Divided Attention and Parents’ Stress: Part 1

The world we live in demands that we are constantly connected to our electronic networks for news, work, friends, and the latest trends on Twitter. We don’t just need to know…we need to know now. Parents, especially those with young children, also have to be constantly aware of their children in small ways (“don’t touch, that’s hot!) and big ways (“will she like the new babysitter?”). The divided attention needed to stay on top of everything seems to be no longer a choice for parents and has become a normal part of life. “Multitasking” is an expectation, and for most people, a source of significant stress. In the past, media messages and employers asserted that the human brain is limitless and that people, especially women, can manage a lot more work “simply” by multitasking (doing tasks simultaneously or switching back and forth between tasks very quickly). But, the latest research has demonstrated that multitasking has its price, in less focus, accuracy, and creativity, as well as increased stress.

You may be wondering why I’m bringing this up in a blog about babies.

If you are a Secrets reader, you are interested in understanding more about your baby’s behavior. You might be thinking that knowing more about your little one will help you feel less stressed. But knowing a little more about yourself might be more helpful. You may not be thinking of the ever-present need for divided attention as a source of stress but it is known to be so stressful, scientists use situations that require divided attention to induce stress for experimental purposes.

Here are some of the documented effects of divided attention:

• Increased heart rate and blood pressure
• Perception that common tasks are more difficult to accomplish
• Mood changes
• Interference with the ability to remember things, including future tasks
• Interference with retrieval of memories and reduced accuracy of those memories

What do these effects mean in the real world?

Let’s say you’re late for work because the kids haven’t been very cooperative. The baby might be getting a cold and your preschooler had a tantrum when you told him that he can’t wear his Halloween costume. You have a meeting in the early afternoon and co-workers have been texting you about it since you first woke up. You had planned to run errands on the way home from work and your spouse asks you to make another stop at a gardening shop that you normally like to visit. You’re almost out the door when you realize you can’t find your car keys. You get a call from your boss just as your preschooler disappears into his room. What happens next?

• Your breathing gets a little faster and you feel overwhelmed and even a little sick
• Anything your boss asks about seems out of line
• You resent your spouse for asking you to run his or her errands when you already have too many of your own (even though you can’t seem to remember what those errands are)
• You feel overly frustrated with your preschooler for going back into his room. After all, he “should know” you need to leave
• You are certain that you left your keys on the counter and can’t imagine any other place that they can be (even though you put them on the hall table without thinking earlier in the morning)

Does any of that sound familiar? Put sleep deprivation in the picture and everything gets worse. It may seem that there is nothing you can do about this but there is! A few changes and you can make even the busiest morning less stressful. In part  2, we'll share these changes. In the meantime, take a deep breath and try to relax!

References

1. Nebel, K et al. On the neural basis of focused and divided attention. Cognitive Brain Res 2005; 5: 760-776.
2. Petrac DC et al. Differential relationship of recent self-reported stress and acute anxiety with divided attention performance. Stress 2009; 12: 313-319.
3. Wetherell MA and Carter K. The multitasking framework: The effects of increasing workload on acute psychobiological stress reactivity. Stress Health 2013; epub, ahead of print.

Right-handed or Left-handed? How Early Can You Tell?

Being a lefty, I know all about the inconveniences of being one of the 10% (or so) of adults who are left-handed. Of course, I know there are stories about “lefties,” specifically, how our brains work differently than those of our righty brethren. The stereotype lingers that lefties are creative but a bit scattered, illogical and spacey. Ok, the spacey part might work… But, how do babies become right- or left-handed and how soon can you tell which hand your baby will prefer? In this post, we want to share some of the research in this area.

How Do Babies Become Right or Left Handed?

Scientists do not fully understand how babies end up favoring one hand over the other. A few ideas have been tested related to babies’ positioning in the womb. Because of the limited space and the position of maternal organs, developing babies end up looking to the right more often than to the left. This means that they are more likely to see and become familiar with their right hands. Another idea relates that there is more likely to be space in the womb to move the right hand versus the left. If one hand is easier to move around, it may end up as the preferred hand. Some scientists have focused on factors influencing handedness after the baby is born. Typically, newborns do look to their right more often than their left and they will work to move the hand they see. This may result in earlier voluntary movement of the right hand. Another theory relates to the fact that babies watch and learn from their parents. Babies notice which hands are used to feed them, play with them etc. This theory may partly explain why left-handedness tends to run in families.

So, the current thinking is that most babies become right-handed because of several circumstances that slightly but consistently increase in the likelihood that they will see, explore, and use their right hands both prenatally and postnatally. We lefties either didn't have these experiences or reacted to them differently (perhaps that's where the brain differences come into it).

