2-045 - Let’s Turn the Conversation Around: Making Infant Sleep Interventions Developmentally- and Family-Focused

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Integrative Statement

Research increasingly highlights a different focus for early infant sleep that emphasizes the importance of responding to infants’ cues and understanding developmental changes. This research gives us the opportunity to turn the conversation from questions about the benefits or risks of behavioral approaches to infant sleep, such as crying to sleep, and move us toward conversations centered on approaches incorporating early developmentally appropriate interactions and strong family systems.
In this roundtable, we initiate discussion of approaches to infant sleep that contribute to parents’ sense of efficacy in care choices by introducing new findings in infant sleep research. We invite participants to engage in conversation about how these findings impact our understanding of infant sleep practice and infant and family outcomes. We examine potential for changes in the nature of best practices for infant sleep. We invite conversation that translates current findings to sleep recommendations that align with a diversity of parental needs and goals. We further examine whether these findings can move both science and applied practice beyond the debate about behavioral extinction practices as a best practice to impact infant sleep patterns. We will invite discussion of questions often overtaken by emotional debates or conflicting positions and turn the conversation away from care practices associated with infant distress to recommendations focused on responsiveness, synchrony, and healthy child and family outcomes. (Macall Gordon, M.A., Moderator)

Sub Unit

• Prevention and Interventions

Moderator

• Macall Gordon, Antioch University, Seattle

Panelists

• Sarah Blunden, CQ University Australia

• Douglas Teti, Pennsylvania State University

• Wendy Middlemiss, University of North Texas