Does the term "sleep training" conjure up images of wailing babies and agonized parents? If so, then I hope what I'm about to say next will help paint a different picture for you: sleep training does not have to involve hours of crying. Sleep training does not have to mean you listening to your baby wail because you're not "allowed" to offer any comfort. Simply put, sleep training does not mean letting your baby cry it out. So what does sleep training mean? Sleep training is merely the
no cry method
Why Pantley’s No Cry Sleep Solution Doesn’t Always Work
Sometimes I hear from parents who have tried Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution and have not been able to get it to work. This article will discuss possible reasons why sometimes it doesn't work for a variety of families. First, let me say that Pantley's book The No Cry Sleep Solution has a lot of good information in it in terms of how babies sleep and the most common sleep problems. As with most books about sleep, it is over 200 pages and has a lot of common sense information in it that you
Will Your Baby Be Spoiled If You Don’t Sleep Train?
A client e-mailed me not too long ago concerned about what a co-worker told her about her baby. Her co-worker told her that if she didn't sleep train and let her baby cry it out, her baby would grow up to be spoiled. She alluded to the fact that by the time he was 7 or 8 years old, he'd be "running the show." This particular client has experience with two very different cultures, one being in the West and one in the East. In the West (where she lives now) she feels tremendous pressure to let
How Sleep Training Progress Looks
When parents update me on their sleep training progress, sometimes it is a little frustrating for them if their baby has a good night one night, then a bad night and some back and forth. I thought it would be a good idea to talk about that in today's post and why it happens. If nothing else, I know it helps to have realistic expectations while sleep training. One of the biggest lessons I learned when I was struggling with my own son's sleep problems is that when the books implied all of our
Knowing When You’re Done Sleep Training
Is it always clear when you are done sleep training? Not for everyone, unfortunately. Success in sleep training, like so many things in our lives, is on a continuum and what is success for you might not be for someone else. It also depends on your expectations and what your goal is from sleep training. For some parents, sleep training is allowing their baby to fuss a few minutes and voila, they sleep 10-12 hours a night ad nauseum luckily for those parents. :D For other parents, it won't be
Will Cry-It-Out Change Your Baby / Child’s Personality?
I happened upon an article where a woman (and husband) was against cry-it-out and specifically, The Ferber Method, but ended up doing it anyway because it was what worked. In that article, Confessions of a Ferberizer, she said that, in the end, her son stopped wanting to be rocked or cuddle. She did not seem to regret doing cry-it-out, I don't think, but reading the article reminded me that many of us wonder whether doing cry-it-out will change our child's personality, so I thought I'd reflect