Parents, not babies, need sleep training.

My co-author Julie Wright and I want a revolution in how we all talk about sleep. Sleep “training” is an old term that conjures up ideas of babies being forced into something that doesn’t come naturally. Let’s talk about sleep as the lovely, natural aspect of life that it is. I

It’s a polarising topic, but it doesn’t have to be. When you clear up some basic misunderstandings about how baby brains work, the whole business of good sleep gets a lot easier.

There’s no “training.” It’s just sleeping.

You can’t train a human being to sleep — we are built to sleep. It takes time for a newborn’s circadian system to mature, but after five months or so, a baby is capable of long stretches of nighttime slumber. She’s become more conscious and in control, with the fine motor skills to find her fingers or thumb, and maybe even the gross motor skills to roll into her favorite sleep position.

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 cots in a good sleeping environment, or unhelpful ones, like falling asleep while being nursed or bounced on a yoga ball. (Falling asleep in mama’s arms is the sweetest. It only becomes an unhelpful habit for an older baby if it’s repeated over and over.) 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.

Parents are the ones who need training.

Newborns need all that rocking, shushing and bouncing to regulate their little nervous systems. But as they grow, they become more and more able to self-regulate. When we work with parents in the first four months, our main goal is to help them gradually do a little less. Just to see what happens. Babies let us know if they truly need our help, but we try to “train” parents to be a little curious and give them space to work things out on their own.

In my case, when I realised that bouncing my son to sleep was overshadowing his own self-soothing skills, I had to step back to give him the space he so clearly needed. He did protest — why wouldn’t he? I was changing a well-entrenched pattern. Once he understood the new pattern — that I was nearby but he was in charge of soothing to sleep — he figured out his favorite sleeping position (legs tucked under, bum in the air) and his sleep improved drastically. As my partner and I have learned over years of practice and research, a little struggle is OK for babies and kids — it’s a normal part of growing and practicing a new skill. They’re not going to like everything we do — and that’s fine, as long as there’s a thoughtful plan in place.

The “one-time-fix” mentality leads to frustration.

We always hear parents say a version of, “We sleep trained her, but it stopped working!” This makes so much sense when you consider the term “training” — send a baby through a sleep boot camp and she should stay that way!

Babies and kids change. Constantly. We want parents to think of healthy sleep not as a training session, but as a family philosophy.

We prioritise our sleep. We have routines that support it, and then when the lights go out, we’re all in charge of our own stuff: getting cozy, sucking our thumb, pulling up the blankets.

When you approach sleep this way, you won’t be fazed or frustrated with things like teething, traveling, illness, or transitioning into the big bed. A few bumpy nights are normal, but then you return to your sleep philosophy and everyone returns to sleeping well.

Do you agree with this advice on sleep-training?

Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright are the authors of The Happy Sleeper: The Science-Backed Guide to Helping Your Baby Get a Good Night’s Sleep—Newborn to School Age (Tarcher/Penguin Random House). Follow them on Facebook and Twitter @TheHappySleeper.

Want more? Try:

Tamara Ecclestone’s husband doesn’t want to sleep in the same bed.

Child can’t sleep? This is why.

Follow iVillage on Facebook

When you become a parent, you don't leave your brain in the delivery suite. That's why mothers with kids of all ages come to themotherish.com; because they're still interested in news about entertainment, health, current affairs and food along with an inspiring and useful stream of parenting advice and support.

Most importantly, they come because they want to hear personal stories of parenting directly from other mothers, without fear of judgement.

[iv-signup-form]