I would like to try to explain a strategy for helping parents get their babies to sleep through the night, and soothe themselves back to sleep whenever they wake up. This skill, or habit, is something that any baby aged 3 or 4 months can learn without too much trouble, within a few nights.
A book by Dr. Michel Cohen provided me with this straightforward approach to sleep training, and while the process I am about to describe may sound potentially painful to some parents, the goal could be really important for many.
Some parents do not need this advice, and tell me that their kids eventually sleep through the night without the need to do anything drastic at all. There are other parents, who I would describe as more “attachment-style”, who would not want to mess with what their instinct and knowledge tell them to do. For example, if their baby cries in the night, it would be hard to convince them that there is a compelling reason to do anything other than console their crying baby.
However, it could be considered a life skill to be able to soothe oneself to sleep, and the opportunity to reliably teach this to kids so young might seem too many like an opportunity not to be missed.
The best window in which to sleep train a child would start at 3 to 4 months and happen no later than 7 months of age, according to Dr. Cohen. So how do you best sleep-train a child from 3 to 7 months of age? Well, firstly you would want to make sure that when you start to do this the child is appropriately tired. That means you would not try this at 7 p.m. if the child had just woken up from a three-hour nap at 5 p.m. You would want to follow whatever bed-time routine makes sense to you, and make sure the child has a quiet space in which you can put their crib (of course, with no hazards or toys or anything in the crib. You want to be confident that the child cannot hurt themselves). Then, you sing your last song, turn out the lights, and close the door.
Suppose you do this at 7 p.m. You would then stay away from that room until 7 a.m. That’s it. No matter how much crying, do not go in. Usually, the crying stops within an hour at most.
When my wife and I did this for our first-born, who was quite colicky and almost never slept continuously for any stretch of time, he was about four-and-a-half months of age. We put him down at 7 p.m. and he cried for nearly one hour right away, and then was quiet for 4 hours. Even though other people thought the one hour of crying was potentially inhumane, when we heard him sleep straight for four hours, we were so thrilled! Then, of course, he woke up and cried for the better part of an hour again, but then slept for four straight hours again! That’s when we knew we were onto something.
The second night, after crying for nearly an hour, he slept for 11 straight hours! We were actually worried something might be wrong: that was how foreign this was to us.
Usually, within a few nights, the child will be able to sleep 12 to 13 hours a night without trouble. It turns out that babies and small infants can and should sleep more than 12 hours a night (though admittedly this is perhaps only achievable if you have the luxury of being able to give the baby their own room or space).
The challenge to keep this going is to stick with it, and to maintain a routine where the child goes to bed at the same time every day and wakes up at the same time every day. This can be easier said than done for some families, particularly large and busy ones. But, if you do go to the trouble of doing this, I can tell you first-hand the satisfaction it gives you as a parent. You will know that you have taught an important life skill, the ability to soothe oneself to sleep at night, to your child at such a young age.
And did I mention that, once the kid is sleep-trained, the parents get their evenings back? What’s good for the parents may be good for the whole family!
