Week9. SC, Routine and Predictability.

I found Bootzin & Epstein’ chapter, Stimulus Control, very interesting and helpful in that it clearly shows us how to set a sleeping routine by controlling stimulus around a sleep.
Focusing on internal cues, using bed for only for sleeping(except sex) even when you are awake during a night, waking up at the same time, do not taking a nap. Even though, those instructions are intended for PWI(a person with Insomnia)(p.167), they are very powerful and practical guidelines for lay people, too. As scientifically proven more and more like Voelker(2006), sleeping is one of essential components affecting human’s emotions and functioning at many aspects. If PWI is treated with SC of typical 4-week therapies, the benefit of establishing sleeping routines and getting a body accustomed to it will be tremendous without a doubt. On top of the effectiveness of the SC, it seems to be very much efficient in light of possibly easy dissemination of the treatment. Although the authors state that the implementation of the treatment is not as easy at it looks, mostly because of compliance issue, the procedures and techniques of SC does not seem complicated for a therapist to learn and practice.

In line with previous reading of ‘Behavioral Activation’, I think SC for PWI shares many components with ‘Routine Regulation’ in BA. As it is well illustrated a case with a depressed person, as a way to break free of depression, a client and a therapist worked together to establish a good sleep hygiene(p.264, Jacobson, Martell, & Dimidjian(2004)).
The importance of setting up a sound routine in those readings reminds me of a TV program called “my kids changed” in Korea. The program introduces a family having a trouble with problematic kids like being aggressive and out of control, and shows how the family changed with an assistance of an expert. The first thing the expert does after observing the life of the family for a couple of days is to set up “family routines”. This is almost the same regardless of types of problematic behaviors. The family routines include wake-up, bed times, meal times and play times, etc. In combination with other strategies for a family, restoring and sticking to routines works as a basis for the family functioning. And at the end of program, the intervention really works and the effect is sometimes reported to last for a follow-up check, depending on how well the family maintains routines.

I’m very much surprised to see the importance of routines every time I watch the program. And I wonder why the routine is so important to those kids in the program. My conjecture is that routines provides predictable environment especially for children. Children with less sense of time than adults are not in a good position to construct their own stuff on a regular basis. This means that they’re less capable of creating predictable environment on their own. Once routines are set and maintained in a consistent manner, children can predict what would come next and what their roles will be depending on a specific routine. This predictability leads children to have a reliable and stable feeling about their environment, getting their body ready for current and next routines.

It will be quite intriguing to see more explanation on the mechanism of how routines change people’s behaviors, thoughts and emotions.