Helping Sleep Resistors Fall Asleep
When our babies and children start resisting sleep, we often double down on our efforts to "get" them to sleep. But what if it's really all about letting go?
When our babies and children start resisting sleep, we often double down on our efforts to "get" them to sleep. But what if it's really all about letting go?
A new "gentle" approach to sleep suggests that if parents meet all their child's needs, sleep will follow. However, I disagree and believe this type of approach can actually harm families. Here's why.
Toddler fighting bedtime? Waking regularly? It may be time to reconsider your toddler's actual sleep needs.
"What is most important for your child's development?" If you answered sleep, I think we need to talk.
New research suggests a method of "responsive settling" actually can improve infant sleep as well as extinction methods. Is this wholly accurate?
We often hear people talk about sleep regressions, but this can send parents off on a tangent, fearing their child is losing skills they once had. Understanding what's happening is essential to helping parents cope with these times and truly help their kids.
"Gentle" parenting or sleep training is making the rounds as an "it" thing, but is all of it actually gentle? Sadly there are too many wolves out there dressed up as sheep and it's up to us to identify the real gentle help from the pretend stuff.
This is for those of you who have gone the cry-it-out route and now regret it. The two biggest questions I'm asked on the topic - have I done irreparable harm and can I fix it? - are discussed herein.
In pondering the use of CIO and CC further, I start to wonder if those of us who speak out against sleep training may be inadvertently setting families up to fail. Hear me out…
Often when I write about crying-it-out or controlled crying, I get comments from people who have done it asking what else they should have done in their sleep deprived state. The question concerns me because it highlights not only how mainstream the idea of leaving a child to cry has become, but also about how ignorant society is as a whole about the alternatives to sleep training.