Understanding sleep training methods

[u/Comprehensive_Bill]

A lot of parents come to the sub to ask which method is the best for their case. The answer always is: whatever method you can stick to until it works. Do your research.

We do not recommend or support sleep training under 4 months old.

All sleep training methods are based on the concept of extinction, in the sense that the end goal is to cease all assistance to sleep so your baby or toddler are able to sleep without you, and stay asleep without you. The difference between the methods is how fast you go from whatever you situation is today, to the point you leave your baby happy and awake in their crib and they drift into sleep on their own.

Methods with parental presence

In these methods, in the initial days of sleep training the parent places baby/toddler awake in their crib and stays in the room with the baby/toddler until they fall asleep, with the goal of not staying in the room with them at some point. Those are usually known as gentle methods.

• Pick up put down (PUPD): at bedtime, you settle your baby and place them awake in their crib. Then, you go in and soothe/re-settle your baby each time they cry, and place them again in their crib awake. As tolerated, start waiting a bit before you soothe, eventually you leave the room after re-settling the baby so they learn to fall asleep without you being there. This method works best for smaller babies, do not recommend it for 6 months or older.
• Chair method, also known as camping out method: my favorite version of this method starts with you doing the last steps of your bedtime routine with baby already in their crib, and then you help settle them to sleep and soothe them with back strokes, singing, etc all the way until they sleep. In the following days, you reduce the amount of soothing you provide to help them fall asleep until you're just standing there and responding with voice only when they cry/complain. Once you get to this stage, then you start moving the chair further away from your baby's crib until you're outside their room. This method works at all ages.
• Fading method
• Excuses method: good method if you're stuck staying with your toddler until they fall asleep. You do your bedtime routine, place your toddler in their bed and stay with them as normal. Then you start bringing excuses to why you need to go out of the room for a moment. "I need to pee" or "I need to grab the post" or "I need to empty the dishwasher". At the start you leave for 30 seconds and come back, towards the end you leave for longer periods with the intention that the periods of you not being in the room get longer enough that your toddler will fall asleep while you're not in the room. Good for toddlers who can understand an excuse, and are not the type that will come after you around the house.
• Taking a break

Methods without parental presence

With these methods, the parent places baby/toddler awake in their crib and leaves the room for a determined amount of time, to allow baby/toddler to fall asleep in their crib, their room, without assistance.

There are many variances on methods such as Ferber, and it became a term to mean methods that parents do check-ins with the baby/toddler at specific intervals. Some do without more than verbal assurance, others with some type of soothing.

• Ferber: you settle your baby in bed and walk away. You check in on your baby at increasing timed intervals. If baby starts crying, you start a timer. If baby stops crying, you stop the timer. If baby is still crying after the end of the timer, you go in to check on them, say a key phrase and walk away. Repeat until baby is asleep. Your check ins are not meant to soothe your baby, just to reassure them.
• Full Extinction (also known as Cry it Out)
• Sleep Wave
• TCB (Taking Cara Babies): Ferber packaged.

There are many resources online explaining those methods. Do your research.

Method with parental presence can be very stimulating. We do not recommend methods such as PUPD for babies older than 5 months old as it might result in much more crying. In this sub, we try to minimize crying. Sometimes, less is more when it comes to intervention.

I like to think about sleep training as parents holding space for babies so they can learn a lifelong skill.

[u/[deleted]]

Are certain methods good for certain temperaments? Like during the day my baby will hang out in her bassinet or crib by herself for 10-15 minutes at a time. But if she is put down in the dark with white noise on at night it’s bloody murder. Like inconsolable unless she is picked up. So just wondering if there are methods that work well for some babies and not for others.

[u/Bear0000]

Just looking into sleep training our 5.5 month old. Where can I get into on the TCB Ferber method mentioned above?

[u/Comprehensive_Bill → u/Bear0000]

If you want to purchase a program you need to go to their website. Otherwise I suggest you read Previous Little Sleep.

[u/Gummy_Bear625]

Baby is 20 weeks old. She usually wakes up around 7:15am. I have been practising “drowsy but awake” since 3 months old, and she seemed to take to it initially by sucking her thumb to soothe, but then hit some regression shortly after which seems to have continued a bit today. She stopped napping in her cribbing during the regression as well - she used to do 40 minutes in the morning consistently with all other naps as contact naps. As a result, I’ve resorted to all contact naps for the past several weeks to ensure she gets restorative naps, and am exhausted. These usually take place in her nursery, blackout curtains, white noise on. I do a short pre nap routine involving a sleep sack, book, and I walk around the room calmly with her humming. I follow her sleepy cues first before wake windows, but they tend to line up with wake windows anyway.

Her wake windows are around 1.75/2/2/2.5. Because I usually do contact naps there are at least two restorative 1.5-2hour naps per day that I can control/cap, then some shorter cat naps around 20-45 minutes. I always get her to do a bridge cat nap around 5, for 30-45 mins, to get her to an 8pm bedtime. For example, morning nap would be 1.5 hours, afternoon nap 1.5 hours, and two 30 min cat naps including the bridge nap before bed. However, she is always wired at bedtime and it is hard to calm her down. I keep her in her nursery and someone will go read her a book, do some gentle play mat time, keep the lights low. I start her bedtime routine around 7pm which consists of bath or sponge bath, bedtime stretches and massage, feeding, sleep sack, book, and then I walk around the room humming to her to calm her down because she is wired the whole time. Once she’s calm, which usually signals she is drowsy too, I put her in the crib. She will then self soothe (suck her thumb) but then she keeps sucking, and her arms begin to drop when she’s falling asleep, but then she startles herself awake when her arms drop and she sucks her thumbs again - this cycles for a long time usually 30+ minutes. As a result her wake window gets extended unnecessarily because I keep waiting for her arms to drop. Sometimes she’s up for almost 3 hours before bed because of this cycling. I don’t know what to do.

Overnight, once she is asleep, she can do 6-7 hours straight of sleep, but always wakes up at 3-4am and I feed her and she takes a full feed. She then goes back into her crib for 2 hours usually, then wakes again around 5:30-6am. I have to rock her back to sleep or else she won’t sleep, and then we wake at 7:15am ish.

Beyond what is outlined above, I have not done formal sleep training yet for nights or naps. Just the drowsy but awake stuff. I am probably doing too much by walking around the nursery slowly and humming to her, but I don’t know how else to calm her down before sleep. She gets around 4 hours average day sleep, and I guess around 10 hours of night if I count the night wakes.

I am hoping for any advice on how she can better consolidate her night sleep without waking at 3-4am every night, and how to improve her crib naps. Thank you.