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I often get some rather accusing replies whenever I write on, well, anything. People read judgment in just about anything and some people seem to not really read much at all, just rush straight to getting offended. This is particularly comment when I write on sleep training – extinction sleep training to be specific (this includes crying-it-out and controlled crying). I often try to reply either via email or in comments (depending on how the comment came in), but I thought I’d publicly write some answers to those who publicly comment. If I’m going to say something on this, I might as well do it once and refer back instead of having to repeat myself over and over and over and over. So without further ado, I welcome you to a comment and response section on extinction sleep training, one I hope to update as more comments come in!
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Found on “Shut the Door and Walk Away”, a piece dealing with the advice to shut your child in a room, leave them to cry, and don’t go back for 12 hours.
WOW…what a judgmental, obviously biased opinion!!!
I TOTALLY disagree based on loving experience! I “sleep trained” my son and he is the sweetest, most caring, loving child I know! We have a amazingly connected relationship and everyone compliments his wonderful temperament, which I give a great deal of credit to his happy, healthy sleep habits!
I did not read any mention above on the importance of consolidated sleep!?? It is just as important as food for growth a development!!!!! Would you let your child eat a whole bag of chocolate because he cried of you didn’t!?
Children need structure, routines, boundaries and to be taught healthy sleep habits. It is unfair to let children be in control of their sleep…of course they do not know what is best for them…that is our job as parents!
To each their own, but do not blanket judge other loving mothers!
BTW…I never once refused to feed my son during the night when he was hungry. I also breast fed him until he was over 2 years old…”easy route”…I think not!
ONE LOVING MOMMA HERE!!!!!!
Dear One Loving Mamma,
I have no doubt you love your child or that your son is sweet, caring, and loving. As I wrote in the piece, extinction sleep training (specifically the method mentioned which was to leave a child for 12 hours, not responding to cries or calls) does not condemn a child to a life of misery or sadness – there are tons of factors that influence our children’s development. I find it interesting that you believe his temperament has to do with happy, healthy sleep habits as temperament is actually defined as the part of our personality that is not influenced by other behaviours and factors. It’s important to be clear here as temperament is one of the factors that would influence how a child responds to parenting techniques like extinction sleep training. In fact, I also don’t know what kind of sleep training you engaged in given you mention always nursing during the night when your child asked for it (which immediately contradicts the 12 hours of non-responsiveness which was the focus on the piece here).
You wonder about the importance of consolidated sleep and I should be clear that there is NO evidence that it is necessary or even positive for young infants into the toddler years. In fact, the work we have on consolidated sleep and its importance is exclusive to older children, adolescents, and adults. Night waking in infancy and toddlerhood is not only biologically normal, but actually essential for infants and some older children to ensure proper growth. Even when we get to older ages, only recently have we humans started sleeping in large chunks. Until the advent of electricity, sleep was a two-chunk process with shorter sleep durations, so the “importance” of consolidated sleep exists only in a Western vacuum. It is not a biological need, but one that has become an issue because we simply don’t have the times to sleep outside this one chunk at night. As such, no, consolidated sleep is not nearly as important as food for development.
Similarly, your idea that children need to be “taught” healthy sleep habits and that it’s unfair for them to be “in charge” of sleep is again a Western-centric view with no basis in history or science. Children throughout time have been in charge of their sleep and not taught specific sleep habits with zero negative repercussions. They have followed their circadian rhythm and the natural day/night cycle when possible (e.g., Native Canadians in the Yukon would not base their sleep on the sun given the long periods of dark or light, depending on the season). Again, in our society we have created schedules and expectations that are based on a specific, narrow view of sleep. In this, children may need guidance to match society’s expectations of what their sleep should look like, but as is being discovered by researchers, this doesn’t actually mean it’s best for children. Where we will also have to strongly disagree is the idea that our babies and children inherently do not know what is best for them biologically-speaking. In a society where we override what is best for our bodies on a daily basis, I would argue our children have a far better grasp of what they need biologically than we do.
