Crying or “No-Crying” – The Research

I have been working as a sleep coach for over ten years and in that time, parenting and the research around it, the books we read, forums we have access to and, more recently, the facts we read on social media, are changing every minute. But one thing stands true throughout this whole time – only your client will know what the best approach is for their baby.

There is no one size fits all. I do believe that any method will work for a baby or toddler if the approach is used a) consistently and following all guidance from you, their sleep coach and b) as long as there are no underlying medical issues. There is one other reason as to why an approach would not work, and that is that your client does not believe in the approach itself – perhaps because they are worried about what they have read online, or their friend has suggested that the particular approach they are using is for example harmful. 

I have been to homes in the past where the parents have tried everything, feel that they have tried the method I have suggested (e.g. return and reassure) and baby hasn’t responded. A lot of these parents are reluctant to give it another go, but I am so confident in the methods that I will go into their home, with the same plan, and see that baby settle and sleep through within nights…. The difference? The parents’ anxiety is gone, they feel confident, and the baby picks up on this. 

The main debate surrounding crying comes from research into orphaned children undertaken in the 80’s in Romania. These children were left in their cots, with no one attached caregiver (a figure that they built an attachment and bond to). These children were noticeably quiet, and did not cry out for anything – food, wet nappies and so on. The researchers noted that being in their cots and left to cry from an early age did this to them.

This is not your client’s child.

Your client’s baby has been born into a warm and cosy world of cuddles, affection, warmth and love. They want to help their baby learn to fall asleep on their own because they know that this is one of the biggest life skills that you can teach a child! With your help, they may have also recognised how important sleep is for both baby’s health and immunity, development, but also their own mental and physical well-being too.

There is an argument from attachment parenting that suggests that sleeping through the night is a modern day false fantasy, and that babies are not biologically ready to sleep through the night until much older, 1-2 years and up. As a sleep coach who has specialised in younger babies for a long time now, I can confidently say that if parents are given the correct guidance and advice early on when it comes to sleep (awake windows, putting baby down awake and all of the wonderful things you have been taught on this course), those babies are more than capable of sleeping through the night from early on – without so much as a drop of crying. They are physically able to, but the support and guidance is just not out there for new parents and therefore your client finds themself in the situation of having to seek external help from you to help correct sleep.

Let’s have a look at one of the studies that shows that sleep coaching is beneficial to modern day parents and children, rather than detrimental. An Australian study of 328 mothers looked at the mother- baby relationship and the difference between those who did sleep training versus those who did not. Results of this study showed that in the short term, not only did sleep improve but so did parents’ mental health score. Following up when the children were age 6 and comparing against the control group, these children showed no difference in emotional stability, stress, parent/child bond and attachment. 

There are many other studies that have shown that sleep coaching is an effective way of increasing sleep quality and quantity for infants. In addition, there is a vast body of research that looks at the link between an infant’s overall well-being and a mother’s maternal health – the lower a mother’s mood, the more likely that baby is to suffer from stress, reduced attachment and baby scores less well overall on well-being.

We know that sleep is a huge contributor to mental health and therefore the argument of sleep coaching negatively affecting a child could also be turned the other way. One could easily argue that by not helping a client with sleep, it is more detrimental to an infant’s health than a child undergoing some sleep coaching for a week to help improve their sleep but also the overall quality of life for the whole family.

Exercise 2

Read the segments on sleep training from both “Cribsheet” and “Your Family’s Sleep”. Provide arguments both for and against sleep training. Conclude with your personal view as a sleep coach, based on the evidence that is presented (800 words)

To this day, I have not had a single client come back to me and wish that they had not done the sleep coaching they signed up for. I believe there are vast benefits to helping a baby learn to sleep well and these lay as much with the baby as with the parents and the strength of that parenting relationship. Although gentle parenting experts would have you believe that we are made to carry our babies around on our backs and deal with sleep deprivation for years on end, that is not our reality now. We live in small, isolated circles with often no help at all, which has left generations of women dealing with not only keeping home and looking after children, but often also going back to work too. 

Please listen to my podcast  S1 EP22 – “The Truth about Sleep Training”  which is also helpful for understanding the debate on cry versus no-cry sleep approaches. 

References

Hiscock., H. et al. (2006). Improving Infant Sleep and Maternal Mental Health: a Cluster Randomised Trial. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2083609/ 

Hiscock., et al. (2008). Long-Term Mother and Child Mental Health Effects of a Population based Infant Sleep Intervention: cluster-randomized, controlled trial. Paediatrics; Sep; 122 (3)