Sleep training for babies
Sleep training is the process of teaching babies how to fall asleep and go back to sleep independently. It usually begins when the baby can sleep for 8-10 hours at a stretch without needing to wake up and feed. Many babies reach this milestone at around 4 months of age, making this the perfect time to start sleep training.
Ideally, before sleep training, you will have already established a predictable sleep routine that includes daytime naps as well as a consistent bedtime ritual and bedtime. The main idea behind all forms of sleep training is to teach your baby to better manage sleep needs independently, hopefully avoiding extreme measures like having to drive around for an hour to put your baby to sleep.
Some of the more popular sleep training methods include:
- Crying it out—Richard Ferber, the director for Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children’s Hospital Boston, developed the sleep training method of “crying it out” (although in reality, parents have been practicing this for centuries). This is the process of teaching a baby to fall asleep on their own by self-soothing. Parents can go into the room after a baby cries for a while, but they can never pick up the baby. They simply pat baby on the back, and then walk away.
- The no-tears solution—Elizabeth Pantley, parent educator and author of The No-Cry Sleep Solution, and William Sears, pediatrician and author of The Baby Sleep Book, believe babies should be trained to sleep with comfort from their parents. When a baby cries after being laid in the crib, the parent offers comfort immediately.
- A combination of these two—Some experts recommend combining these two approaches, depending on how your baby reacts.
Dr. Mark Weissbluth, author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, advises parents to anticipate and respect when their baby will need to sleep, just as they anticipate when their baby needs to feed.
Weissbluth also recommends matching the time when you soothe your baby to sleep to the time when you baby naturally needs to sleep. Learning to recognize your baby’s drowsy signs will help determine when to begin soothing your baby to sleep in a consistent fashion, with the idea that soon your baby will be able to self-soothe.
The most important thing to remember is that there is no right or wrong way to train your child to have healthy sleep patterns as long as you have consistency. Different methods of sleep training may seem more natural or more acceptable for each parent, and different methods may work better according to the temperament of your child.
Takeaways
- Studies suggest sleep training is an effective way to teach babies how to fall asleep.
- You can usually start sleep training you baby around 4 months old.
- Crying it out, or self-soothing, is a main practice to teach children a sleep routine.
My son just turned 4 months old. Sleep training was attempted but I realised he’s too young for that. So we are training him to sleep with his arms out of the swaddle sack. The problem is everytime we put him down on the mattress he wakes right up and refuses to fall back asleep. We have tried the non-dominating arm out, dominating arm put and both arms out; giving him 5-15 minutes to soothe himself but to no avail. It always ends up with him sleeping on me, in my arms or in a carrier during the day. I know that my situation might be off topic here but I am at the end of ropes and I just need a fresh perspective on my situation. Is this normal? Does my son have issues with insecurity?
This sounds completely normal and in no way indicates your baby has issues with insecurity. The key is consistency – whichever method you decide to use, make sure you are following the same patterns each and every night so your baby comes to know what to expect. Good luck!
There is a heck of a lot of research about the negative side effects of sleep training. It sets kids up with a stress-reactive brain profile that often makes them prone to anxiety for their whole lives. Any research stating that CIO and most other sleep training techniques are not harmful don’t usually look much beyond whether the child stops crying or not which is extremely shallow. It would be helpful if this site actually presented facts.
The purpose of this article was to present some of the most common sleep training methods, not to suggest one is superior over another. I am personally not generally in favor of the cry it out method, as I think a gentler approach can often be used. The American Academy of Pediatrics has found that there are no negative side effects to sleep training. Feel free to check out the link here.
http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/Infant-Sleep-Training-is-Effective-and-Safe-Study-Finds.aspx
My child is now 8 months old and is waking up more now then he did when we brought home from the hospital. We travel on the road with my husband and have a home, but mainly live in and out of hotels. So I can’t really just let him cry it out cause my husband needs his sleep. But, I’m losing sleep and my patience at night. What can I do to help him/us sleep better at night and start sleeping all night?
Ashley I feel for you and I’m not sure there is an easy solution! Your son needs both a consistent bedtime routine and needs to learn to soothe himself back to sleep when he wakes up during the night, even if it means fussing a bit. Traveling with babies is hard enough, I can’t imagine doing it all the time. Perhaps you could return home for a little while to try and get him on a better routine? Or maybe get a hotel suite with more than one room so daddy could sleep away from the baby? I feel for you and wish you the best of luck!