![]() Myth: There's a "right" amount of time to let your baby cry when you're trying to sleep train.įact: There's not a strict formula that works for every parent (or baby). In one study, these types of gentle interventions reduced the percentage of parents reporting sleep problems five months later by about 30%. If the baby begins crying, the parent is supposed to check in after waiting some amount of time. ![]() ![]() They are told to place the baby in the crib and then soothe him - by patting or rubbing his back - until he stops crying. In several studies, parents are taught a very gentle approach to sleep training. "All these methods are lumped together in the scientific literature as 'sleep training,' " Mindell says. For example, some sleep training starts off by having the parent sleep next to the baby's crib (a method called camping out) or simply involves educating parents about baby sleep. It includes much gentler methods than cry-it-out or the so-called Ferber method. In today's scientific literature, the term "sleep training" is an umbrella term that refers to a spectrum of approaches to help babies learn to fall asleep by themselves. Cry-it-out is an old way of thinking, says Mindell, author of one of the most frequently cited studies on sleep training (and the popular book Sleeping Through The Night). "But that's not the reality of what we recommend or what parents typically do."Īnd it's not what scientists have been studying over the past 20 years. "You put your baby into their crib or their room, you close the door and you don't come back till the next day," Mindell says. Indeed, the cry-it-out approach does sound cruel to many parents. "I think unfortunately sleep training has gotten a really bad rap because it's been equated with this moniker called 'cry it out,' " Mindell says. In fact, most of the time, it's not that. The mommy blogs and parenting books often mix up sleep training with "cry it out," says Jodi Mindell, a psychologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who has helped thousands of babies and parents get more sleep over the past 20 years. Myth: Sleep training is synonymous with the "cry-it-out" method.įact: Researchers today are investigating a wide range of gentler sleep training approaches that can help. What does the science say? Here we try to separate fiction from fact and offer a few reassuring tips for wary parents. Others parents say letting a baby cry is harmful. They say it's the only way they and their babies got any sleep. ![]() At some point, many parents need the baby to sleep - alone and quietly - for a few hours.Īnd so, out of self-preservation, many of us turn to the common, albeit controversial, practice of sleep training, in hopes of coaxing the baby to sleep by herself. There are too few arms for rocking, too few chests for sleeping and too few hours in the day to stream The Great British Bake Off. As a result, taking care of a newborn can be relentless. Nowadays, though, many moms and dads are going about it alone. Adding another baby to the mix didn't really make a big dent. Throughout human history, children were typically raised in large, extended families filled with aunts, uncles, grannies, grandpas and siblings. And to top it off, in this new world, sleep is like gold: precious and rare. Welcome to parenthood! For many of us, parenthood is like being air-dropped into a foreign land, where protohumans rule and communication is performed through cryptic screams and colorful fluids. ![]()
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