The Hard Line on Sleep

Two reviews appeared in Slate today on the new and revised edition of Richard Ferber's Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. (You can read them here and here).

Now I haven't read this book and happily fall into the class of parents that doesn't need to. But in reading the reviews it occurred to me that we had pretty much taken the Ferber line with our babies anyway. That line is this: let them cry. The book is then about various strategies for parents to use to achieve this. As one reviewer, Emily Bazelon, wrote: "his parenting book is read and reread in our house, because we rely on Ferber for backbone." She goes on:

Ferber's method rests upon the sensible idea that children have to learn to go to sleep by themselves. To do that, they need a set of "sleep associations" that don't require your presence, which means at bedtime no nursing, rocking, back rubbing, or singing to your baby. Ferber provides a vivid analogy for adults: "Think again about having to sleep without your pillow," he writes. "You would no doubt curse your bad back and your doctor vehemently. … The only way you would learn to fall asleep without your pillow would be to actually practice doing so." So it also goes for a baby who since birth has been nursed to sleep and is now going off the boob. She needs to practice and that means some crying—and not crying followed by a guilt-ridden rush to make the wailing stop. When parents cave, "their child only learns that he must cry longer to get what he wants." According to Ferber, your impulse to give unconditional comfort is misguided, and maybe you'll even be able to conquer it. "Once you understand that your child's need is simply to learn a new way to fall asleep (whether it is what he wants or not) it is easier for you to see that this need is met," Ferber says.

This highlights the issue. The theory is simple: if you make a big deal about bedtime and associate it with things that require your attention then that is what will happen. Bedtime is a first hit at independence and, of course, it is a rare baby that doesn't react to that very fact. After all, from their perspective they are the centre of the universe and everything else about their lives at the time is reinforcing that belief.

It is implementation that is hard. This is especially the case for first time parents. And what you need to do it is support.

That is what happened to us. Our first child spent the first six weeks of her life not sleeping. We were getting four hour breaks at best. I was hallicinating. (I saw a horse running on the freeway and still remember it vividly!) We took her over to a friend's place. They had more children. We put her down and they stopped us from going in. 30 minutes later she was asleep.

That night we implemented the hard line. Through the baby monitor was screaming. My partner said that she "couldn't stand listening to it any more." So I went to the monitor and turned it off. "Problem solved." 10 minutes later we determined with our ears to the door she was asleep. 4 hours later we didn't get her. She screamed and then went back to sleep. 8 hours later we woke up, panicked, ran to her room and she was lying there happily smiling at us.

We never had another problem night from her again. And when I say never, I mean never. She would go down at 6:30 and stay there until 6:30am. 12 hours per night without fail. Now it wasn't just the hard line that allowed this but also the fact that we made sure she wasn't hungry by engaging in a 'feeding frenzy' between 4pm and 6pm. But with that mix we definitely got results.

So how did all this knowledge translate to our second child. There, it was a hard line pretty much from the start. And the result was 8+ hours sleeps at night at 4 weeks. Alas, however, our cockiness stuffed it up again when we put him on solids at 4 months (that was the recommended date way back then in 2001) and got over-enthusiastic about it. He had stomach cramps, had to be taken off food and didn't sleep through properly again until 10 months.

Sleep performance does to a large extent depend upon the child. Child No.1 was well suited to it. She ate like a big that meant she could eat enough before bed. She also is a great sleeper. To this day (she is now 7) we can move her around in her sleep without her noticing.

On the other hand, Child No.2 would throw up feeds all the time and was a light sleeper. He also doesn't need as much sleep. To this day, he bounds up out of bed at 5am ready to go. He is the ultimate in morning people even before it is officially morning! Compared with Child No.1 who thinks that morning is an afront to her rights and grumps for a good hour, our son is disturbingly happy and cheery at sunrise.

