How About Sleep Helping Instead of Sleep Training?

At Let Mommy Sleep we’ve counseled thousands of parents on sleep; sleep hacks, safe sleep, getting twins to sleep in the same room and of course sleeping through the night.  While we’ve been privileged to teach our families, we’ve learned from them as well. For example, in our culture there’s waaaay too much emphasis on sleep training techniques and not enough on all the small steps that lead up to independent sleep or what we’ve come to call “sleep helping.”

Let me save you a read of about 500 books by breaking down every sleep training method here:

Method #1: Visit your baby every few minutes while s/he cries.

Method #2: Stay in baby’s room while s/he cries.

Method #3: Stay in your own room while baby cries (curling up in fetal position, cursing self optional)

I’m sure you see a common theme here. The fact is that these are all variations of crying it out and while CIO doesn’t harm babies who are old enough to sleep through the night, it cuts right into our souls as parents making us clamor for another option.

So here’s another way-

Sleep training should not mean a stand-off between parent and child. It means that baby is fed properly, allowed to have stimulating activities and then a nice wind-down routine to switch gears from wakeful to sleepy every day. It also means being absolutely sure, by getting your pediatrician’s blessing, that your baby doesn’t need to feed for 6, 8 and eventually 12 hours. This understanding of baby’s physical needs is much more important than any technique, because when it is time for bed, baby will feel secure and receptive to sleep. (And you won’t keep asking yourself, “what if she’s hungry?”)

That’s nice, you might be saying, but I really need this kid to sleep through the night, so just tell me which method really works.

The answer is that they all work. And they all don’t work.  For example, a breastfed 6 month old will likely find a stay-in-the-room method very frustrating because Mom is RIGHT THERE and not breastfeeding. Twins sharing a room will most certainly find Ferber confusing. So the right method is the one you and your pediatrician agree on when baby is developmentally able to sleep through the night.

Maybe we can help ourselves stay sane and our little ones sleep through the night by shifting our thinking from “sleep training” to “sleep helping.”  Allowing baby to be as comfortable, secure and well fed as possible all day long is something you’ve been doing since your first day on the job so it shouldn’t surprise you that you don’t need a book to accomplish this!