Having a hard time putting baby to bed? Is crying it out the way on how to make baby sleep fast? Learn more about it here.
What can you read in the article?
- STUDY: Crying it out the best way to make baby fall asleep
- Will baby learn to sleep without training?
- How to get your baby to sleep without being held
Parents everywhere know the struggle and hardships associated with getting a full night’s rest. Not just for themselves, but for their newborn, or young baby. For years, parents have been trying numerous different sleep training methods to get their babies to sleep. One popular sleep training method is known as “graduated extinction.”
What is graduated extinction? Simply put: letting your baby cry it out.
Many parents claim the method is bad for baby, causing everything from long-lasting emotional problems to stress-related issues; however, a new study is proving those claims wrong.
How to make baby sleep fast – is “crying it out” the answer?
The Australian study, conducted over a three-month period, gathered 43 sets of parents and their babies between the ages of 6 and 16 months. The researchers divided the parents into three groups.
The first group used graduated extinction to get their child to sleep at night. Parents were asked to leave the room within a minute of putting their child to bed and, if their children cried, to wait longer and longer periods of time before going back to comfort them.
The second group utilized the sleep training method known as “bedtime fading.” Essentially, this means that children were put to bed at or around the time they usually go to sleep. Parents were encouraged to stay in the room until the child fell asleep.
The third group was the control group. They were not asked to implement any sleep training methods and instead received general information about toddler sleep.
The three groups were studied over a three-month period. What the researchers found was that the first group (graduated extinction group) had children that were sleeping approximately 15 minutes sooner than the third group (control group). The second group (bedtime fading group) had infants sleeping an average of 12 minutes sooner than the control group.
As the study indicates, both of the applied sleeping methods yield efficient results in terms of getting your baby to sleep sooner. Though, it should be noted that the “cry it out” group’s results bested the fading group’s in other measures during the three-month study, including the number of times babies awoke during the night and their total sleep time.
Research proves that these methods, specifically graduated extinction, can get a baby to sleep faster. But what effects do these methods have on babies? Apparently none.
The researchers found that the levels of cortisol, the hormone that produces stress, were lower in the babies whose parents used sleep training methods. Furthermore, one year after the interventions, the babies did not show signs of being more attached to their parents, nor did their parents report more behavioral problems compared with the babies in the control group.
Knowing that these methods have no long-lasting effects on their children, parents would be wise to implement one of the techniques as soon as possible. But which one of these effective sleep training methods is fit for your child? And will your baby learn to sleep without training?
Daniel Lewin, a pediatric psychologist and sleep specialist at Children’s National Health System in Washington, says
“If you have an infant that only has nighttime awakenings, it appears from this study that bedtime fading is not as effective. In the real world, you could do a combination of both.”
It seems that either method is effective, but it takes a bit of trial and error. The good news is that the study suggests that it doesn’t take long to see the benefits and effects of these sleep training methods. Researchers suggest that parents could see results in as little as three days.
READ MORE:
Everything you need to know about sleep regression in babies
Why it’s more harmful than helpful, according to experts
But despite the study, a lot of experts are still firm on their decision not to support the extinction method. They claim that letting baby cry it out just to fall asleep have some long-term negative effects on the child.
According to Dr. Margot Sunderland, Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health in London, parents wouldn’t think of putting their babies into so much stress if they knew the effect it would have on their brain.
“The infant’s brain is so vulnerable to stress. After birth, it’s not yet finished! In the first year of life, cells are still moving to where they need to be. This a process known as migration, and it’s hugely influenced by uncomforted stress.
Then in the first year of life, there are adverse stress-related changes to the gene expression of key emotion chemical systems. They’re responsible for emotional well-being and the ability to be calm and handle stress well in later life,” she said.
She added that the level of stress caused to the infant’s brain by prolonged uncomforted distressed crying is so toxic, that it can result in elevated in blood pressure and cerebral pressure, erratic fluctuation in the heart rate and breathing, suppressed immune and digestive systems, suppressed growth hormone, apneas and extreme pressure on the heart, resulting in tachycardia.
Meanwhile, for Dr. Howard Chilton, a neonatologist and author of many parenting books like Baby on Booard, letting babies cry it out makes absolutely no biological sense.
In the early months, our babies have to embark upon massive amount of brain development. This is where they lay down connections, embed beliefs about how safe and secure their world is, and build a foundation of trust with their parents. So why would you abandon your child during this crucial moment?
“This is a vital time during which they are learning from their parents (but their mother in particular) new things about the world around them and how to deal with stress. So it makes no sense at the darkest, scariest time of the day to abandon them to a regime of nocturnal neglect!
Cry it out also contradicts the very basic parental instincts of nurturing and caring for those we love the most in our lives. It truly makes no sense,” he said.
Sleep training a screaming baby sounds counterproductive because a child wouldn’t be able to focus on learning when he is in distress.
Finally, Dr. Tracy Cassels, a clinical psychologist, believes that letting babies cry it out can cause internal distress, and encourages parents to find a gentler method to put baby to sleep.
“What all parents need to know is that ‘cry it out’ and all modified forms of it are based on early behaviorist beliefs that if you stop the crying, you stop the distress. But what we now know is that this is not at all close to the truth.
Infants and children often have a behavior-physiological mismatch. For example, a child that is upset, but is being held and comforted by an attached caregiver, may not show physiological signs of distress. Whereas a child that is silent can be experiencing huge internal distress.
This is why responsiveness is key in our parenting. Responding to our children is paramount in building a sense of security and later independence for our children,” she said.
Sleep training – how to get your baby to sleep without being held
Image from Pexels
After learning about the two opposing beliefs, parents can decide on what their next step is when it comes to their baby’s sleeping habits. Parents who don’t believe in crying it out may ask, “Is sleep training really important?” “Will baby learn to sleep without training?” Meanwhile, those who are convinced that sleeping is a must will ask when to start sleep training their baby.
According to Heather Turgeon, author of the book The Happy Sleeper: The Science-Backed Guide to Helping Your Baby Get a Good Night’s Sleep, babies need to be trained to sleep, because it’s part of our physiological need and programmed in our brain. However, they may learn and develop good and bad sleeping habits which can be detrimental to their regulation skills.
We don’t “learn” to sleep, because it’s programmed deep in the brain, but we do “learn” sleep habits. Babies can learn helpful ones, like grabbing their loveys and falling asleep in their cozy cribs in a good sleeping environment, or unhelpful ones, like falling asleep while being nursed or bounced on a yoga ball. The helpful habits let a baby’s natural sleep skills shine.
The unhelpful ones create the pattern of baby reaching externally for soothing back to sleep — meaning you hear from her throughout the night,” she pointed out.
Sleep coaches say that the ideal time to start sleep training depends on your baby’s development, but should be somewhere between 4 to 6 months, when they haven’t gotten used to nursing or being rocked to sleep yet.
According to Jennifer Garden, an occupational therapist who runs a Sleep Coaching company in Vancouver, this is also the stage where your baby is also ready to learn the skill of falling asleep on their own.
How to get baby to sleep without being held? There are different but gentler sleep training methods than crying it out. You can try sitting on a chair beside baby’s crib and shush him until he falls asleep or pick him up for a few minutes, shush him and put him back to his crib when he’s sleepy, not asleep.
Updates by Camille Eusebio