THROUGH THE NIGHT: HELPING PARENTS AND SLEEPLESS INFANTS

THROUGH THE NIGHT: HELPING PARENTS AND SLEEPLESS INFANTS
Dilys Daws
New York: Basic Books, With New Preface, 1993
274 pages, hardback, $000
ISBN 0-465-09532-1

Reviewed by Lynne Lamberg

"Sleep problems may punctuate uncertainties between parents and baby at any stage of the baby's development and bring out doubts in parents about their parenting abilities," writes Dilys Daws, a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic and chair of the Child Psychotherapy Trust in London. "They are among the most undermining troubles a parent has to deal with."

While not a traditional self-help guide, this book will interest psychologically-minded parents eager to know more about how sleep and bedtime behavior both reflect and shape parent/child relationships. Sorting out what is going on between parents and baby during the day, Daws observes, may be as critical to solving sleep problems as addressing events of the night. The book was first published in 1989 and updated with a new preface in 1993; it remains timely.

"Looking at sleeping problems," she says, "makes us aware of the complexity of the emotions involved in being a parent." One sees the process by which parents, particularly mothers, and babies move from early closeness to becoming separate beings. Acknowledging a baby's needs, being sensitive to fears, and spontaneously offering comfort, need to be tempered by gradual limit-setting.

Although sleep problems cause distress and confusion, she points out, they are common and not found only in disturbed or problem families. Parents usually do not need to have their problem "solved," she says, but to learn to find their own answers to it. Outside help, however, may offer some new directions. Likely sources include family and friends, a pediatrician, a sleep specialist, or a psychotherapist. Consulting this wise and insightful book would be a good first step.

One way to handle some problems is to reframe them. A baby who sleeps well in the early months and develops trouble sleeping at the end of the first year, Daws notes, may be flourishing, not troubled. He or she may be "fascinated by their discoveries of all that the world has to offer and loath to shut this off and go to sleep." Similarly, she says, nightmares and fears of tigers behind the curtains that develop in the second year "are also signs of maturing minds and creative imaginings."

The book includes a detailed look at one family's difficulties, their struggle to make sense of it all, and the improvement in their baby's sleep they achieved over the course of four counseling sessions in a two-month period. Other chapters focus on infant sleep problems related to depression in the baby's mother, and to handicapping conditions or other illness in the child.

The book includes suggested reading for parents, a comprehensive bibliography, and an index.