Does sleep training even work?

[cyberrocky]

It feels like everyone in my bumper group sleep trains but it also seems like they are constantly having to retrain their babies after every “regression”, illness, teething spell, etc. Parents are told “it’ll be rough for a week but you’ll never look back” and it’s often just not true. But by the time they find out, they’re in too deep and don’t want to think they put themselves and baby through all that torment for nothing so they go through yet another cycle of CIO bc it’s all “part of the process.”

I also think sleep training probably has a much higher failure rate than is generally acknowledged, either because parents don’t want to admit to “giving in” or they are ashamed they tried it and don’t want to think about it. A close friend told me she tried various “gentle” sleep training methods with no success, and was then counseled that her baby would benefit from “full extinction”. She said she had to go outside because she could hear her baby screaming for over an hour and couldn’t take it anymore. After another hour her baby was physically exhausted but still awake, she gave up and never tried sleep training again, and she was understandably pretty traumatized by the experience. How many stories like this are there? Obviously the failure rate is not presented in the promotional materials. I think parents are afraid to talk about it, but they should. How many on the fence would say “screw that” if they knew that 50% (or however high a number) of parents stop after 2, 3, 4 weeks of CIO not working?

When I hear about sleep training that goes well (i.e. doesn’t sound excruciating for all involved), I tend to think it’s largely down to the baby’s temperament (some babies/people do prefer sleeping in their own space). But I know my baby would be absolutely heartbroken by the experience—I know because he’s so easy to nurse to sleep and when he’s being held or is lying next to me he stays asleep until he wants to wake up, but he will wake up within 10 minutes if he’s transferred to his bassinet. It’s just so obvious what makes him feel secure! Why would I try to mess with that? I was very similar as a baby and apparently my daycare tried to sleep train me because they didn’t really have the resources for a contact napper—guess what? It didn’t work. I would just cry and cry and not sleep. Per my mother, “one of the daycare workers eventually took pity on you, became your person, and would hold you for nap time.”

 

[abubu1]

@cyberrocky It absolutely comes down to the baby’s temperament. I’m sure there are some chill babies out there that figure out after a couple of nights of crying that the world isn’t ending and they can just simply ~fall asleep~. I have a child that screams like she’s being murdered if she experiences any minor inconvenience (see: tooth brushing, diaper changes, me walking away from her) so I just knew sleep training was never going to be for us. If I had a more relaxed baby I might’ve been willing to give it a shot. At this point she’s 11 months and very aware of things, so it would feel like a betrayal.

I agree though, it does seem like there’s often a ton of retraining involved (or, as I’ve heard it euphemistically called, “clean up work”).

 

[johnmartin]

@abubu1 Yep, same, I totally agree. My friend did Ferber for two nights and it just clicked with her (then) 7 month old. She’s also been a great sleeper and never wanted to be swaddled, stopped wanting to contact nap early on, and had always been capable of just happily chilling in her crib while awake. She’s two years old now, and continues to be a great crib sleeper.

My 15 month old would NEVER. She’s the joy of my life, but she’s also a major clingy koala baby (now toddler), and she gets pissed if I leave her in the crib for a second to get dressed I knew sleep training was never for her, but I can see how some babies can tolerate it if they are naturally inclined to be more relaxed and chill.

 

[ababyofourown]

@cyberrocky Anecdotally, based on posts in my birth month group, there is very little difference at 2/2.5 years between the infants who were sleep trained and those who weren’t. They’ve all gone through periods of resisting bedtime and periods of frequent waking with illness/molars/separation anxiety/developmental milestones. The parents who sleep-trained are the ones posting in the group wondering what happened to their “perfect” sleeper and how to “fix” the problems. I’ll admit to experiencing a tiny bit of schadenfreude when I see those posts because I practiced responsiveness/AP and was told all the time that I was a martyr, spoiling my child, making a rod for my own back etc.

 

[elderjamesb]

@ababyofourown Yep! Studies show that there is no different between sleep trained and not by toddlerhood and parents who sleep train get on average very little extra sleep per week!

 

[katrina2017]

@ababyofourown This!!!!! I cannot tell you how many posts I see a day in moms groups about their sleep trained baby not sleeping lol. I’m like doesn’t sound like you’re getting great sleep listening to your baby cry for hours at bed time or in the middle of the night. I’m over here rocking my baby back to sleep in 15 mins and back to sleep we both go!

 

[awefactory]

@cyberrocky Every time I try to share my awful experience of sleep training (which I regret so much), I am nearly always told I must have done something wrong. No, I followed the method to a T and I can tell you all it did was traumatize me and my baby. I just have to hope that those two weeks have been repaired by all the times I responded in the previous eight months and all the times I responded in the next five months after abandoning sleep training.

Sleep training only “works” in that it keeps the baby from waking the parents. I am so angry that sleep trainers or doctors try to convince parents that it “teaches” baby self soothing and that it is a skill that has to be taught by leaving baby to cry.