You ask if I would give my child a bag of chocolate chips if she cried for them. Here I find your misunderstanding of an opposition to extinction sleep training to be most clear. First, let me say that I say no to my child many times and she gets upset. Being upset does not mean I change what I am doing, but it also does not mean I ignore her distress and refuse to comfort her; quite the opposite, I acknowledge her feelings while holding the boundary (see the chart to your right). In extinction sleep training, the entire method is based on refusing comfort when a child cries out for you – that IS the entire definition of crying-it-out and so if you are not doing this, you are not engaging in extinction sleep training. At no point have I ever advocated that parents stick with an unsustainable situation. However, there are many gentle methods that are based in responsiveness that allow parents to (try to) change sleep patterns that are not working for the family (one whole post on gentle sleep resources can be found here).
You end by saying I have blanket judged other mothers yet I can see no place in this piece in which I have said anything judgmental about mothers. I have spoken about methods and choices and the risks associated with some choices. If you read someone pointing out that there was possible risk in a decision you made as “judgement” then I ask you do some soul-searching about what you are really looking for from strangers on the internet.
Tracy of Evolutionary Parenting
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Found on “Shut the Door and Walk Away”.
I couldn’t disagree more. I pandered to my first child’s every cry. She was a most unhappy child. Slept little and I wasn’t just a tired mum, I was distraut and sick. if you look at the science of sleep, people have natural sleep cycles. No-one callously just shuts a door on a baby. Babies naturally resettle when waking between sleep cycles. Random comments of ‘just walk away’ have no foundation. Read the book or go and see the sleep doctor in person. He says it straight because he knows it works. But there’s more to it than that. I wrapped up my second two children and laid them down to sleep independently from birth. That’s was after, feeds, nappy changes, cuddles and singing. But, when the the sleep cue came, which starts as a little whimper or fractious grizzle I knew from the science that my infants were ready for sleep. Following their cue, I settled them into bed and walked away. They happily lay their in there familiar surroundings and contentedly fell asleep. Distraut parents of unhappy babies who cry all the time visit the sleep dr or read his book and yes have work to do. Their infants are used to parents returning to there recurrent cries and have developed a habit. These babies are not happy because the poor lambs never get enough sleep. They’re not happy, neither are their poor parents. So they go to the sleep dr in desperation and he teaches what he knows works; how to help your baby have good, long, solid periods of heavenly sleep the are so desperately lacking. The method may seem confronting, but brings beautiful results of a happy, well rested and healthy baby and equally so are the parents. Time with baby is no longer fractious and spent resentfully, but enjoyable. Parents are still tired and baby’s are still babies, but this continuous attendance of a baby who never settles habitually day in and day out, night in and night out is eleminated. I spent time settling my first child and introducing the sleep doctors practices at a pace I felt comfortable with and in time her happiness was evident in a baby who whilst she learned to settle independently, gained a far more restful sleeping pattern not relying on being constantly disturbed by her own anxieties.. As a result we were all less anxious. The experience I’ve had of poor mothers constantly attending a baby who doesn’t sleep well is that they and the child are both stressed and anxious.
Dear Sleep Doctor Fan,
I am first very sorry to hear you had such an unhappy first child. I find it odd that you seem to attribute this unhappiness to your “pandering” to her every cry as that may have actually made her experiences better than what they would have been otherwise. I hear you on the fact that she didn’t seem to sleep much and you were beyond exhausted. No one – especially not I – is suggesting you should have just continued with this; however, if you had come to me, I would have sat down with you to first find out if you had the support needed to get your own sanity back before focusing on trying to ascertain what was wrong with your child. For you see, sleep is rarely a problem in and of itself, it often reflects other problems such as feeding or health issues and as such should be seen as a symptom and not a cause of distress. However, I know how hard it is to actually accept that when you’re beyond exhausted.
Everything you describe about your own anxieties and the stress surrounding your first is part of a larger problem of parental lack of support and expectations about infant sleep. You were happier because you eliminated the stress from your life and your child stopped calling out to you. You can say your child needed long stretches of sleep, though no science or history supports that as an actual “need” at young ages (see my response above). You see a child who is responded to as simply having a “habit” yet I see a child who realizes parents will be there during periods of distress. Something that is essential to building healthy emotion regulation later in life. You spend a lot of time describing your own experiences and to that I can only say that if your second two happily lay down after a feeding and fell asleep, consider yourself lucky. That is not all babies and to assume that all are the same is truly problematic.
