Gentle infant sleep training:

Programs for children 6 months and up

© 2008 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

When parents hear about infant sleep training, they often think of babies left alone in their cribs to cry themselves to sleep.

But there are alternatives to such an approach. Here I describe two such alternatives, both of which have been scientifically tested on babies and young children.

For other information relevant to infant sleep training, see my article on solving baby sleep problems.

Positive routines with faded bedtime

The theory behind this sleep training method is simple:

Children will fall asleep more easily if they are led through a series of predictable, pleasant, quiet, bedtime rituals.

But if you pick a bedtime that is too early, children won’t feel drowsy, and they may resist falling asleep.

With this program, you train your infant to associate the bedtime routine with feeling drowsy, and you do this by waiting until you are sure your baby is ready to fall asleep--even if this means starting bedtime later than you like.

So you begin by noting your baby’s current sleep patterns (for help, see this article on signs of sleepiness and sleep deprivation ).

At what time of night does your baby fall asleep naturally? That’s the time to begin.

Next, you introduce your bedtime routine—which might involve 20 minutes of quiet, pleasant activities—as baby’s “natural” bedtime approaches.

Once your baby learns to associate the pleasant bedtime routine with falling asleep, you can gradually shift bedtime to an earlier hour, moving bedtime up 10-15 minutes every few days until the desired bedtime is reached (Adams and Rickert 1989).

This approach to infant sleep training has been subjected to a randomized, controlled study of children aged 18-48 months (Adams and Rickert 1989).

The researchers found that the approach was as effective for reducing bedtime tantrums as was graduated extinction (an approach to infant sleep training that involves leaving baby alone to cry).

Other studies have tested positive routines on children, but these studies included positive routines as part of a package of other infant sleep training methods. As a result, it isn’t possible to say which methods had the greatest effects (Mindell et al 2006).

Currently, I can find no controlled studies testing the specific effects of positive routines on infants under 12 months. However, given that the approach does not impose any distress or separation anxiety on babies, it seems entirely safe.

Extinction with parental presence

With this approach to infant sleep training, you put your baby to bed while he’s still awake, and you lie down with him until he falls asleep. However, you pay progressively less attention to him each night.

For instance, after a few days, you might touch the baby less often. A few days after that, you might look away more often, and sit up in bed rather than remain lying down. The next step is to sit at a chair alongside the bed, and the step after that is to move the chair a bit farther away. You can read or do some other silent activity while you keep up your vigil.

By making these gradual changes, the baby is weaned from extensive parental soothing rituals. After several days, you might try leaving the room for a few seconds, returning before the baby starts to cry. This may help the baby learn that you can be trusted to return after an absence (Skuladottir 2003). But you remain in the baby’s presence until he falls asleep.

When baby awakens in the middle of the night, you take the same approach. But baby becomes more adapted to the new program, you may try letting the baby wait for you for a minute or two before you return (Skuladottir 2003).

When method of infant sleep training was tried on sleep disturbed infants aged 8-12 months, infants slept longer and experienced fewer night wakings (Skuladottir 2003).

A somewhat similar approach, in which the parent stays in the same room with baby but sleeps in a different bed, has also reported successful results (Sadeh 1994). In both cases, parents can encourage babies to learn self-soothing techniques while avoiding the distress associated with leaving infants alone.

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References

Adams LA and Rickert VI. 1989. Reducing bedtime tantrums: Comparison between positive bedtime routines and graduated extinction. Pediatrics 84(5): 756-761.

Mindell JA, Kuhn B, Lewin DS, Meltzer LJ, Sadeh A and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. 2006. Behavioral treatment of bedtime problems and night wakings in infants and young children. Sleep 29: 1263-1281.

Sadeh A. 1994. Assessment of intervention for infant night waking: Parental reports and activity-based home monitoring. J Consult Clin Psychol 62(1):63-8

Skuladottir A and Thome M. 2003. Changes in infant sleep problems after a family-centered intervention. Pediatric Nursing 29(5):375-8.

Content last modified 10/08