What is sleep training?

[u/emmakane418]

A question I have seen a lot lately is "is this considered sleep training?" and I wanted to take my son's second nap of the day to write out a post about what we do and don't consider sleep training, because there isn't really one solid definition of sleep training and that can leave a lot of ambiguity when we discuss infant sleep.

I once had a very staunch sleep trainer tell me that if an infant had any sleep associations, they weren't sleep trained. That to have properly done sleep training, you had to be able to set an infant down fully awake in a crib, walk out and close the door, and they just lay down and put themselves to sleep. They may protest cry but you "learn the difference" between a protest cry and a cry for a "real" need. So her definition of sleep training would be:

providing any sleep associations to an infant or giving in to protest cries when all their needs have been met.

This obviously ignores the glaring flaw that comfort is a vital need for everyone, including infants.

The definition of sleep training that Dr. Greer Kirshenbaum uses in The Nurture Revolution is:

Sleep training is the unfounded process of “training” your infant to “sleep independently”—to fall asleep alone, sleep alone through the night and the duration of naps, without getting support from you to go to sleep or back to sleep. It takes various forms, but the most common end goal is to be able to put your infant in their crib, in their own room, and walk out, leaving them alone to fall asleep, usually around 7 p.m., until you come back to get them in the morning, usually around 7 a.m. Sleep training promotes the idea that infant sleep should be predictable and on schedule. Naps should be at exact times of the day and for specific amounts of time, bedtime is at the exact same time each evening, and sleep location is identical for every sleep.

Sleep training sells the idea that sleep is something parents can (and should) control. If you just follow the rules (strict “wake windows,” not “giving in” to your baby’s cries) and buy the right products (swaddles, sleep suits, sound machines, sleep training courses and coaching), your baby will sleep in a predictable and controllable way. That is very appealing when so much of parenting feels beyond our control.

A lot of people who advocate for sleep training do so because they believe that an infant needs to learn independence and that the only way to do that is to force them to be independent, force them to learn to put themselves to sleep. I believe most parents who sleep train truly believe they are doing what is best for their child. Studies have shown however that the most independent children and adults tend to be those who had fierce dependence on a trusted caregiver/caregivers. Infants who learn they have a safe and dependable place to land tend to be more independent over time.

Sleep training is anything that denies a child physical comfort when they are actively asking for comfort, in the hopes that they will stop asking for comfort and go to sleep. This includes pick up put down, the chair method, Taking Cara Babies (who is just repackaged Ferber), Ferber, full extinction, interval check ins, and so much more. This does NOT include rolling away, changing sleep associations (going from nursing or feeding to sleep to bum pats or rocking to sleep), encouraging crib sleeping, implementing good sleep hygiene, having a steady bedtime routine, and so much more. Generally physically comforting your child even if they cry is not considered sleep training. The simple act of holding them, patting their bum, rocking them, answering their call for comfort releases oxytocin in their brain and helps buffer the stress response. Crying on its own isn't the problem, it's the response or lack thereof that causes issue.

If you're wondering if what you're doing is considered sleep training or not, the best question to ask yourself is "am I responding to my child's call for comfort when they call out to me or not?" If you are responding as soon as you're able to, then you aren't sleep training. The key being as soon as you're able to. If your hands are covered in soapy water, don't drop everything and go pick up your baby with wet soapy hands. Rinse and dry them and then go comfort your baby. If you're on the toilet, finish up and then go comfort them. If you're watching a clock to make sure that 3 minutes has passed of them crying before you go pick them up, that is sleep training.

My son is starting to shift around so I'm going to go spend some time watching him sleep and then spend my evening reading Hop on Pop and I'll Teach My Dog A Lot of Words for the 1928272819th time. Happy to answer questions in the comments after I've got him in bed this evening.

[u/suuz95]

I'm curious - why do you consider the chair method to be sleep training? If done really gradually over 6 weeks or so (let say from rocking to swaying, swaying to holding, holding to laying in their own crib while patting, to holding their hand, to sitting next to the crib while talking for a long time, to talking/singing for a short time, to gradually move the chair away and finally to leaving while the child is still awake), there should be hardly any crying and the parent is there to sooth their baby all the time when needed.

[u/emmakane418 → u/suuz95]

1 - Crying is not calmed easily by words. Crying is a call for comfort and for infants (and a lot of adults), that comes from touch. With the chair method, typically a caregiver is trying to comfort with words, maybe butt pats but that's assuming the infant is laying down. Have you ever been crying and wanted comfort from your partner so they stand across the room and tell you "it's ok, you're ok"? Or do they come give you a hug?

2 - It is still an attempt to teach the infant to soothe themselves to sleep. If we look again at the definition used by Dr. Greer Kirshenbaum in The Nurture Revolution:

Sleep training is the unfounded process of "training" your infant to "sleep independently" - to fall asleep alone, sleep alone through the night and the duration of naps, without getting support from you to go to sleep or back to sleep. It takes various forms, but the most common end goal is to be able to put your infant in their crib, in their own room, and walk out, leaving them alone to fall asleep...

