Parent survey

Problematic infant sleep is a common issue facing parents and can have deleterious effects on many aspects of health and wellbeing for the child, parents and broader family unit. Extinction-based interventions are the most common treatment recommended for problematic child sleep behaviours, and involve ignoring a crying child to various degrees. Multiple sources have described parental resistance to implementing such methods but little is known about their uptake in the community. This resistance potentially leaves parents without support or treatment for sleep problems. This project explored (1) Australian parents’ use of three common, extinction-based sleep interventions (unmodified extinction, graduated extinction, and extinction with parent presence) and (2) views on managing sleep with their young child. An exploratory, mixed methods approach was used to meet the project objectives. An online survey collected 1,344 complete responses from Australian parents (98% mothers) of a 6-18-month-old assessing factors relating to child sleep, including night-waking cognitions, parenting efficacy, psychological distress, sleep information access, extinction use and demographics. From this quantitative data, descriptive and path analyses were used to ascertain mothers’ use of extinction interventions, reasons for use or non-use, and factors which predicted use.