Finally, on to Child No.3. We had a hard line from the start (partly because we didn't realise the old baby monitor wasn't working too well and so we got our 'spine' for free; we didn't know she was crying!). But nothing we would count as sleeping through until 10 months. This is because our daughter reached a compromise solution. She wanted 5 minutes of our time sometime between midnight and 2am for a feed and that was it. We hardly felt it and when it comes down to it we effectly got 90% of the Ferber-type independence anyway.

Nowadays when she wakes up at the crack of dawn she is greeted first by our son who, let's face it, is the right person for the job. That buys us extra sleep time.

In conclusion, the Ferber approach has lots of merits but it is implementation that you have to concentrate on. Absent that the defective baby monitor will work wonders.

Toilet Training and Incentives: Child No.2 (Part I)

In my last post on toilet training (over three years ago) on our experiences with incentives on our first child, I ended with the following hope:

... the management process was painful and it is unclear whether this wouldn't have all happened of its own accord anyway. Next time around we will wait a little longer, check for signs of readiness and go for a big bang behavioural change. Let's see how that goes.

It is time to report just how it went. The answer, very very mixed.

Our son proved to be a very different ball game from our first daughter and not for gender differences. Our daughter possessed several qualities that lent her to the useful application of incentives. First, she was highly strategic and easily understood what rewards meant. Second, she had some basic motives -- most notably food -- that made it easy to give her high motive rewards.

Our son possessed neither of these qualities. He was not strategic and hardly had a self-interested bone in his body. He didn't care about much that was material. For him, toilet training was something that was going to please us and for that reason he was interested. Read him a book and he will stay on the potty. The attention would do.

Nonetheless, despite this, very little has happening. So we decided to implement our more explicit incentive system that had worked well with Child No.1. But there was a twist: Child No.1 was around and in many ways we need her help. So Child No.2 would receive a sweet reward -- one or two jelly babies as the case may be. But also where he was successful, Child No.1 would receive the same. We viewed all this as a team effort and Child No.1 was part of the team. To align her incentives we gave her a share of the pie.

That part worked swimmingly. She encouraged our son to sit on the potty and spent time showing her books. It seemed that we may have efficiently outsourced this activity: something valuable in our time strapped lives.

Alas, it was not quite to be. We had to put a stop to it all when we discovered Child No.1 feeding Child No.2 copious amounts of water to help the process along! (By the way, in case you are wondering Child No.1 was 4 years old at the time).

Nothing seemed to work with Child No.2 and a deadline was looming. He was turning 3 and could go to pre-school so long as he was toilet trained. We were three weeks away and desperate (Not just for us but for him. Pre-school was much more fun than child care).

So we established Toilet Training Boot Camp. The nappies were confiscated. The rug was removed from our wood floors and we would do this as long as it took. He understood the basics but just needed intensive experience and so that is what we provided.

Now you may think that this seems somewhat cruel. Well, I did some research and this was nothing compared with a book tantilizingly entitled, Toilet Training in Less Than a Day by Nathan Azrin. This book is ranked in the top 1000 of books sold even today. But if you read the reviews the results are definitely mixed and even those who liked it said it took many more days than one. I didn't buy the book and we persisted with our methods.

The first week was tough: he definitely wanted his nappie back and we had to buy more cleaner. The second week had more successes and we were getting close: 100% results on number 2 but still problems with number 1. But in the final week he got it.

We turned up to school and announced our success. They then told us pull-ups would have been just fine. So much for rules. Sigh.

In the end, it was the attention and intensive experience that did it but all indicating a message: it will happen when it will happen.

But we were not done yet: incentives came back inforce when we moved on to night training. A much longer story for another time.

(Un)Happy Meals?

[From CoreEcon]

Today brought moves for a code of conduct for the 'junk food industry' to limit the advertising content in junk food ads to children. One of the suggestions is that McDonalds would not be allowed to put toys in Happy Meals.

When it comes down to it, the whole move against advertising towards children is a red herring at best and at worst a distraction and excuse for governments not to hit at real problems.

