Hi, it’s Linda of Sleep Tight Consultants. Today on the Sleepy Qs podcast we’re going to be talking about a topic that you may not be quite familiar with. It’s called intermittent reinforcement. What is this you might ask? So intermittent reinforcement is a behavioral term that means that as parents, when we’re desperate, we do all sorts of things in order to get our children to go to sleep or to go back to sleep.
So we’re going to talk today a little bit about what intermittent reinforcement is. And I’m going to give you some examples of what that looks like with babies, with toddlers, and also how it plays out with older children. And I’m going to talk a little bit about how it plays out in other area because this is really a behavioral term that applies to so many different things as it relates to children and also of course, as it relates to sleep.
One of the major causes of sleep troubles
Surprisingly, this isn’t something that gets a lot of attention when actually it really is kind of the backbone of what it means to sleep train your child. When we we talk about intermittent reinforcement, what we’re really talking about is inconsistency, responding to children in ways that are inconsistent, meaning that sometimes we do one thing and sometimes we do something else. And unfortunately this causes a lot of confusion.
Inconsistency is normal for newborns
I do want to be very, very clear though, that this does not apply to children under four months. And really even under six months, in some instances, there’s a lot that can be unpredictable for young children. And unless your child is at a place where they’re ready to start to learn how to do things in the exact same way, every time and how to be responded to consistently, then this isn’t going to apply to them. Newborns are inconsistent just by their nature. They are not predictable. They do things at all different times and they change very, very frequently because they’re growing and developing very frequently. And so it’s okay to respond differently to your newborn when they wake up. Really, at nighttime with a newborn your goal is to do whatever you have to do in order to get them back to sleep.
For example, when your baby wakes up in the middle of the night, you feed them, you change them, do what you have to do in order to get them to go back to sleep as quickly as possible. All of this is very, very normal, but when your child gets older, as you move out of that 4 to 6 month range, this is where you want to have a way of responding that’s going to be very, very consistent and very predictable if you’re looking to start to change your child’s sleep behavior. If whatever is happening for your child, sleep is no longer working for you, that’s where change can start to happen assuming that your child again is past that 4 to 6 month range.
Intermittent reinforcement at different ages
So I’m going to give you some examples of what intermittent reinforcement looks like for children at different ages. For babies again, children past that 4 to 6 month range when you’re really in that survival mode, right? This can look like: your baby goes to sleep at bedtime. Maybe they fall asleep being held or fed or rocked, whatever it is, that’s how they fall asleep, and that actually works pretty well. Then your baby wakes up an hour or two later, and you’re able to just go in and pop the pacifier in. That works. Great. Wakes up again an hour or so later, maybe a couple hours later and you think to yourself, okay, it’s reasonable that you might be hungry. And so you feed your baby at that point. Then your baby wakes up again another hour later and you’re like, “Oh, you can’t be hungry again!” So maybe you send dad in there and you see what he’s able to do to get your child back down.
Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t, maybe there’s a little rocking, some bouncing, some pacifier action again. And finally your child goes back down. Then they wake up again. Okay, fine. I’m going to feed you again. And then the next time they wake up, it’s 4 or 5 in the morning. Seems close enough to morning. So now I’m just going to put you in the big bed with us. And so all of those things will get you through the night, but unfortunately, all of those things are very inconsistent. It’s unpredictable. Your baby doesn’t know “when is the time that I’m fed? When do I get the paci? How do I get to go sleep in the big bed?”
With toddlers, this can look a little bit different. So, especially with children who are in beds rather than crib s, this can be really difficult, although I’ve seen this plenty of times with toddlers in cribs as well. So this could mean that your toddler is in their bed and they call you back. “Mommy, I need water.” Okay. I get you some water. They call you back. “Mommy my socks fell off.” And then you go and you put their socks back on. “Mommymy blanket came off.” I would add very clearly here that I do not recommend that that parents put blankets on young children. Yes, there is the safety recommendation to not put a blanket on a child under two years old or even. You know, under a year old, however, I recommend that parents don’t put blankets on toddlers for behavioral reasons because they don’t say under them move a lot when they sleep. Children don’t actually enter that stage of paralysis and sleep until they are sometimes three or four years old. So they move around, they don’t stay under their blanket, and now they insist that you come back in over and over again and recover them throughout the night.
So finally, throughout your whole process of troubleshooting at bedtime, you managed to get your child to go to sleep by doing that one last thing and they finally agree to go to sleep. And now they wake up and you’re back at it all over again. So I think of intermittent reinforcement for toddlers as really that troubleshooting behavior that we get into as adults. And we think it’s so rational. If I just do that one last thing, maybe my child will finally go to sleep.
Troubleshooting to get your child back to sleep
I’ll give you an example from when my daughter was a toddler, she was classic in this behavior she loved to do, she loved to do these things. And so one night I remember she woke up in the middle of the night and she asked for something that was in the car. And I so clearly remember my husband being like, “Oh, okay.” And turning around to literally go out to the car in the middle of the night to retrieve whatever item it was that she wanted. And I was like, “No, we do not go to the car in the middle of the night,” but it seems so rational at the time time, because our thought was I’ll just get her back to sleep. Another example that I often give i s, if you’re in the grocery store and you’re in that checkout line and you’re in the long line and somebody in front of you is maybe they’re writing a check and it’s taking forever and ever, and your kids are with you and they’re like, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, can I please have this candy bar? Can I please, please, please have this candy bar?” And you’re like, “no, no, no, it’s almost dinner. We’re not getting a candy bar. We’re not getting it.” And they get louder and louder. And now everyone’s starting to say. Stare at you. And finally you’re like, “Oh, fine, fine!” And you give them the candy bar. Well, you better bet that the next time you come into that at store, your child is going to escalate more quickly and more loudly because they don’t know what finally made you decide to give in, but they know that it’s possible. You have a limit and then eventually this will happen.