As for the science you seem to want to discuss, I would like to correct a few things. First, not all babies naturally re-settle between sleep cycles. This is the entire point of responsiveness and how it helps babies to re-settle. Some require feedings, some require close contact, and so on. Second, your suggestions that the sleep doctor leads to better results (including happier babies) doesn’t actually hold up in his own research which I have read. In his large-scale findings, infants using his method sleep 1 hour more per day, but cry the same amount as infants who did not use his method. This means that proportionally, they are actually crying more during their awake time than those who are not undergoing the extinction sleep training he recommends. (I also will add that I have had personal conversations with the sleep doctor and this view of shut the door and walk away is actually rather reflective of his method, though he admits to offering less extreme versions for families unwilling to follow this bit.)
I don’t doubt that you and the doctor have families’ mental health in mind. The problem is that the infant’s mental health is being ignored with these methods. No one wants unhappy, stressed out parents, but there are many ways to achieve better sleep as a family than extinction sleep training. Even in Australia, Dr. Pamela Douglas and her Possums Clinic offer evidence-based, cue-based care for families, helping them understand the reasons behind the sleep disruptions and anxieties so they can tackle the real issues instead of the symptoms. I recommend checking her book out (a review here) to understand more of what cue-based care entails.
Tracy of Evolutionary Parenting
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From “Sleep Training is a Feminist Issue (Just Not in the Way You Think)”, a piece responding to the claim that extinction sleep training is feminist as women bear the brunt of nighttime care and this is a method that helps them.
The irony, of course, being that you ARE ignoring your children’s needs at night. Because a child’s (and adult’s) primary biological need during the night… is for SLEEP.
Have you had a chance to look at the mountain of irrefutable evidence showing how much physical and psychological harm is caused by chronic sleep deprival? In both children AND adults? Women are not, as you say, “designed” to handle night wakings any more than men are.
(My reply: You’re conflating research on adult sleep deprivation and natural, normal night wakings in infancy and toddlerhood. Longitudinal research shows they are very much NOT the same thing. Plus, as the article states, there are LOTS of ways to handle changes in sleep when necessary that don’t involve extinction sleep training.)
Okay, let’s for one moment accept your assertion that chronic sleep deprival (past early infancy) does not cause problems for toddlers and children. There is no disputing that it is harmful to adults (i.e. these children’s mothers and fathers). I fail to understand how you can place so little value on the mental and physical health of the very people responsible for raising these little humans. Moms matter. What is best for baby is to have happy, healthy (ergo well rested) parents. Period.
Dear Guest,
There are really two main issues to address here with you: (1) What biologically normal sleep looks like, and (2) The mental well-being of the family and how to achieve this. The first issue is paramount to explain as you seem to conflate normal night wakings with chronic sleep deprivation. Yes, there are extreme cases (especially in countries where parents are expected to return to work immediately) where demands on parents are so great that they suffer severe sleep deprivation from normal infant night wakings. We need to tease these apart though because the infant is often not sleep deprived (a point I made in my first response) and behaving in a biologically normal manner, one that is ideal for his/her development, but society – especially a patriarchal society – does not value this or the type of care required for this developing child. Typically, infants will wake, nurse, possibly play (until the discovery and widespread use of electricity, even adults didn’t sleep in these long, consolidated sleep patterns), and then return to sleep when tired again. This is normal and may even be optimal for these children’s individual development.
That said, there are infants and toddlers for whom sleep deprivation is an issue, yet even here, extinction sleep training should not be the go-to for parents. As mentioned above, actual sleep problems in infants (not parental problems with infant sleep) are almost exclusively symptoms instead of being a sole problem. In these cases, discovering what the cause is should be the primary focus of any treatment.
The second issue is about the mental well-being of the family. There are two fallacies in your response here. First, you assume that to be against extinction sleep training is to not value the mental and physical health of parents. Not true. It simply means I also value the mental health of the infant. This is why I will always offer gentle suggestions on changing sleep patterns, but only ones that are based on responsiveness to the individual child. If you fail to respond to your child, you are not being considerate of their mental or physical well-being.
The second fallacy is this idea that all that matters to infants is that their parents are healthy and happy. Sorry, life does not work that way. Infants have needs that go beyond a happy caregiver. Most notably, infants need lots of contact, comfort, and responsiveness. Time and again we find that responsiveness is one of the most important elements of parenting and thus if removing responsiveness is what makes mom or dad happy, it most certainly does not mean the infant is getting what is best. I recommend you read up a bit on the period of hyporesponsivity and the role of comfort in the development of emotion regulation to better understand the integral role of parental responsiveness in child development.
