Your Baby Isn’t Sleeping Well Because Your Marriage Is Rocky

If your marriage is on the rocks, your little baby knows. That’s why he or she isn’t sleeping through the night according to a new study on infant sleep in Livescience. What I found interesting about this study is that researchers focused on thoughts of divorce and not severity of fighting in the household. Although the research is pretty premature, the findings indicate that children often know what’s happening in the home even if you try and conceal it from them.

The Livescience piece mentions the presence of stress in the home when considering the sleep patterns of children. Anne Mannering, a  research associate at the Oregon Social Learning Center at the time of the study, says that it’s unclear if stress in the marriage makes parents less responsive to their children or if child are directly impacted by the stress.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t take a screaming match in the kitchen for kids to understand that things are less than okay. Children are often sold a little short in how much they can sense simply because of their age. Tactics to close doors, restrict arguments to after bed time, or conceal problems completely, don’t in fact keep little ones in the dark. Even in spaces where language isn’t offered, little kids know when there is turmoil in the home.