New Study Aims to Help Parents Cure Bedtime Blues

By working closely with family physicians that treat children in London and area, the Parenting Matters Program hopes to reach a large number of children aged two to five with sleep and behaviour problems. It will provide assistance, motivation and support to families who struggle by offering booklets and telephone coaching.

Parenting practices are linked to the development of psychosocial problems. Sleep and discipline problems are the most common problems for parents of young children, and are the two concerns related to future child behaviour problems.

Parenting Matters gives tips for improving how parents think about and interact with their child. It helps parents develop daily and weekly routines children enjoy. Specific ways to increase positive behaviours and decrease the negatives are covered.

The program's principal investigator, Dr. Graham Reid, assistant professor in Western's Departments of Family Medicine and Psychology and the Brock Family professor in Child Health, says the program's aim is both to help families, and in a small way, reduce some demands on busy family physicians.

"The program provides new ways of reaching parents that might not have help otherwise," says Reid. "The booklets offer simple, step-by-step parenting techniques to help motivate and support parents in implementing them. The program focuses on parenting related to common problems which may have a lasting impact on child development."

Funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the three-year study addresses the urgent need for assisting the large number of families requiring help, as well as being cost-effective and time efficient. The program works with families for six weeks, and will assess changes in sleep and discipline problems over six months.

The Parenting Matters Program hopes to be a model for improving treatments of children's sleep and discipline problems in Canada.

The research team includes: Drs. Moira Stewart, Evelyn Vingilis, David Pederson, David Dozois, Stephen Wetmore, John Jordan, Gordon Dickie, Ted Osmun and Judith Belle Brown of Western; and Dr. Terrance Wade, Brock University.

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For more information, please contact Graham Reid (519) 661-2111 ext. 84677 or Alison Liversage, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at (519) 661-2111, ext. 86415.