How does your baby's temperament impact their sleep?

Sleep and development educator, chiropractor and mama of two, Dr Ainslee, shares how crucial temperament is in the world of understanding baby sleep.

If there was ONE THING I wish all new parents knew, it's this: how your baby sleeps is not a reflection of your parenting ability.

In the baby sleep world, too often, it’s suggested that if a baby won’t go down 'drowsy but awake' or 'if your baby doesn’t fall asleep independently' then you are doing something wrong.

Here comes the truth bomb I wish could gift every new parent the understanding of – whether your baby can go down 'drowsy but awake' easily or whether they can fall asleep independently is 100 percent down to a baby’s temperament.

The current sleep training narratives around sleep often don’t take into consideration the importance of temperament and normal infant sleep biology, which is something I believe we need to change.

WHAT IS TEMPERAMENT?

Temperament references individual, consistent biologically driven differences in behaviour. It is a human’s inbuilt nature that permanently impacts their behaviour throughout their life, including how they behave as a baby. People often assume that babies are 'just babies' and should be treated all the same, but we know now that temperament characteristics are apparent within the first few months of life and are dramatically evident by the latter half of the first year of life.

We can think of temperament as representing the 'how' or the style of behaviour that humans are born with. In 1956 Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess (child psychiatrist & researcher) found that temperament is influenced by nine traits. These temperament traits for each baby are all on their own individual sliding scales from one end (easy going to highly sensitive) meaning each baby is unique and can have significantly variable temperamental traits that impact how you parent them and also how they sleep. 

NINE TEMPERAMENT TRAITS

+  Activity level: how 'busy' your baby is

+  Regularity/variability: how consistent and regular your baby’s physiological processes are such as eating, sleeping and pooping

+  Initial reaction: your baby’s first reaction to new things

+  Sensory sensitivity: how sensitive your baby is to sensory input such as light, sound and touch

+  Mood: what is your baby’s general overall mood like?

+  Adaptability: how adaptable is your baby to new things and environments

+  Distractibility: how easily your baby is distracted

+  Persistence & attention span: how persistent your baby is & how long they can focus on something

+  Emotion intensity: the intensity of how your baby responds to all emotions from happy to sad

These nine traits can be used to categorise humans (babies included) into one of three groups for temperament – easy going, slow to warm, and sensitive. It’s important to remember that every temperament trait, regardless of what end of the spectrum a baby sits at (easy going or sensitive) has equal pros and cons that go with that trait.

With this in mind, I prefer to use the three flowers – orchids, tulips, and dandelions – as terms to describe each group. This a commonly used method to simplify temperament information. Each flower has a unique set of traits and of course are beautiful and magnificent in their own right.

Orchid

Just like the flower, orchid temperament babies will thrive in the right conditions, but can also be considered temperamental and hard work at times. They are loving, empathetic and notice lots of aspects of their environment more than other babies would. This extra awareness can lead to overwhelm and more sensitivity.

Orchids have nervous systems that love familiarity, dislike change, are wary of strangers, and often hard to make smile. They can sometimes feel like really hard babies to parent, however, if a parent is given the skillset to tune into what their orchid baby needs, often life becomes a lot easier and the baby becomes more relaxed and joyful.

Orchids naturally require more support and co-regulation, especially when it comes to sleep, they often don’t fit into the typical age-based sleep schedule and they are not often self-settlers. More often than not, our orchids are signallers, which means when they wake between sleep cycles they require parental support to get back to sleep.

In 2021 research found that infants with more reactive temperaments (higher sensitivity temperaments), had more sleep disturbances and shorter sleep durations. Higher sensitivity temperament has been shown to correlate with greater difficulty falling asleep and more regular waking overnight.

It is thought that orchid babies make up about 10-20% of the population and classically these are the temperament group that was termed 'difficult'in early research but we now know that babies who fall into this category are beautiful sensitive souls. Other terms for orchid babies can be 'highly sensitive' or 'spirited'.

Historically, these genetically more sensitive humans were beneficial for tribes and villages as they often spotted danger coming more easily than others due to their heightened sensitivity.

If you are a parent of an orchid, please know that this sensitivity is such a gift and you are not alone if you are finding raising an orchid a challenge. Orchid babies when supported grow up to be the most vibrant, empathetic, kind and caring humans that often excel in life. 

Tulip

Tulips are also called 'slow to warm' or 'shy' babies. They are characterised by their tendency to withdraw from new things, their slowness to warm up to new things, low level negative responses to new people or unfamiliar environments.

These babies that are a mix of both orchid and dandelion traits meaning they aren’t relaxed and easy going like dandelions, but not as persistent or loud at communicating their feelings like orchids do. Once tulips have adjusted to new people or a new environment they can be fun and outgoing, they just often need a lot of reassurance, co-regulation and support to get there. Tulips often thrive on predictability, so knowing what is coming next so their nervous system doesn’t have to recoil into a caregivers arms to ensure they are safe.

Tulips are thought to make up roughly 20-30% of the population. Tulips can be really variable with how much support they need from caregivers when it comes to sleep. Sometimes they may self-settle to sleep in a cot, and other times when something is off kilter in their world such as teething pain or not feeling well, they may need more parental support with sleep. This can confuse parents and often frustrate them, because they can’t understand why sometimes their baby feels 'easy' and other times, things feel 'hard' and don’t work in the way they were working, especially when it comes to sleep. 

Dandelion

Just like the flower, dandelions are hardy, grow easily in many different environments. They are sturdy, reliable, resilient, consistent and manage to thrive even when conditions aren’t in their favour. From the start they often establish their own rhythms or routines around things like pooping, sleeping and eating.

They are easy-going, relaxed and not often phased by much. They are resilient and can easily adapt to whatever is going on. A baby that is 100% dandelion would often be called a 'unicorn sleeper'.

Thought to be 30-40% of the population dandelions often sleep independently easily (or are easily trained to do so), and typically have less sleep disturbances overnight. Dandelions will be the babies who happily drift off to sleep by themselves or if you are out and about during their nap time they will just fall asleep wherever they are and take the sleep they need, they are highly portable.

Dandelion children have naturally calm nervous systems, so sleep just comes easily to them and it appears they can self soothe and self-settle.

Dandelion babies are why the argument between whether or not babies can self soothe/self settle exists because people get confused that some babies 'can do it'. They aren’t actually actively self soothing though, it's purely down to their innate central nervous system state and vagal tone.

Some are cruisy forever with sleep, it’s just easy and they don’t skip a beat. Other dandelions (remember all temperaments are a spectrum) will have disruptions with sleep from things like teething, sickness or new development, but once out the other side of those events sleep returns to normal very quickly.

For dandelions, nothing is a problem. New places, new people, new rhythms are all easy-ish. They are resilient and not easily overwhelmed.

Parents who have a dandelion baby or babies would question why sleep is even a problem for some families. They are often lulled into a sense that what they have done, has created a great sleeper, when in actual fact, it is just the baby’s genetics that has allowed sleep to flow so easily.

Dr Ainslee is a responsive infant sleep expert and chiropractor who focuses on holistic support and education for families. Follow her on Instagram @babysleepwithainslee or check out her website babysleepwithainslee.com