What is Sleep Training?
Hey everyone! I'm so happy you're reading my blog today! I want to talk about a question people often ask me. What is sleep training?
Regardless of how or even if you teach your baby to sleep, this is not a shame or blame post.
I remember feeling really angsty about the idea of sleep training my baby.
I mean, really, sleep training can be associated with all sorts of ideas around broken attachment, abandonment, and leaving babies to cry it out that can get the social media public out and shaming anyone who dares mention that they are teaching their baby to sleep.
So I avoided the conversation … until my travel buddy had a baby who barely slept at all. And I kept thinking, Parents can’t function like this. There’s got to be a way to enjoy the little years without forgetting them from lack of sleep. And the short story to that tale is that she decided to sleep train her baby, it worked, I became a certified sleep coach, built Little Winks Sleep, continue to learn, and here we are.
Sleep training is simply teaching your baby to sleep. There are a number of different ideas out there about the best way to do that.
Today let’s take a dive into the Cry It Out method (also known as extinction).
CIO is a sleep training method that involves putting your baby in their crib fully awake and allowing them to cry until they fall asleep. Parents are not in the room or supporting baby.
The idea is that baby will learn that once in the crib, no matter how hard they cry, you are not coming to help … and eventually they learn to quiet down and go to sleep.
While this is sometimes a successful method in terms of baby eventually learning to get to sleep without crying, it doesn’t take into account that:
Sleep is a skill that can be learned, and we can communicate to baby through the routines we have in place and help baby co-regulate using supportive strategies.
All babies are different and can need modifications for their sleep.
Parents can learn to understand HOW baby sleep works and the WHY behind what they are doing for sleep to continue to be successful.
HOWEVER … not using Cry It Out DOESN’T mean that there will be zero crying. This is because:
Babies are born with up to 17 different cries. They are each different ways to communicate, and they are not all cries of distress.
Most babies will cry when a change is made with sleep, because that is how they communicate that they feel confused or frustrated.
Crying is baby’s way of communicating anything other than pure joy and happiness.
To learn more about crying, watch my YouTube video here.
The keys to majorly reducing crying while teaching sleep are:
To practice co-regulating strategies with baby to find out ways that best support them to get a calmer state.
To have consistent routines built into the key parts of their day (wake up, naps, bedtime, and feeding) so that they know what to expect.
To have an informed plan that supports baby’s sleep needs, so that their brain and body feel rested and able to handle change.
To only make one change at a time, and to keep that change once you’ve made it.
Then if crying does happen, it is reduced and kept to a minimum because you are able to truly meet their core needs.
I cover all of this and more in my Sleep Sleep Baby course. It is a game-changer for getting sleep back for your family AND continuing to build attachment while teaching your little one how to feel safe and loved while falling asleep.
A great place to look into how we teach sleep is my free Infant Sleep Class
Anna