Parental education and better sleep in infants: a systematic review
Ana Rita Vieira1, Jonathan dos Santos2, Paulo Santos3
The first year of the child’s life can be overwhelming. One of the major problems faced by parents relates to the infant’s crying and sleeping habits, potentially leading to exhaustion, with implications for their health. Information is crucial, so our aim was to assess the relevance and impact of parental education on children’s sleep problems in the first year of life. To this end, we conducted a systematic review, using as keywords references to “parental education,” “parenting,” “sleep hygiene,” “infant,” and “newborn,” looking for original articles published over the past 10 years in English and Portuguese. We found nine original articles. Results suggest that preventive intervention improves infants’ sleep quality. Parental education programmes included infant sleep patterns, parental behaviour, and strategies facilitating self-soothing. Placing down the infant while still awake, and minimising parental responsiveness by active extinction and graduated extinction techniques, were shown to be the most successful strategies. Cognitive-behavioural interventions proved to improve both parents’ and infants’ symptoms. Incorporating formal parental education into children’s sleeping pattern and parents’ behaviours in children’s health routines in regular medical practice is a cost-effective strategy for increasing the empowerment of families to deal with the problem.