 

[claytoncf]

@awefactory All of my friends who have sleep trained have had different experiences in terms of their kids’ temperaments, but they’ve all been very happy with the results. They get lots of sleep in a way that I don’t, and their relationships with their kids seem fine.

 

[awefactory]

@claytoncf I wouldn’t argue that it doesn’t work if the goal is for parents to sleep better. And I don’t judge my friends who sleep train because I know sleep deprivation is brutal. I just know that my baby now goes into hysterics if I place him in a crib and it genuinely didn’t improve his sleep or mine

 

[comicbookguy]

@cyberrocky This is a very good comprehensive article on the overall success of CIO

These are just a couple of snippets, the article is worth a read.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220322-how-sleep-training-affects-babies

The actigraphy did find that sleep training improved one measure of the babies' sleep: their longest sleep period. That was an improvement of 8.5%, with sleep-trained infants sleeping a 204-minute stretch compared to 188 minutes for the other babies.

And for those who did find a form of sleep training helpful, effects didn't necessarily last. Two months after the intervention, when the babies were 10 months old, 56% of sleep-training and 68% of the other mothers reported that their babies still had sleep problems. When the infants were 12 months, 39% of sleep-training versus 55% of the other mothers did.

 

[losangelesbutterfly]

@comicbookguy

That was an improvement of 8.5%, with sleep-trained infants sleeping a 204-minute stretch compared to 188 minutes for the other babies.

These studies are so funny to me. 16 extra minutes. As if that makes a huge difference for parents sleep or babies development. Let’s traumatize our babies for 16 extra minutes of one sleep cycle.

What a joke.

 

[comicbookguy]

@losangelesbutterfly I know! I think it demonstrates that what you hear anecdotally from pro sleep training parents is not overall reflective of the success amongst all parents. There’s a huge amount of bias in what we hear.

From what I remember the article suggests that babies that would naturally be good sleepers anyway are good sleepers with sleep training, and babies that are harder are still hard with sleep training.

Anecdotally, parents that I know who have used only gentle methods have babies sleeping through by 1, and yet we are gentle and still don’t have good sleep at 18 months. Babies are all individuals. There’s no one size fits all.

 

[losangelesbutterfly]

@comicbookguy To me it seems like 20% of babies fall asleep easily and/or stay asleep easily and/or have high sleep needs (13+ hrs).

The rest of the 80% of babies need less sleep and more support.

And yet 80% of media talking about baby sleep acts like every baby should be in that 20% category and if they aren’t then you shouldn’t accept it and should expect differently and try to change it. Everything is so backwards.

If 80% of baby sleep media talked about biologically normal baby sleep and supporting mothers through that, mothers, babies and everyones emotional health would be much better off.

 

[albys]

@cyberrocky This is frequently discussed on the science based parenting sub. Even if it “works” in the sense that you don’t have to re-train, which does seem rare, the baby isn’t sleeping any more or waking any less. The only change is that the baby isn’t calling out for parents when they wake.

So take that as you will, but to me that means that no, it does not work.

 

[hary89]

@albys I know two people who sleep trained and both told me “my baby pukes in their crib and goes back to sleep! Didn’t even cry or wake me up”. And they tell me this like it’s a good thing but for me I feel sick to my stomach and so sad. My kiddo was up one night throwing up and he was so sad and sick.

 

[phaeton]

@hary89 This is exactly why we never did it. It’s teaching your baby that their distress isn’t important to you, and they might as well give up. What a thing to teach an infant.

 

[timbohemia]

@phaeton So profoundly sad. And even sadder that it is so mainstream. In most parenting and mom subs comments like this would be downnvoted to oblivion and argued with. It is so common here in the US that I've noticed people don't ask "if" you're sleep training, they ask "when".

As someone who experienced childhood emotional neglect I just can't even fathom it.

 

[albys]

@hary89 Same! It hurts my heart that so many people sleep train these poor innocent little babies. They are biologically programmed to need their caregivers, including at night. Putting the responsibility on these tiny new creatures to figure it out at night, instead of on us as parents to help them while making sleep manageable for us, is SO backwards to me.

I think that with some time, CIO sleep training will be seen in the same way that we look back at spanking now. Now, spanking is very obviously harmful and ineffective, and is considered cruel and abusive. With some more studies, I believe that is what we will find with CIO sleep training, and people will look back on this generation in horror at how many people did it.

 

[yaphasheba]

@albys I live in Sweden and CIO is very much is seen in that vein already here. It’s not banned, but the public healthcare discourages its use, and in my private FB group for babies born the same month, when a person asked about CIO, literally every single comment begged the poster not to do it because it is akin to spanking/abuse. (Sweden was the first country to make spanking illegal.)

 

[hary89]

@albys I think so too! I have some very very strong opinions on it. At some point people should be responsible for how they treat their kids.