Our understanding of sleep disorders has come a long way in the last decade. One thing that has become abundantly obvious is the fact that insomnia (difficulty falling or staying asleep) can be a symptom of a sleep disorder, and that children can suffer from insomnia too.
In the old days, any child who fought bedtime or woke at night (past the age when feeding required it) was assumed to have a behavioral problem. This means that the child was behaving badly, and that the parents had encouraged this behavior by giving in to the child's demands to be held or rocked or fed. The treatment of choice was to not give in, to let the child "cry it out."
But what if these children have insomnia? What if their difficulty sleeping is a symptom of a sleep disorder. Can you teach a child not to have insomnia by making them lay in their crib alone, even worse, stay there crying?
No.
I found this out the hard way. I was a pediatrician poorly trained in sleep disorders, as are most physicians because the information is so new, and I let my sleepless child cry because I had been taught that all sleepless children are spoiled. It didn't work. And now I know why.
Please share your stories here. If you include your email, I will gladly write back with all the information and helf I can muster.
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