As always, there are better methods than extinction sleep training that can respect a child’s biological development and the mental health of the entire family, infant included. Being against methods that disrespect the infant and their development is not contrary to feminism in any way, shape, or form.
Tracy of Evolutionary Parenting
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If you are in need of individualized parenting help with sleep or other areas, I offer science-based, gentle, and attachment-focused help via email, Skype, or phone. You can find out more here.
Hey Tracy,
Thank you for existing.
My son is nine months old and for several weeks he has been waking up every two hours at night. I’m tired, he’s tired. He is on the bottle solely now and up until yesterday I have been not only responding to every cry but I have been giving him the bottle too. Many people (and their dog) believe that we have created a habit where he needs the bottle to fall asleep.
So, following Hand in Hand’s guidelines, I have been StayListening after giving him the bottle. This has happened three times in 36 hours and each time he cries for 60 minutes before falling asleep. I hold him or I sit with him while he is in his crib. My dilemma is that I do not feel good watching him cry that long, seemingly fighting sleep, and I don’t know if trying again later might be a better plan. I will not let him cry it out alone but I want more sleep.
Emailing you.
[…] Een heel ander thema is dat van de boze reacties op een blg over iets waar je als blogger een uitgesprken mening hebt. Ook daarin kan ik mijzelf zeker herkennen. Mogelijk pik ik het idee nog eens, maar eerst deel ik het origineel met jullie. I get a lot of people angry that I speak out against extinction sleep training because it “worked” for them. I thought I’d start a post that allows me to “How Dare You Judge Me For Sleep Training!”: Comments and Responses | Evolutionary Parenting | W… […]
Hello. My son is 7 months old and he wakes during the night every night, Can you please recommend some positive resources for helping him with longer sleep patterns, I try and be responsive to him but lately I feel overly exhausted and I feel like I’m not at my best during the day. I have noticed hes been increasingly unhappy as I have been more and more tired and I desperately would like to correct this for each of our benefits given that I am a single mother and the only caretaker he has. I fiercely oppose methods that “cry it out” which seems to be the main types of articles I can find and I’m just frustrated…
I’ve sent you an email!
My second child (a son) is 7 months old. Lately his sleeping patterns have been quite erratic, due to (I presume) teething, a brief cold and learning to crawl. He sleeps in my room, sometimes in a Pack and Play and sometimes with me (husband goes to the spare room). When he wakes, I feed and rock him to sleep every time. Lately this is now every 2 hours plus a prolonged waking around 3 am. I didn’t do this with my daughter as I fully bought into the “bad habits” belief and sleep trained her at 9 months. I won’t do it with my son because his crying will wake her plus your site really does make me consider his actual needs vs societal ones. HOWEVER, we are all quite tired and I do plan on moving baby to Hus own room since he is outgrowing the playpen. Is there anything I can do to help him/me? We will move a twin bed to his room for nights he needs more attention.
I’ve emailed you.
I am so thankful & glad that I came across your website a few months ago, Tracy! I tell my fellow momma friends who are also believe that CIO is not for their family. Sarah’s son’s sleeping habits overnight are exactly like my son’s in the past two weeks! He just turned 7 months as well. I’d be so grateful if you could also provide me with any suggestions on how I can help my son & subsequently, me! Thank you in advance.
Well done, as usual. Three things helped me the most with my daughter, now 5, who was not a great sleeper as a baby. She needed to be moving constantly for the first 6 months – we bounced, and bounced, and bounced – and was a frequent night nurser well past a year. First, I thank my lucky stars for the doc at the breastfeeding centre who encouraged us to co sleep (and, as my daughter was early, we hadn’t had time to move the guest bed out of her room, which ended up being where she and I slept). We had a lot of sleepy nursing where really, neither one of us was totally awake. Second, I had a couple friends who had more than one child, and had had one who was like mine. They said, “oh, you have one of those! Don’t beat yourself up – it has nothing to do with your parenting. If you can hang in there, it just all clicks around 2 and a half.” And it did. Boom. My first 5 hour stretch, which quickly became 8-10 hours and has been ever since. And third, finally finding some real science about infant sleep and breastfeeding that jibed with my experience, and what my intuition was telling me, which was if so many babies have sleep ‘problems’, then really, that is normal behaviour we are looking at, not a problem. That also lifted a weight off by helping to recalibrate my expectations of my daughter and me. And now, my son (13 months) and I contentedly cosleep, and he nurses when he needs at night. If he’s teething, going through a cognitive leap, or has some other reason(its not like he can tell me), then the nursing is frequent. If he’s between stages, then some nights, he won’t need to nurse for 4-5 hours. And, I just don’t stress about it. He’s normal, this is normal, and it will pass. And then I will long for a snuggly middle of the night nursing.