Behavioral science behind intermittent reinforcement
So intermittent reinforcement is not just something that all of us crazy sleep consultants have come up with in order to explain things to parents, it’s really based on behavioral science. And this comes from an experiment that was once done on rats. It’s still probably done. It’s called the Skinner rat experiment. And what this means is th at, a rat is put into a maze and it runs through the maze. And at the very end, it rings a bell and it gets a treat and it does that over and over again. And then the person who’s doing the experiment starts to give the treat intermittently. So sometimes they give it, sometimes they don’t. And what ends up happening is the rat kind of starts to go crazy, not knowing what to expect. How do I get the treat? And they kind of start losing their mind, ringing the bell all over and over again, without understanding what makes that happen. And so the same thing happens in children as they start to experience this inconsistency, they start to escalate more quickly, more loudly. And I always explain to parents that any behavior that’s been intermittently reinforced leads to more hysterical, crying.
Incidentally, if you’ve ever played a slot machine, this is intermittent reinforcement for adults. Another example that I can give from my daughter when she was older was there was always a time limit on when she could have any sort of a device in her room and I’m pretty strict with it. And there are times where my husband is not so strict with it. And I remember one time where I went in to get whatever the device was. And she said, “Well, daddy, let me have it longer last night.” And I was like, well, but yeah, “I’m here for it tonight.” And then you better bet. There was a power struggle that happened because there was some inconsistency in the rule.
Sleep training helps you respond consistently
So, what do you do if all of these different things are happening throughout the night, and you’re trying to help your child learn how to sleep better? Well, this is where sleep training really comes in and the actual methods for sleep training: that’s a discussion for another podcast, but the reason that sleep training works and the reason that it changes sleep behavior is because it gives you a way of responding in a very consistent and very predictable way to your child each and every time they wake up. So they’re not wondering, is this the time where I’m fed? Is this the time where I get the paci? Is this the time where someone takes me out and bounces me? How do I get to sleep in the big bed? And it becomes very clear to them. They understand what’s going on and they know what to expect.
Medical issues make consistency very difficult
I do want to add one other really important piece of information, which is that if your child has an underlying medical issue, it’s going to be very, very difficult to make changes in their sleep behavior specifically because it’s very hard to respond consistently into your child, if there’s a medical issue. So for example, if you know that your child has reflux and and it’s not being treated or you know that your child is bothered by it. It’s uncomfortable for them. Then it’s going to be hard for you to say, “no, I’m only responding to you in this one, consistent, predictable way” when you know that there’s probably something that’s making your child uncomfortable. And so as a parent, it’s very, very hard when you know that there’s something going on, to respond consistently. It’s also hard when kids are sick, because they’re going to wake up, they’re going to be uncomfortable. And this is something that’s going to make that consistent response, very, very difficult for you because you know, that there’s something that is making your child uncomfortable, that’s bothering them. The medical issues that I see that really make it hard to make any sort of consistent changes to your child’s sleep are things like reflux , eczema to some degree, it’s the itch that rashes. Sleep apnea, for sure which is when children are sleeping and their tonsils and adenoids are enlarged blocking their airway and causing their oxygen level to drop throughout the night. This in particular, it causes them to wake up. So I always, always recommend resolving any underlying medical issues so that when you do say, okay, now we’re going to respond consistently. You can be confident in your ability to do so.
It gets worse before it gets better
Because of the nature of behavior change, whenever you’ve gone from being inconsistent, to being consistent, things always get worse before they get better. I always tell parents, especially of toddlers, that you have to sort of walk through the fire to get to what’s on the other side. And what that fire looks like is a tantrum. It means your child is going to be really mad, really frustrated that you’ve stopped doing the things that you’ve done before that were sort of appeasing them and now you’re responding very consistently. And so sometimes it can be really, really hard upfront when you’re trying to make that change. And also any behavior that it’s been intermittently reinforced leads to more hysterical crying, more frustration from your child until they start to learn what the new name normal is, and that things will now be this way from here on out.
Intermittently reinforced behavior leads to more crying
Whenever parents ask me how much crying there’s going to be whenever they’re making changes in their child’s sleeping behavior, I always talk to them about that their child’s age about their child’s temperament, but most importantly, what really determines how much crying there will be when you say, okay, we’re going to make these changes and we’re going to be consistent, really has to do with how much intermittent reinforcement there’s been in the past. So this means how many different things might happen throughout the night in order to help your child go back to sleep. But also if you’ve made efforts in the past to be consistent and to sleep train, then when you say, “okay, now I’m doing it again,” now it’s going to be harder because of that pattern of learning that the parent has a limit, that at some point they will do something to help you go to sleep then this can often make that intermittent reinforcement really powerful.
Thanks for listening in to today’s episode about intermittent reinforcement. This has been Linda Szmulewitz on the SleepyQs podcast. If you liked today’s episode or any other of our episodes, please share your five-star review so we can continue to make these episodes for everybody to enjoy. Thanks so much.
