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 sleep solution
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
Can You Mix Attachment Parenting With Sleep Training?
Before I had a baby, I did not know anything about "attachment parenting" nor had I ever heard the term. It is a little "weird" considering I am an avid reader (well, before kids and this website when I used to have time), but I guess none of my friends ever mentioned it and I was never exposed, even though Dr. Sears coined the term with his wife over 20 years ago. I did know I wanted to breastfeed. I did know I didn't want to co-sleep (though we did anyway out of necessity for a
Taking the Cry Out of Cry It Out
All of us are looking for ways to help our babies sleep with as little crying as possible. No crying would be ideal and surprisingly (when I look back at our long and difficult journey), the first few nights I actually helped my challenging sleeper of a son learn to fall asleep with virtually NO tears. It took TWO LONG HOURS for TWO LONG NIGHTS, but by the third night, he did it in just 20 minutes and then on the 4th night with no tears into his crib (we were trying to stop co-sleeping because
Sleep Training (From No Cry to Cry) Series – Part 3
In this sleep training series, so far I've talked about the importance of a bedtime routine and gone over how you can sleep train while co-sleeping. In part 3 of this series, I will be discussing the "fading" method of sleep training. Fading, The Method This method I would consider one of the no-cry (or very little cry) methods. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, when you change the rules how baby falls asleep (usually by breaking a sleep association), it is usually not done without some
Sleep Training (From No Cry to Cry) Series – Part 1 – Bedtime Routines
Today I will start a series of posts outlining the variety of sleep training methods that I recommend. I will post them in order (as I interpret them) from no (or very little) crying to the most (potential) crying. There are many variations of these methods, so I am only going to highlight the main gist of each method. Every parent can add tweaks here and there to accommodate their unique style and situation. At the end of the series, I will tell my story of my first son and, eventually, my