This comment has just given me immense hope. Thank you. 🙂
Love this! I tried to let my 23 month old CIO one time for about 20 minutes when I desperately needed him to nap. It was some of the worst minutes of my life! I still regret it. We have co-slept or bed-shared all of his life, and while I know this is not specifically what you’re suggesting all parents do, we normally sleep great! It has allowed us to respond to his needs quickly and as often as required. I’d say by the time he turned one, we were sleeping just as much as before he was born. Thanks for helping those that want to be helped, and for setting those straight that continue to spread parenting methods not supported by science.
First of all, I LOVE your site; It completely resonates with my parenting style/beliefs! Now for the meat of it: my son is now 4.5 months old and hasn’t been the best sleeper since he was born, however for the first two months he slept better than he has been since. Now he wakes for everything. He used to sleep in 3- hour intervals and only waking because he was hungry. For the past 1.5 months he sometimes barely makes it 2 hours before waking, and it seems that he wakes for various reasons.
I’ve considered that he was probably going through a sleep regression. I’ve also considered that he was waking because he needed to pee, so we’ve even started pottying him when he wakes, which has helped his nighttime squirming/restlessness. I’ve considered that he was going through a growth spurt; maybe he is teething (he’s constantly biting on something and acts frustrated and angry when he bites even); maybe he is cold and he was already rolling over at 3.5 months. So as you can see I’ve really tried understanding, and I have tried to “solve” any sleep issues that I can solve on my own, however it’s just not getting better. Even after nursing, rocking, pottying/diaper change he will still sometimes wake an hour later fussing/crying and seeming like he’s uncomfortable and frustrated because he can’t sleep.
He naps well, about 2-3 hours total during the day, and he goes to bed at about 18:00/18:30. He doesn’t have reflux and he’s not sick. He’s healthy and generally very happy during the day as long as he naps. But it’s like it all goes to crap at night. For instance last night he woke 5 times: 20:00, 22:10, 00:15, 01:30, stirring around at 02:38, 03:50, and then awake for the day at 05:15. At least one of those times I know he wasn’t hungry, however nursing him to sleep is generally how he likes to fall asleep and how he goes to sleep the easiest, otherwise I have to walk and bounce him around the room for 30 minutes, and I’m just too exhausted for that all the time!
I haven’t slept well since my 8th month of pregnancy. I have permanent bags and dark circles under my eyes, and my heart beats so heavily sometimes from lack of sleep. I’ve been relying on “this too shall pass”, which I know it will, however sometimes I wonder if all this is “normal”. My first child was nothing like this! And, I get tired of hearing people tell me he’s not a good sleeper or he shoud be sleeping better, etc etc. The thing is he likes to sleep, but it’s like he has trouble. Btw, we bedshare, and he’s EBF. Is there something I can do to make it a little easier besides continue to be patient? I guess my main question is is all this normal? I think what I need more than anything is to know that I am not alone in this- that there are other babies out there like this, because sometimes it seems to me that every other baby is sleeping mostly all night with minimal waking! Maybe I just need a simple “hang in there” …. Thank you!
There’s a lot that’s going on at that age and so his sleep isn’t really that off, especially given the individual variation in kids’ sleep needs. If you’re worried, I can look more into it with a consult, but I don’t know that that would be super helpful as he’s at the sleep regression age and you may just need to wait-it-out! Email me if you want more info 🙂
Sounds normal to me! My second baby woke every 2 hours until I night weaned her at 19 months. We co-slept, it was the only way I could have survived.
