A report from New Jersey 101.5 discusses the issue of getting children to sleep alone and offers practical solutions for parents.
Sleep Onset Association Insomnia of Childhood is a technical name for an exceptionally common issue for parents — getting children to sleep alone and in their own bed, according to New Jersey experts on the issue.
Children start associating certain things with sleep, and the most common thing is the physical presence of a parent, according to Dr. Matthew Davis, a neurologist and sleep specialist at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch.
“The treatment for this is exceptionally unpopular and gets a lot of bad press, but it’s commonly referred to as just sort of the cry-it-out method,” said Davis.
He said the idea is that, you put your child to bed, make sure they’re safe, make sure there’s no illness, put a monitor in the room if you need to, and essentially let them cry until they learn to self soothe to allow them to fall asleep on their own.