• First, it is highly unlikely that junk food ads were causing the problem. It is the junk food itself that is surely the issue. Let's face it, no one really believes that advertisements really work otherwise they would advertise carrots to children this way and it would 'solve the problem.'
• Second, Happy Meals are not about the food but about the toys. The good thing about the food is that it is in small quantities. In my day, when we went to McDonalds we would eat adult meals. Anything that stops that is surely a good thing. McDonalds is likely making all their money on selling the toys in these meals.
• Third, indeed, if we are worried about children eating McDonalds then the biggest threat -- ironically -- are the salads and sandwitches McDonalds now offers. These make it easier to sell Happy Meals. Why? Previously, a constraint on going to McDonalds was that increasingly health conscious adults would be resistant because they would have nothing to eat. Now, that is not the case. Remove that constraint and more children get McDonalds. Of course, I don't want to suggest banning healthy food at McDonalds only to suggest that playing around with these things is complicated.
• Finally, if we get politicians thinking that dealing with advertising is good health policy we won't get good health policy. Moves to control the actual content of food rather than the content of food messages is surely the way to go. Thus, moves to ban soft drinks in school tuckshops is a much better candidate for health policy focus.

On a parting note, let's not forget the critical role junk food plays in children discipline and incentives. Everytime an ad is shown, children value junk food more and therefore react more when they receive it as a reward. Happy Meals do have carrots after all.

The second best 'ice' movie this month

Movie Reviews (Ice Age 2: The Meltdown and March of the Penguins)

We saw Ice Age 2 yesterday and I have to say that it was the second best ice-themed movie I have seen this month (behind March of the Penguins). Let me substantiate this bold claim but first letting you know something about my criteria in seeing these G-rated movies: just because they were made for kids doesn't mean they should only be for kids. If I have to go along, I am expecting to enjoy it too.

That means that I am looking for something a little more sophisticated in plot than 'chicken sees sky falling and then war of the worlds ensues just as he was being doubted by society.' Ice Age 2 was strongly anticipated on this front. Ice Age had produced a remarkably complex plot that exposed prejudice, revenge and forgiveness. Just to recap that movie involved the plot 'sabre tooth tiger attacks humans as revenge for a prior attack, human mother saves baby by placing it in a boat [yes, it was derivative of Moses], baby picked up by mammoth whose family was also attacked by humans, who overcomes desire for revenge (thanks to a friendly sloth), converts another tiger away from group think and ends up fending off tigers to return child safely to humans, who show self-restraint in not killing the mammoth.' Very similar to the Jungle Book but with a few extra dimensions of selflessness and alot more ice.

As the ice melted for Ice Age 2, so apparently did the need to get everyone's motives down pat. The mammoth, Manny, is now concerned about being the last of his kind and is faced with a single potential mate, Ellie, who was raised by possums and thinks she is a possum. [Now there is some irony here as the mammoth is taken in by others just as the baby in the first Ice Age but is not smart enough to know what she is as opposed to the dinosaur in Dinosaur who knew he was not a lemur!]. Other than that it is not clear what the deal is with everyone else. The sloth, Sid, and their tiger friend try to overcome fears but the main enemies -- some previously frozen reptile things -- are somewhat one dimensional. They can't even talk for goodness sake!

Actually, there is a secondary plot line -- just as in Ice Age -- with a little rodent, Scat, trying to get himself an acorn. He will do anything for it and in the process causes mayhem (but ultimate redemption) for others. His struggle (reminiscent of the penguins that I will get to in a second) is wonderful, painful but also inconsistent with the plot of the first movie where he was frozen for 20,000 years. Nonetheless, I was happy to seem him back, even if there was no attempt to explain that.

In the end, there is little below the surface in Ice Age 2. The good news is that it is easily watchable and there is no sense at all of 'when will this be over' making it above average for the genre. [No Vogon poetry-type torture here].

Contrast this with March of the Penguins, a documentary about emperor penguins in Antartica and what they have to do through. It is 'set' today but the same story could have taken place during the ice age, so I feel that the movies are 'apples to apples' comparable.

