Transcript
Andrew: Hi, this is Andrew from Salt Lake City. Dad’s Club has made it so easy for me to learn and be a better dad, so thank you for everything you guys are doing. I downloaded the iOS app to my phone, and I just love being able to access it anytime. So, my question is about the cry it out method. Our baby is 3 months old, and I’ve heard some new parents say you should let your baby cry until they learn to fall asleep on their own. Is this good? And what else can we do to help our baby sleep? Thanks again.
Vincent: Hi Andrew – thanks for being a Dad’s Club member, and thanks for the great question. I had the same concern when my daughter Lily was a few months old. When Lily came home from the birth center, she went straight into her own nursery. And for the first few weeks, I actually slept in her room on a bean bag.
So the Cry It Out Method, which is also called the extinction method of sleep training, is when you put your baby in their bassinet or crib fully awake and let them fuss or cry until they fall asleep. That means you don’t feed them or rock them to sleep before putting them down. Sometimes this is referred to as the Ferber Method, by Pediatrician Richard Ferber.
The goal is just to teach your baby to fall asleep without being reliant on being in your arms. Most experts agree that crying it out is harder on the parents than it is on the baby. Some research shows that letting a baby or toddler cry as they go to sleep will not have any long-term negative effects. As long as your child is loved, nurtured, and played with during the day, they won’t be hurt by being a little fussy before bed.
However, in scientific literature, “sleep training” is a broad umbrella term that refers to a wide range of strategies. Jodi Mindell, a psychologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, says that the Cry it Out method, which is putting your baby in their room, closing the door, and leaving isn’t what she recommends.
Other methods of sleep training involve having the parent sleep next to the baby’s crib, which is called the camping out method. This is what I opted to do, and another gentler method of sleep training is to put the baby in their crib or bassinet and to soothe them by patting or rubbing their back until they stop crying. In one study from Australia, using gentle interventions reduced the percentage of parents who said their baby had sleep problems five months later by 30 percent.
Usually, after a week, the baby will learn to put themselves to sleep. It can be hard to let your baby cry and not do anything, so other options can be checking on them every 15 minutes without rocking or nursing them. Another option is to comfort the baby if the crying lasts longer than a certain period of time.
Even Dr. Ferber says that the idea that every child should be left to cry alone for a few nights is a misunderstanding of his views in an interview with NPR, he explained that his guidance mixes sleep science with psychology. And the so-called Ferber Method of allowing a baby to cry for longer and longer periods is really only for families that want to break bad sleep habits.
Dr. Ferber: A typical example of that is a child who is rocked to sleep, the family is sneaking them into the crib and then tip-toeing out of the room. So when they wake up at night, lo and behold everything has been changed. Now that child is not going to be very happy with that. If the family wants the youngster sleeping in the crib by themselves then they have to be honest with their youngster. And you put the child into the crib awake.
The fact is that there is no data to show that either choice, sleep training or not sleep training, can hurt your child in the long run. In randomized controlled trials with more than 200 families, researchers couldn’t find any long-term difference between children who had been sleep trained as babies and those who hadn’t. They concluded that there were no harmful effects on the children’s behavior, sleep, or the parent-child relationship.
So you really shouldn’t feel any pressure to sleep train or not sleep train your baby.
Question: My question is about the cry it out method. Our baby is 3 months old, and I’ve heard some new parents say you should let your baby cry until they learn to fall asleep on their own. Is this good? And what else can we do to help our baby sleep? Thanks again.
Answer: I had the same concern when my daughter Lily was a few months old. When Lily came home from the birth center, she went straight into her own nursery. And for the first few weeks, I actually slept in her room on a bean bag.
So the Cry It Out Method, which is also called the extinction method of sleep training, is when you put your baby in their bassinet or crib fully awake and let them fuss or cry until they fall asleep. That means you don’t feed them or rock them to sleep before putting them down. Sometimes this is referred to as the Ferber Method, by Pediatrician Richard Ferber.
The goal is just to teach your baby to fall asleep without being reliant on being in your arms. Most experts agree that crying it out is harder on the parents than it is on the baby. Some research shows that letting a baby or toddler cry as they go to sleep will not have any long-term negative effects. As long as your child is loved, nurtured, and played with during the day, they won’t be hurt by being a little fussy before bed.
However, in scientific literature, “sleep training” is a broad umbrella term that refers to a wide range of strategies. Jodi Mindell, a psychologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, says that the Cry it Out method, which is putting your baby in their room, closing the door, and leaving isn’t what she recommends.
Other methods of sleep training involve having the parent sleep next to the baby’s crib, which is called the camping out method. This is what I opted to do, and another gentler method of sleep training is to put the baby in their crib or bassinet and to soothe them by patting or rubbing their back until they stop crying. In one study from Australia, using gentle interventions reduced the percentage of parents who said their baby had sleep problems five months later by 30 percent.
Usually, after a week, the baby will learn to put themselves to sleep. It can be hard to let your baby cry and not do anything, so other options can be checking on them every 15 minutes without rocking or nursing them. Another option is to comfort the baby if the crying lasts longer than a certain period of time.
Even Dr. Ferber says that the idea that every child should be left to cry alone for a few nights is a misunderstanding of his views in an interview with NPR, he explained that his guidance mixes sleep science with psychology. And the so-called Ferber Method of allowing a baby to cry for longer and longer periods is really only for families that want to break bad sleep habits.
A typical example of that is a child who is rocked to sleep, the family is sneaking them into the crib and then tip-toeing out of the room. So when they wake up at night, lo and behold everything has been changed. Now that child is not going to be very happy with that. If the family wants the youngster sleeping in the crib by themselves then they have to be honest with their youngster. And you put the child into the crib awake.
Dr. Ferber
The fact is that there is no data to show that either choice, sleep training or not sleep training, can hurt your child in the long run. In randomized controlled trials with more than 200 families, researchers couldn’t find any long-term difference between children who had been sleep trained as babies and those who hadn’t. They concluded that there were no harmful effects on the children’s behavior, sleep, or the parent-child relationship.
So you really shouldn’t feel any pressure to sleep train or not sleep train your baby.
Sources
Hiscock, H., Bayer, J., Gold, L., Hampton, A., Ukoumunne, O. C., & Wake, M. (2007). Improving infant sleep and maternal mental health: a cluster randomised trial. Archives of disease in childhood, 92(11), 952–958. https://doi.org/10.1136/adc.2006.099812
