Context Matters Part I: Learning doesn't happen in a vacuum

I'm going to try to address several emails at once through a series of posts about what psychologists often call "context" or the "environment." If you've emailed me to ask about swaddling (how long do you do it for? when do we transition babies out of swaddles? will the switch out of swaddling make a difference in the baby's sleep?) or about moving a sibling into another child's room or traveling for a long period of time and coming back home to "old" sleep patterns or differences in sleep patterns at your house versus the grandparents' house... these posts are for you! All those issues and many others concern changes in the child's sleeping environment and those changes, indeed, can make a HUGE difference in how children fall asleep and stay that way. For this post, I'll stick to the more general consideration of learning ANYTHING at all, not just sleep habits. Then we'll generalize in the next post to sleep in particular.

One of the reasons sleep training is usually not a one-shot deal for most families is that as the child develops, the world around him also changes.  So far, we've only touched on one of the most important aspects of sleep training. This issue is actually not specific to learning how to go to sleep on one’s own: it is a fundamental aspect of all kinds of learning, especially in the early years of life but also, to some degree, throughout childhood and adulthood. It’s the role of context. When we learn a new skill, we use all the cognitive resources at our disposal, and it seems as though it is these thinking powers alone that either permit learning to occur or are found insufficient to the task. But learning relies on much more than what’s going on inside our heads. It also relies on what’s going on in the environment.

When a child learns to count, he does indeed require a brain that’s mature enough to grasp the way numbers stand for a sequence of objects. He needs the language skills to utter words that stand for numerical placement. He also needs joint attention and social referencing so that he can pay attention to what is being taught by his parent or teacher. These are all the requirements for counting that rest INSIDE the child's head. But he ALSO needs a great deal from outside his skin. He needs a parent or teacher patient enough to repeat numbers while pointing to objects. He needs a set of objects that are the right size and shape, and are lined up in such a way as to highlight their “countability.” He also needs to be well-fed and well-rested so that he can concentrate on the task at hand. And he needs a well-lit room and a learning space where the objects to be counted stand out from their background and make themselves available to be pointed to or manipulated. In other words, learning depends on context. 

Learning ANYTHING in life is helped along a great deal by contexts that are set up to support that learning. We take all this for granted, and we intuitively prepare contexts to help children learn whatever it is we’re trying to teach them. We don’t try to teach a child the names for colours in a dark room, and we don’t try to teach table manners to a child who has the flu, or who is extremely hungry, or who wants nothing more than to be finished eating and go out to play. We adapt the context to the task and the task to the context. The child’s learning of the task depends on the context in which it’s learned. Finally, skills that are not yet completely formed, or that are still easily lost or forgotten, are best maintained when we reproduce the context in which they’re originally learned. In other words, kids (and adults, BTW) learn particular skills better when these skills are taught in the same (or very similar) environment, over and over again. Table manners take a long time to perfect. But if we want to keep them from vanishing, then we practice them again and again in a context that facilitates impulse control and pulls for social routines.

The role of context in learning and maintaining good sleep habits could not be more critical. We don’t teach children to sleep on their own when they’re over-tired, or going to sleep at grandma’s house, or when their stuffed animal has gone AWOL. And we make sure that the lights are dim, the room warm, the belly full, and so on. We intuitively understand the importance of comfort and consistency, and we carefully prepare the child’s environment to maximize the chances of successful sleep-training. Then, once sleep-training has begun to succeed,  we’re careful to set up bedtime practices that will ensure its continued success. We wait until the child is tired, but not over-tired, we calm her down with stories and other peaceful activities, we sing the familiar songs, the ones that will become bedrock routine before long, we set the lights at just the correct dimness, and we make sure that every nuance of our own behaviour conforms to our child’s expectations.

So one of the most common causes of sleep setbacks is, very simply, a change in the context of going to sleep—often a change that we’re unaware of (slowly it becomes lighter and lighter outside at earlier and earlier times in the morning), or that we don’t see as important (change in diet, learning to walk), and sometimes a change that we can’t control (the child grows out of the swaddle, an overnight disaster trip to grandparents' house).

We'll talk more about how this basic learning principle -- context matters -- impacts on sleep issues in the next couple of posts. But I think you see where I'm going... What changes in the environment disrupts your child's sleep patterns? How have you adjusted to those changes?

Comments

[B]

What an interesting post, and as a first time parent, I have to admit that I took for granted what all is involved in learning! I am really looking forward to future posts about this, esp sleep!
As for how we adjust to changes in our environment / sleep pattern, we just try to keep everything else as routine as possible. Even if our daughter wakes up early or goes to bed late, try to keep dinner at the same time, bath at the same time, use the same song / milk / book routine prior to bed. I try to tell myself that it helps - I'm just not sure if it's helping me or my daughter more!

[z]

Changes in environment- daylight savings and the fact that it gets earlier in the summer makes wake up time earlier but since it gets darker later-it doesn't necessarily mean a later bedtime. How do we handle it? Rather grumpily at first but then we adjust to it soon enough. Thankfully they still nap in the afternoon.
For my younger son though any kind of light or white noise disrupts his sleep. He likes to sleep in cool dark rooms which his brother does not these days. His brother needs the light these days so we cover the little one's head with soft breathable blankie to help filter out the light.
As far as the bigger changes in environment- sticking to the same routine when we travel is good. It may not always work as well but it works. We also are super flexible when we travel in that the kids can snuggle in bed with us or whatever it is they need to get to sleep we will do that with them since they are out of their environment.

[fahmi]

One thing I always wondered - does context depend on the time of the day, too? 5-month-old kidlet goes down very easily for night time - the routine works to do the proper cueing, I guess. And it helps that he is tired and ready for bed.

But naps require a lot of help. A lot of holding, shushing, rocking, sucking. In fact, it's rare that I can put him down before he's asleep for naps, and have him to go sleep on his own. Most times, I have to rock and shush him to sleep and then put him down. At this point, he opens his eyes and then goes back to sleep.

I am nervous about sleep training his naps, though. Is that going to make his nighttime sleep habits change, too? Or can they make that distinction between nap and bedtime?