About: Wishes for the study and the NGO behind it

Our goal is to work to ensure that parents and carers of young children receive understandable, unambiguous and qualified guidance, which follows the latest scientific research on and in Relation to children’s sleep. We hope that this study will be an important step towards this goal.

The continued recommendation of outdated approaches to sleep, such as sleep training, is not a matter of a few isolated cases where professionals ACT unprofessionally. In fact, our study shows that there is a widespread and general problem with the guidance given in infant, baby and child sleep in our society, all over Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Parents of young children can be a vulnerable group, especially with the first child and during the first year of life. In a state of fatigue and with the absence of their own experience base, parents need caring and reflective guidance that can guide them to find the solutions that are right for their particular child and their family. The National Board of Health (Sundhedsstyrelsen) has a great responsibility in relation to ensuring that professionals and their managers are equipped to provide guidance based on updated knowledge and with great consideration for the vulnerable position of the parents.

Our first wish is that this study raises awareness about the extent and severity of the problem surrounding sleep training, among those who are in a position to make changes.

Our second wish is to create an open and public dialogue between the Danish National Board of Health, health professionals, researchers, relevant institutions and the media to ensure that professionals, as well as the guidelines in baby and child sleep they use, are updated and qualified. Furthermore that counseling in outdated sleep training methods stops.

Our last wish is that the debate stays focused: The lives of children and parents are currently being affected by poor sleep guidance, and it is urgent that action is taken to ensure children’s demand for and right to be treated with care and respect.