Now you definitely get the 'when will this be over' feeling watching the March. But it is not for yourself, but for the penguins. In a vast irony of evolution, penguins appear to have become perfectly adapted to their Antartic environment but in a way that leaves their quality of life below that of pond scum. I don't want too give much away but you haven't seen suffering until you have seen what the penguins do as part of their normal life. Yes, there was suffering in Schindler's List and Meet the Parents but it was relatively short and hardly normal. The penguins do this year in, year out, generation in, generation out.

This movie is entertaining for the whole family but also gives you something in return: a new perspective on how hard life can be. Whenever things are getting you down, you will be able to think of the penguins and thank goodness you are not one of them.

In another irony, there is the subtext of global warming and what it might be doing to the penguins' environment and way of life. When it comes down to it, it is difficult to walk away from that with environmental fervour. After this movie, the emperor penguins are not going to be the poster child for that cause.

[March of the Penguins is available on DVD from amazon.com]

Busy tooth fairies

[Originally from CoreEcon]

In the last couple of days, I have spent considerable energy thinking about the tooth fairy. It is our own fault really. On Thursday, our daughter lost her sixth tooth. On Friday morning, she woke up to tell us that the tooth fairy hadn't come. And then trouble ensued.

My initial reaction to this sad news was to go up and check her 'tooth box' carrying money in my hand in a vain attempt to suggest that she had just missed it being bleary eyed in the morning. This plan was aborted when I opened the box to find, well, a tooth. Obviously, to take the tooth now would be a tad too obvious.

On to plan B; imaginative lying. We settled on, "obviously, lots of children must have lost teeth on Thursday and the tooth fairy is just one fairy and can do so much. She will be here tonight." Our daughter bought that and, indeed, when discussing the incident with a friend, it turned out the same thing had happened to him once. (We must remember to thank the parents!)

A colleague of mine recounted to me his 'imaginative lie' when faced with a similar dilemma. He said to his daughter (and I am not making this up), "Oh, I came into your room last night and saw a bright thing buzzing around that looked like a firefly and so I swatted it." It wasn't clear that that was to death or just away but his daughter was suitably (and understandably) horrified.

In that light, our lie is much more tame. However, that didn't stop another parent being horrified with me as I recounted the day's incident: "how could you just lie to your children?" Ahem, it is the 'tooth fairy' we are talking about here! I think I have a pretty much free license on that one.

To continue the story, we almost forgot again on Friday night, but got this just in time. We have so many more teeth to come amongst our three children, this is bound to be an on-going issue.

This led me to think about the whole tooth fairy thing. From an efficiency standpoint, it would be much better if a child could present a tooth to us and receive cash on the spot. No running around at midnight searching for coins. It also saves on other inefficiencies. This time around our daughter ended up with New Zealand currency (I had just returned from there and it was lying about). If she asks about it I'll embellish our original lie. "The Australia tooth fairy has been busy, as you know, and so probably asked the New Zealand one to come in and help out." As you can see, globalisation works out for the general good again.

How did we end up in our current situation? According to Wikipedia, the tooth fairy has origins in the United States around 1900. But it really appears to have taken off in Western cultures post-WWII. Suggestions allude to the value of myth and how children like story telling as a rationale for the tooth fairy. But that doesn't ring true.

When it comes down to it my daughter knows exactly where the money is coming from but is quite happy to 'play the tooth fairy game' if only for the benefit of her younger siblings. So there is no sense of wonderment there. Just the usual raw economic calculus.

My hypothesis is that the 'tooth fairy deal' persists because it is an excellent incentive device. When a child has a loose tooth, there is a possibility that it may not come up necessitating more drastic action. This might be a parental intervention (you know, the string and the door trick) or worse, an expensive trip to the dentist. What can stop this is if the child endures a little bit of pain and wiggles the loose tooth. To provide an incentive for this action, we offer some money for the tooth. Saving a $50 dentist bill for a dollar or two a pop seems like a good deal.