CIO is something I have been against since my first baby, eight years ago. It’s cruel. Honestly — 12 HOURS? No. Just, no. I cannot imagine my babies needing me, wanting to smell, feel, touch or hear my heart beating because they were cold or lonely or afraid or hungry and not knowing whether I would come to them or not. They’re not adults — they can’t reason that way. They can’t think, “Well, Mama must be tired — that’s why she’s not coming when I cry…” They would just know they didn’t matter or that they weren’t important enough for me to get up or that no — no one was coming to rescue them. That breaks my heart into a hundred pieces to even ponder — which is why I could never stomach it.
We are expecting our fourth baby in May. My oldest, 8, is a GREAT SLEEPER — despite never having been sleep trained. As are my 6 and 4 year-old. They go to bed when it’s time, sleep through the night and wake at a reasonable hour. All co-slept (either in a cot or bed-sharing) until they were variable ages. The latest was 5 months old before we moved him into his own room, but I always wonder if that was too early. He still naps with me now, though (such a cuddle-bug!). **NOTE: all three of my children did not “sleep through the night” until they were about a year to 18 months old. That is, from bedtime to morning light, they woke up to feed at least once. This was our normal. I expect this next baby to do the same thing. It might just be how my kids are wired. But that’s okay. We have sleep tactics in hand and basically know what to expect. And a year is over in what feels like a poof of magic time. It’s just a year (though it may feel longer when you’re in the trenches).**
I have friends who sleep trained. And I know they love their kids and were on the edge of their sanity so they did what they thought was best. I don’t think they are bad parents… I just think CIO is not the way to get your sanity back. And your article and expertise in this are so valuable in voicing that. Thank you!
As a parent of 3 grown children, I gave each of them the same advice as my parents gave us and their family gave them. It is essential to the mothers health that babies develop good sleep habits right from birth. My mother received this advice from her sister who was a nurse. Once you put your baby down for his nightly sleep, leave them. The first night they will probably cry for an hour or so. Then they will fall asleep until morning. If the baby is no wet or has anything sharp, like a diaper pin sticking into them, they should be left to fall asleep by themselves. Second piece of advise – never wake a sleeping baby to feed them. Third – don’t try to keep the house or apartment super quiet. This third one we found to be the real key.
We found that when a baby wakes up from a sleep, after being put down for the night, that when they wake up, they will be looking not so much to be picked up, but making sure that there is someone close by that will come if they really need them. After a while, parents get to know a “I want attention” and “Get in here, i am in trouble.
These were how my parents raised the four of us in my family. My mother said the first time they left us to cry for about an hour. Next night, is was 45 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 15. After that maybe 2-3 minutes, then we would fall asleep again. It worked on all four of us.
When my wife and I had our first, I convinced my wife before the baby was born to try this method. The first problem we had was when we told the nursing staff – no 2:00am bottles. Babies who are healthy and a decent weight, don’t need to east in the middle of the night, any more than we do. Sure the nursing staff was royally pissed off, but after 5 days our son was sleeping from his last feeding at 9:00pm until 6:30am in the morning. Even the nurses were impressed. The chief of staff at the hospital (someone they was a family friend) came by to see us the first day and we told her what we had asked for in regards to the 2:00am feeding. She laughed and said, I guess your Aunt Mary was right then. My aunt had nursed with her at this same hospital 20 years before and they had figured the night sleeps out back then.
For our children, we left a small radio in their rooms playing gently at night. One was listening to Classical music, one fell asleep listening to hockey games and one to country music. Guess what each of them are still passionate about.
If you love your children, and you want to be well rested so you can be an effective parent the next day, Leave you newborn to cry for a while when you put them down a night, and don’t tiptoe and whisper all evening. All your baby really needs is to know that there is someone who loves them that is around and close in case they get in trouble. It’s surprising how quickly you as parent will now what a Pick me up cry versus a help me cry really sounds like
Wow. Did you read the article at all? All I’ll say is that for a small child a cry is a cry – it’s their only way of expressing distress. So to try and distinguish between a pick me up and help me cry seems misguided – all cries are a cry for help in some way. Also there is no way a newborn should be sleeping through all night every night. Their stomachs simply aren’t large enough. Not to mention that this could be highly damaging to a mother’s ability to breastfeed as regular nursing, especially at night is essential to building and maintaining supply.
