Co-Sleeping And Infant Development

There has been a constant debate of whether co-sleeping is beneficial or detrimental to infants development. But studies have shown that co-sleeping with the parent influences emotional development between the parent and the infant. By co-sleeping with the parent the warmth from their body in addition, to the sense of protection allows for attachment between the two. The infant is able to follow the breathing rhythm of their parent while co-sleeping as well. Exposing infants to toxins in parents’ breath also assist in development. Furthermore, co-sleeping has been seen to have prolonged effects on social interactions between the parent and child. The purpose of this paper is to review how co-sleeping is beneficial to infants development.

One of the issues with most parents of newborns is the amount of sleep their infant obtains and when the sleep occurs whether it is daytime or nighttime. An important goal for parents is ti eliminate the stress of their infants night awakenings by getting their infant to form early, healthy, and independent sleep habits. This is the goal of most parents specifically in western countries such as the United States which is why many are against co-sleeping. Sleeping through the night or settling is a misleading concept. Most adults and children periodically wake up throughout the night and fall back asleep without being aware of these awakenings, something infants cannot achieve right away. Parents of newborns cannot expect the baby to have eight hours of uninterrupted sleep especially in a room by themselves but they can expect gradual improvement. Wolfson, Lacks, and Futterman (1992) studies the effects of parent training on infant sleeping patterns, parents’ stress, and perceived parental compete...

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...nt, if not more important, than bedtime practices in predicting infant sleep quality (Teti et al., 2010). Results support the theoretical premise that parents’ emotional availability to children in sleep context promotes feelings of safety and security and, as a result, better-regulated child sleep.

In conclusion, though none of the above directly states how co-sleeping effects emotional development in infants it is apparent that infant sleep is very essential to infant development in a general. During the moments when infants are sleeping with their parents they have much parental availability that will soothe them back to sleep. In turn this makes the parent-infant attachment better which will affect how infants display their emotions. Being able to express their emotions freely and having a responsiveness parent will be beneficial to their emotional development.