It’s time we acknowledge the devastating truth about sleep training

As a new parent, the pressure to use sleep training is unavoidable. It’s hard to blame new parents who fall prey to sleep training, as bleary-eyed days become sleepless nights and desperation for more sleep takes over.

Sleep training involves various methods of letting your baby cry to sleep in their own room, which I won’t detail, because I don’t subscribe to any of them. Sleep training is sold as harmless for your baby, and some sleep “experts” recommend it as young as 12 weeks old.

I’m here to make the case against sleep training.

The big business of sleep training

Not only has sleep training been normalized in modern western culture, but it is encouraged and pushed by the baby sleep industry that has stealthily crept up. Try Googling “baby sleep” and you won’t find anything but websites selling you sleep training services. It is almost impossible to read anything online about what baby sleep is like (and how parents function) when you don’t sleep train your baby.

Sleep consultants abound on social media, and some even profess “gentle” methods to teach your baby to sleep. However, the reality is nothing about sleep training is remotely “gentle.”

The hard (sad) truth about sleep training

Well-meaning parents who sleep train their babies will gleefully tell you that their baby can now sleep through the night.

However, contrary to common belief, babies who are sleep trained are not actually sleeping through the night. In sleep training, babies learn that their parents are not going to come rescue them. They are utterly terrified and scream for their parents, and when nobody comes to save them, they eventually give up and stay silent.

In ancient times, your baby would be giving themselves up for dead. The sabretooth tiger would pounce. Your baby’s DNA doesn’t know the difference, even if they are in their own safe crib in a nice house.

I’ve heard many expressions of shock and disappointment from other mothers who tell me that their sleep trained babies didn’t call out to them in the night when they vomited/pooped/hurt themselves. Sadly, the baby knows that nobody will come to help.

Not only does the elevated stress (cortisol) from the fear of abandonment impact brain development, but the most concerning long-term impact of sleep training is that your baby has learned that they cannot rely on you for help or comfort.

Reorienting expectations of normal baby sleep

The (only) good thing about sleep training, is that it instinctually feels wrong. Mothers instinctually cannot ignore their babies and let them cry. Deep down, mothers know sleep training is wrong. But parents allow themselves to be convinced by society that it is ok.

You will get immense social pressure to sleep train. Upon discovering that your 10 month old is not sleep trained and still nurses all night long, friends will balk, “Sleep training changed by life. Highly recommend.” “I couldn’t survive as a mother if we didn’t sleep train.” “I don’t know how you do it.”

I’ve had countless of these conversations with other moms. Despite them singing praises about sleep training, I can sense their guilt. It’s not your job to make other parents feel better about themselves for sleep training. You can simply tell them it doesn’t feel right for your family.

This is where you can enlighten them that a baby’s ability to sleep through the night is an adult expectation. Babies are not actually capable of this, and they are designed to wake up in the night and nurse and snuggle.

Your baby’s current sleep is developmentally appropriate for your baby, at this moment in time. It is not a problem. One baby might sleep through the night at 6 months and another might not sleep through the night until 3 years.

Reorienting parenting expectations

We might be better off if parents knew that babies are not actually capable of sleeping through the night, and that it is their responsibility as parents to attend to their children every hour of the day are night. That’s what parenting is. It involves sacrifice and an extended period of selflessness. That involves caring for your child at night. Your baby’s sleep is not a “problem” needing to be fixed.

“We must accept that the modern Western custom of an independent childhood sleeping pattern is unique and exceedingly rare among contemporary and past world cultures.”

Crawford, 1994

You don’t need to train your baby to sleep

Do nothing to “train” your baby, and your baby will eventually sleep through the night. I promise. Infants and toddlers alike do not need to be taught how to sleep. Connecting sleep cycles and sleeping through the night are developmental milestones that they will achieve in their own time. There is no magic trick that makes your baby sleep. It will come when they are ready, in time.

My toddler is living proof that sleep training is not necessary. My husband and I resisted the pressure to sleep train throughout her infancy and toddlerhood, and instead employed all the sleep “tools” that felt instinctual: co-sleeping, nursing to sleep, contact napping.

At 21 months, we carefully and lovingly transitioned her into her own sleep space, and she started sleeping confidently through the night all on her own. No crying or tears involved, whatsoever.

We did nothing—except attend to her every need morning and night for nearly 2 years—and she eventually felt emotionally (and physiologically) ready to sleep on her own. No cry-it-out or sleep consultants needed.

The bottom line about baby sleep

I encourage you to listen to your instincts. Do not bow to outside pressure influencing you about how your baby should be sleeping. I am here to remind you that your baby’s sleep is as it should be. And they will sleep through the night, eventually, even if you do nothing.