That is very sad! I wonder if your lack of compassion for a tiny defenceless newborn stems from a lack of compassion shown to you when you were a baby…? Your baby spent nine months lulled to sleep to the sound of her/his mother’s voice and heartbeat and then you dump it in a room all alone to navigate the night alone, ignoring its cries of distress. That poor baby…..
You, sir, are an actual monster. If I had been at the hospital I would have called CPS on someone determined not to feed a newborn at night. That is disgusting and abusive and you should be ashamed. I’m ashamed that they let you take the baby home at all, and I feel awful for your wife.
I feel so sick just reading your story. People like you shouldn’t even have children.
My son is 3,8 years old and sleeps with me. It was a constant battle since he was born to lay him to the crib, his bed. Nursing him until 2,2 years I gave in to co- sleeping until now. When I manage to make him fall asleep in his bed he will stil wake up during the night to find me. I never understood how mothers do it, did it that their children go down at 7pm !! This is sleep training to me and I have never achieved that. I found it hurtful and made me feel incapable mother because my son simply wasn’t and isn’t like that! He used to go bed at 8pm, 9pm, 10pm. I was exhausted. He would sleep different times during the day. Now, yes, I was led by him. You say is unfair. I find it hurtful because what I would have given for days , hours my child had gone in hours I wanted him to. I didn’t chose that. My child would not just mend to my needs. How was I to put child to bed who shown no signs of sleep at 7pm, joyful , playful, happy, hungry, having dinner! No way he would go to sleep! How can you wake up or not let a child to sleep if was fell sound asleep at 5pm?? I questioned how can I be the crow mother to wake up or not let my child sleep if he did. I was told… Don’t let him. And what ? Let him cry for two hours so he can go hit spot on 7 pm? How dare one can criticise my parenting and not follow the schedule 7am, noon, 7pm! Do we all have the same patterns ? Are we all donkeys to follow one schedule. My Son isn’t a robot, neither I. I couldn’t bare listening to mums whom children were sleep trained because yes, their kids do that!? How easy is that? If you can, if you could! It’s easy to brag about something you are going well on, I wasn’t achieving it and it was hurtful! My child would t let me. I worker out that my child had 4 routines, 4 days that were different from one to another in their structure. I just had to work out, what day I was in. I called it routine A,B, C and D. My week could just be mixture of any of these. Yes I was broken. Yes I feel impact of my sleep deprivations and made me worse person. Yes, I not and wasn’t great mum many times. I didn’t have help. I didn’t cope. You weren’t in my shoes. And stil I didn’t sleep train my son. When I saw him tired I let him sleep . He wasn’t disciplined or regimented. He is stil happy and balanced child, full of beans.
Tracy, I love your website. Thank you all the information. My baby is just 2 months but I wonder when I can start introducing the gentle sleep techniques? He is not a great sleeper! We cosleep at night so nights are not too bad, but he’s terrible during the days. He has to be on someone like in a carrier or sling to sleep. Thank you in advance!
There’s nothing terrible or bad about that – it’s very very normal at that age. Depending on what type of sleep techniques you’re considering, you can start gentle stuff now, but it’s really just laying a foundation and seeing what his tolerance is. So trying naps laying down is gentle so long as you respond by picking him up if he doesn’t go for it. But keep trying as you go (even if just once a week) to see when he is ready for it. 🙂
Hey Tracy,
Loved reading this. I have one daughter who turns 2 in a month’s time. We have always co slept, I have always been responsive not just to her wakings (and the related need there) but to other things as well. We have been doing great and she had finally started sleeping 8-9 hours at a stretch (followed by an early morning feed and then nap some without really waking-waking up), though she still falls asleep to nursing. The problem is – we just made took a staycation and she’s been unsettled since the time we’re back. She slept well in the hills, but since we’re home she is getting up many times again. Anyways, I want to get her into a sleep routine where she is able to soothe herself to sleep. She currently sleeps at about 9:30-10 PM and gets up at 7:30-8, then naps 2.5/3 hours in the afternoon – nursing both times. Also, when you say there are other gentle methods, I find their mention so many times but I don’t know of those methods. Any resource I could pick up to get them at one place so I could choose the one for me? Husband and I have been following gentle methods for almost everything, always ‘listening’ to our child rather than trying to fit a round peg into a square hole >> just so you reply to me accordingly 🙂
In anticipation – P
Hi Pallav,
There’s a piece on gentle methods you can look at here: https://gku.flm.mybluehost.me/evolutionaryparenting.com/gentle-sleep-resources/ and you can also look at individual consultations here: https://gku.flm.mybluehost.me/evolutionaryparenting.com/consultations/ 🙂
Hope this helps!!