How Early Can you Tell if a Baby will be Right or Left Handed?

Many parents start to imagine that their baby is left- or right-handed based on the percentage of time their 4- or 5-month-old reaches awkwardly with one hand or the other for an object that is held in front of them. But simple one-handed grasp actions are easy to do with the non-dominant hand (you do this every day) so trying to identify the preferred hand so early isn’t likely to be very predictive (at least not of left-handedness because nearly all babies end up right-handed). Handedness becomes more predictable when babies start to use both hands to explore objects. Older babies will use one hand to grasp and the other to keep objects steady or to manipulate them. When they start to play with toys in more complex ways (stacking, pulling them apart, putting them in and out of containers), they are more likely to use a dominant hand. Babies tend to be older (18 to 24 months) before handedness becomes more consistent. No matter what age your baby starts to prefer one hand over the other, there are a couple of things you should know. First, handedness is really a continuum, meaning that most babies can use both hands but they tend to use one hand more effectively than the other. Some people rely on the preferred hand for nearly everything, others can use both hands for most tasks. Handedness in adults and older children seems absolute only because of habits and more practice doing daily activities like eating and writing with one hand. Second, researchers have found that babies are less likely to show hand preference when they are learning new skills. That means that you might see your baby using one hand much more often than the other until he starts doing something new (like standing) and then he might use both hands equally until he masters the new skill.

References

Fagard J. The nature and nurture of human infant hand preference. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 2013; 1288: 114-123.

Michel GF, Babik I, Sheu CF, and Campbell JM. Latent classes in the developmental trajectories of infant handedness. Dev Psychol. 2013; June 17 Epub.

Nelson EL, Campbell JM, Michel GF. Unimanual to bimanual: Tracking the development of handedness from 6 to 24 months. Inf Beh Dev 2013; 36: 181-188.

Reader Question about Older Baby Sleeping Independently

A few days ago, we received the following question from a reader:

How about sleep with older babies? We have an 11 month old, we've never sleep trained, she's never been a great sleeper (we co-sleep). I'd like to move towards independent sleep after she turns a year but I have no idea how to implement... I feel like some of the reasons I shied away from (independent) sleeping when she was an infant aren't such a concern with a young toddler..? So what are your thoughts on sleep training for an older baby?

Most parents define independent sleeping as their child sleeping on their own sleep surface in their own room but different parents have varying goals or ideas about at what age this should or will occur. Let’s take a look at a few studies reviewing where babies sleep at 1-year-old. In a 2002 study, 76% of 12-month old babies slept in their own rooms (in a sample of non-co-sleeping infants). (Burnham 2002) A larger study in 2008 reported that about 71% of 1-year-old babies slept in their own rooms. (Hauck 2008)

While there is really no need to “sleep train” babies (in the popular sense of the term), even at 1 year old, we do have several great posts to help parents through this transition time. I’ll share a few key things to keep in mind, along with links to our past posts for you to read.

First, babies love routines, and this reader is changing her baby’s routine by moving her baby into the baby’s own room. Any change in routine takes some adjustment time and has the potential to cause increased night waking. Creating a consistent new bedtime routine that ends in her new sleep environment is the key. For more about the importance of routines, click here.

Next, some of the guidelines have changed related to crib safety. In the following post we answer a reader question about transitioning her baby into her own room to sleep. We share Recommendations for Infant Sleep Settings and Choosing a Safe Sleep Surface in part one of the post. Then in part 2 we share tips to ease the transition of baby into her own room.

Lastly, there are many reasons why we don’t like sleep training, even for older babies, and truth be told, older babies may wake-up at night in their second year of life as well. For more details, click here.

We think it’s most important for parents to weigh the evidence and then do what feels best for their particular baby and family, realizing this may be different from others’ choices. We hope this was helpful! Good luck and we wish all of you with 1-year-olds a very happy first birthday!


References

Burnham MM, Goodlin-Jones BL, Gaylor EE, Anders TF. Nighttime sleep-wake patterns and self-soothing from birth to one year of age: a longitudinal intervention study. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2002; 43(6): 713–725.

Hauck FR, Signore C, Fein SB, Raju TN. Infant sleeping arrangements and practices during the first year of life. Pediatrics. 2008 Oct;122 Suppl 2:S113-20.


Note: The original post “Reader Question: "At what age do you transition babies to sleep in their own rooms?"” published on 6/3/11 contained 2 typos. 1) The 2008 study by Hauck et al found that 29% still bed shared, meaning 71% slept in their own rooms. 2) In the text of the post we said the Burnham study was published in 2005, when it actually was published in 2002 (the reference list was correct). We apologize for the confusion.