Indeed, we know of a child who was two days from going to the dentist who was offered (and it is not quite clear how this fits in with the tooth fairy lie) $20 if they could pop the tooth that day. Surprise, surprise that is just what happens. I pity those parents, however, on what will happen with the next tooth. The child will anticipate the dentist deal and wait until the last minute. Much better to hold the strict tooth fairy line.

This all leads me to think more about other economic issues associated with tooth fairies. What drives the price of a tooth? Does it drift with the rate of inflation or the cost of dentists? What about the mechanism for the exchange (tooth under pillow versus tooth in cup of water versus, our solution, tooth in special box)? All interesting questions that I'll need to return to at some point.

Tuning in doesn't make you tune out

[From CoreEcon]

As a parent, access to television is seen as a privilege and not a right. We place a television alluringly in the family room and then place an invisible wall around it saying 'Off Limits.' If a request to watch television comes in from one or more household members it is carefully reviewed by committee including taking of submissions from all interested parties, examinations of the time of the day and the day of the week, and a rigorous account as to the applicants' other merits (doing homework, asking nicely). Then a decision is based with reference to guidelines as well as precedent. Unfavourable decisions usually are accompanied by appeals and requirements for the committee to suggest alternative activities. Favourable ones are then referred to a lower level subcommittee to determine what will actually be watched on television.

In an earlier day, without DVDs or Tivo, that process would have been lengthy enough so that a new problem of 'there is nothing interesting on TV' would have come up and the TV may actually not get turned on. Today, we don't have the luxury and so practices are then reviewed by a non-consultantive panel regarding whether too much TV is being watched overall. In the end, I think an average child in our household ends up watching 4-6 hours per week (yes, per week; about a seventh of the average in the population. For TV loving parents such as us, this is somewhat surprising).

Our review panel devours any studies that might enlighten on this issue. The sum total of those studies has been basically uninformative. Some claim TV is plain bad, others it depends on what you watch and others depend on who watches with you. The end result is too use common sense as these outcomes also apply to books and computers.

A new study has appeared by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro that will get our attention this evening. These economists at the University of Chicago have used the fact that television was introduced at different times in different cities of the US. They have then taken standardised tests conducted in the 1960s to examine the long-term effects of television watching. Theoretically, if television is bad, if you had been watching it for 12 years before taking the test as opposed to 4 years or not at all, it would show up in test performance. [See this article in Slate for a more comprehensive explanation.] Moreover, this is all done at a time prior to VCRs etc where there was little ability of parents to choose what their children might watch and there was certainly no regulation of advertising content.

And the results: there is certainly no negative effect from television watching. If anything the effect was positive and more so for children in non-English speaking households and where the mother had less than a high-school education.

Can we disband our review processes now and let the kids watch TV until they are sick of it? Then we would have more time to get back watching as much TV as we did when we were growing up.

Restraining parents

Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame wrote an interesting paper recently that strongly suggested that car seats did not assist in preventing child fatalities in car crashes any more than seat belts. A link to his article and related findings is here.

Now when I proudly brought this excellent piece of econometric research home as evidence as to how we could free up space in the car, I was informed that our household behaviour would not be changing. Car seats all around until they are well beyond 6 years old. Well, we had the seats anyway (4 or 5 by last count between various cars and ages and a total expenditure of $1000).

I suspect that reaction will be similar. Give parents and option and suggest that it will have a marginal improvement in safety and they will demand it in droves. Get some government regulations and it is entrenched forever.

But one wonders how far this might go. Suppose I developed a cocoon type restraint whereby you took said children, put them in a coffin like structure with a little window to look out of and staked them neatly in the boot of the car or SUV. Now I am pretty sure I could get some engineer to demonstate their safety properties. Coupled with an alluring idea of having the kids out of sight while driving (whine free!) and I think this is a winning product.

Parental demand for safety (subject to wealth constraints) seems to me to be unlimited and as close to inelastic as we are ever going to find. Although against this is the fact that we are yet to see the ‘Safe and Silent Cocoon.’ Nonetheless, an issue of public policy makers interested in consumer protection is how to restrain parental purchases of unnecessary equipment. I for one could use some restraint.