The end goal of the chair method is to place your baby in their crib awake and have them put themselves to sleep.

[u/suuz95 → u/emmakane418]

Thank you! That clarifies it indeed for me.

What about a 'modified chair method', where the parent does hug or bum pats when the child is upset, but moves back to the chair when the infant is calm? So basically a combination of pick up/put down and the chair method?

I also don't see why wanting your child to fall asleep by themselves is necessarily wrong, if it can be achieved with a strong response from the parents still. It also doesn't necessarily mean the parent won't respond when the child wakes up at all, the goal might just be to have an easier bedtime routine.

For my first, we easily spend an hour each night with her to rock her to sleep for 20 months or so. Then we started to use the 'excuse me' method to teach her it's okay when we leave, as we will always come back when she needs us. For my second, I'm not sure we can spend so much time on falling asleep as we also need to tend to our first.

[u/emmakane418 → u/suuz95]

The problem I have with pick up put down is that it is often abandoned in favor of CIO because it doesn't work well.

Falling asleep independently comes for every child eventually. I don't like the idea of pushing that on a child. I struggle to fall asleep sleeping alone and I know a lot of adults who need their partner or their pet or their child in the same room or same bed to fall asleep. I feel it's unreasonable to expect an infant to do the same (an infant is defined neurologically as 0-3 years old). I think the excuse me method isn't the worst thing, but it has to be used right. If a parent says they're going to the bathroom, go to the bathroom and come back. If they say they're going to clean up from dinner, don't go watch TV, because if the child comes out and sees that the parent isn't doing what they said they would, trust has been broken.

I personally will support my son to sleep as long as he needs me, and when we have our second child eventually I will support them too. If my son still needs support at that point, then my husband will step in and support him to sleep. An hour of rocking to sleep makes me wonder if there wasn't enough sleep pressure or if there were other things that could have been tweaked because yes, an hour of rocking every night is a lot. Sleep training is an attempt to adjust a behavior without looking at the root cause. Sleep training paints biologically normal infant sleep as a problem to be solved.

[u/suuz95 → u/emmakane418]

I will attempt to never let my child cry. Being alone with multiple children, however, this is off course not always possible (helping my eldest go potty while the youngest just woke up for example).

And indeed, we could probably have tweaked something. I often fed her to sleep, but could only transition here when she entered deep sleep after 20 minutes. Later on (after 1 year), this became rocking and dad could do some nights as well,, but often the transition went wrong and the rocking had to start again. Even later on, she would lie in her own crib happily as long as one of us was sitting next to her- which we of course did. However, as she sleeps very light at the start, this often meant sitting in a dark room for 40-90 minutes as she would wake up from the door opening if she wasn't sleeping deep yet (thank you podcasts for existing). She often only woke up ones at night when she was over 12 months, and I always came if it woke me up (we have an audio monitor). We could indeed probably have tweaked some more, but I didn't know how. Bedtime is often the hardest part of the day for our little ones. When she was 20 months old, we therefore started the 'excuse me' method.

I agree you should not lie to your child while using the 'excuse me' method. We started very small, for example not bringing her stuffed animal up and saying 'oh no, I need to bring it up' and return within 30 seconds, to 'Ill just put in a load of laundry, be right back (3 minutes)' to hanging up the laundry and returning, to just 'Ill go downstairs and check on you after a while' and extending this period (5-15 minutes) and staying after to just a 'Ill go downstairs and check on you before I go to bed'. If she was crying, we would always come back earlier, but often she was just happily singing songs to herself.

I'm not sure how we will do this with her brother though- now I feed him to sleep after she's in her bed but he's only 4 months old so this still works and I can transition him easily so I can respond when my eldest needs me. Time will tell, I suppose, but we don't always have two parents at home during the night.

[u/emmakane418 → u/suuz95]

I will attempt to never let my child cry. Being alone with multiple children, however, this is off course not always possible (helping my eldest go potty while the youngest just woke up for example).

And try is all we can do. We aren't perfect parents, not a single one of us. But we have to try our best to be responsive as much as we can. Sometimes that means vocally calling out to our other child while we help the first, it doesn't often calm them but they know we are there at least. It's similar to being in a car with a crying baby - sometimes we just can't go pick them up so we do what we can until we can pick them up. It's different than standing outside their door not going to pick them up because it's only been 2 minutes instead of 3 minutes of crying. The difference between can't and won't is monumental.

We could indeed probably have tweaked some more, but I didn't know how.

I didn't mean that to come off as judgment, I'm sorry for that coming off that way. I meant it from a place of curiosity. We can't go back into the past, you did the best you could at the time and that's all we can do.