Cheers,
Tracy
Hi Tracy,
Thank you for your responses, which I have read and wholeheartedly agree with.
My son is 7 and a half months and he is an extremely active little boy. He was like it in the womb, constantly kicking at night for literally hours! He wakes sometimes every 2 hours for feeds and sometimes just cuddles but hates being put in his cot awake. Lately I feel like I’ve made a bit of a break through in that, last week I managed to get him in his cot, in the day for naps… every day!! I’ve worked out that rocking him and whisper singing ‘wind the bobbin up’ does the trick. Problem is, it doesn’t work quite so well at night and it can take me up to 2 hours to get him down.
When he wakes at 5, I usually put him in bed with me.
Is there anything else I could be doing or is this quite normal?
Thanks for listening.
Charlotte
Day and night sleep are quite different so don’t expect the same things to work for both. However, 2 hours at night is way too long so I would expect something is amiss with your plan, but part of it may be that he doesn’t want to go down awake which is quite normal so I wouldn’t try to force that yet unless there’s something I’m missing 🙂 However, there may be other things you could do, but I can’t know without a full review. If you’re happy with things, then I wouldn’t stress about it though!!
Hi Tracy, great responses!
Just a quick correction, I think. You write
“Being against methods that disrespect the infant and their development is not feminist in any way, shape, or form.”
I suspect you meant to say the opposite – maybe that being against methods disrespecting the infant is not _opposed_to_being_feminist? Or that being for those methods is not feminist?
Anyway, just figured you’d like to correct that, as I would hate making such a ‘typo’ myself 🙂
LOL – thank you!!! I will go fix that now 🙂
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This article is a breath of fresh air. Normalising infant sleep patterns is a hot topic at the moment and I feel it’s almost a losing battle versus the abundance of ‘sleep training’ information out there. It’s a normal part of language now, “when / how can I sleep train my baby.” It makes me feel so sad that an infant’s needs are considered less important at night. When they cry they need care, it really is that simple. More than that, it is neuro-developmentally normal. We wouldn’t try and train a baby to do maths or ride a bike, they are not ready!
I feel we have moved so far away from our evolutionary primed way of caring for infants, that it will be hard to come back as a society. Thankfully, there are many other protective factors that will help influence development. However, hand-on-heart, I feel so proud in my conviction to always provide comfort for my crying baby, day and night.
My second baby’s sleep ranges from sleeping 10 hours straight through, sometimes waking 20 times, as he is on and off the boob for comfort, normally waking a couple of times for a feed and comfort to resettle. Many factors might influence his waking, but his need is still the same, he needs me to connect with him and help soothe him. That is my job and I have to find ways to be supported if I’m tired. I crucially learned with my first, that acceptance of his sleep was key for me managing the huge transition and sleep deprivation.
I respect that everyone has to find their own way but the information in this article is so important for helping parents make informed choices.
Hi Tracy,
I find your articles to be incredibly helpful and informative. They’ve given me the support I need to resist the pressures to sleep training. My son is 8 months old and he has never been a very good sleeper. He nurses to fall asleep for naps and at night and he co-sleeps. He does an initial stretch of roughly three hours of uninterrupted sleep and then he will continue to wake every two hours or so, at which time I will nurse him and he usually goes back down pretty easily. To say that I’m sleep deprived is an understatement and I am returning to work soon so I have that added pressure. My heart will not allow me to listen to my son cry via sleep training and I do not want to do anything that could have an adverse impact on him. I am a big believer in many of the tenets of attachment theory and I am very attentive as a parent. My son has a wonderful temperament and is very happy and calm. However, the level of night waking has become unsustainable with my return to work. I just don’t know what to do. Help.
Hi Monica,
This sounds like you may need individual support as I don’t know what your current situation is to be able to help. The sleep course would be very beneficial for you probably, but it’s not running until November again. When are you going to sleep? Are you looking at your own sleep needs to ensure they are being met too? Right now your son’s sleep sounds pretty normal so I would want to look at your expectations and routines for you.
Cheers,
Tracy