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As someone who's gone through this five times (ok, going through it for the fifth): My experience has been that once I understood it it became very simple, but

As someone who's gone through this five times (ok, going through it for the fifth): My experience has been that once I understood it it became very simple, but learning it was hard since none of the documentation is complete and it often only covers the small child that the author of said document had. One piece of very practical advice that I picked up from some docs somewhere though: For some reason adults easily understand that kids needs to learn to eat, learn to walk and learn to speak and later write. For some reason however many of us think that kids just should know how to sleep. Most kids however doesn't know how to get a good nights sleep however. Some general advice in that regard: - Don't let kids over a year fall asleep with anything they cannot keep during the night (food, parents by their side, music, film etc.) We all wake up about once an hour to see that things are still OK. This is good thing. For small kids this check seems to be mostly that things are exactly as they were when they fell asleep. Not knowing about this mechanism can drive a good hearted parent mad since they'll go to extreme lengths to make sure their kids are happy - including waking up once an hour to help the kid fall asleep again. (Case in point: I did this for months until I realized my kid woke up once an hour because she always fell asleep with a bottle of milk and consequently woke up once an hour the rest of the night to tell us things weren't right until she could have some more milk in her bottle.) - Some people recommend letting one year olds crying themselves to sleep until they "learn to sleep". I recommend against it. What small kids seems to be afraid of is that parents disappear. Training the kid to realize that parents are there and will check back even if they don't cry seems to help a lot. In other words: if kid cries, pop your head in and say the some very few carefully selected nice words, but more importantly and somewhat counterintuitively if the kid does not cry, have a timer on short intervals and make it boringly predictable to the kid that you will show up even if they don't cry. What I found out was that as soon as my kids realized I would come back with boring precision even if they just played with their toys they stopped shouting or crying: I cannot know what they think but I guess somewhere along the lines of "no need to bother crying if dad shows up in exacly 2 minutes 40 seconds since he was here 20 seconds ago"

pjgalbraith 5y ago
Yeah sleep is something that you quickly learn as a parent doesn't come all that naturally. Training my daughter to sleep properly is one of the most valuable things I did. I used the Ferber method which is similar to the method you mentioned. Where you visit them in intervals but the time between intervals increases over time. It took about 3 days but since then she sleeps 10-12 hours every night.
creativemonkeys 5y ago
One thing we did early is train our first child that she should not expect us to be in the room when she sleeps. It took a few iterations of (put baby to sleep, leave room, give baby a chance to self-soothe, pop back in for a bit to let her know we're still here) until she no longer cried when we left the room. We didn't set a timer, but we usually gave her 5-10 minutes to calm down before popping back in. If there's one thing I've learned though is that every baby is actually different (and it's not just a saying). For example, we've been bottle-feeding the baby right before sleep (nap and evening) every day for two years now, which I understand is against the usual advice of not feeding the baby immediately before putting her to sleep, but we found that she sleeps much better throughout the night and it didn't seem to cause any issues as long as we burped her properly before laying her down in the crib. YMMV though.
burticlies 5y ago
Oh wow, this is the first internet baby tip that has actually worked. Our two year old would take 30 minutes of settling every night, with one of us in the room sitting in a chair. Tried this checking in every couple of minutes idea, and within a few days he only took 6 minutes and was relaxed the whole time. Thanks a bunch! Got any tips for when they wake up freaking out in the night?
- eitland 5y ago
  I'll favourite this :-) Maybe even add a bookmark for it, filed under a new tag: bragging_rights ;-) But please remember I did not come up with this, see sibling comment (pjgalbraith). It seems the method is called the Ferber method although I learned a modified version from what I found when I looked it up[1]: the way I learned it was to increase by two minutes each day, not more, ie first day 1 and then 3 minutes, second day 3 and then 5 minutes etc. I believe this will be even gentler and it has worked wonderfully for both children and adults. Now to your question: > Got any tips for when they wake up freaking out in the night? Two things: Once kids learn to associate bed with relaxing on their own they can often find their way back to sleep easily but not always. My rule of thumb has been that if they have been asleep and wake up I walk in immediately as soon as I can so to make sure they aren't worried about being alone. Then it is up to ones judgment as a parent: if it is just old habits, start the countdown timer. If however they are scared (nightmares etc) stay a bit longer or if necessary take the child out of bed and hold them. This is easier to judge if one arrive quickly because otherwise it is hard to know if they were scared when they woke up or if they became scared after thinking they were alone. [1]: https://www.parents.com/baby/sleep/basics/the-ferber-method-explained/ https://www.parents.com/baby/sleep/basics/the-ferber-method-...
  - burticlies 5y ago
    I think this speaks to how when learning a concept, just having it framed in the right way can really help. I’d heard of the Ferber method before and we tried it a bit to no success. But just hearing the same idea framed as “the parent checking back in regular like a metronome”, rather than “the baby needs to learn to self settle” just clicked in my head. Thanks for the tips, will keep trying this and see if it sorts out the late night wakes too.

pjgalbraith 5y ago

Yeah sleep is something that you quickly learn as a parent doesn't come all that naturally. Training my daughter to sleep properly is one of the most valuable things I did. I used the Ferber method which is similar to the method you mentioned. Where you visit them in intervals but the time between intervals increases over time. It took about 3 days but since then she sleeps 10-12 hours every night.

creativemonkeys 5y ago

One thing we did early is train our first child that she should not expect us to be in the room when she sleeps. It took a few iterations of (put baby to sleep, leave room, give baby a chance to self-soothe, pop back in for a bit to let her know we're still here) until she no longer cried when we left the room. We didn't set a timer, but we usually gave her 5-10 minutes to calm down before popping back in. If there's one thing I've learned though is that every baby is actually different (and it's not just a saying). For example, we've been bottle-feeding the baby right before sleep (nap and evening) every day for two years now, which I understand is against the usual advice of not feeding the baby immediately before putting her to sleep, but we found that she sleeps much better throughout the night and it didn't seem to cause any issues as long as we burped her properly before laying her down in the crib. YMMV though.

burticlies 5y ago

Oh wow, this is the first internet baby tip that has actually worked. Our two year old would take 30 minutes of settling every night, with one of us in the room sitting in a chair. Tried this checking in every couple of minutes idea, and within a few days he only took 6 minutes and was relaxed the whole time. Thanks a bunch! Got any tips for when they wake up freaking out in the night?

eitland 5y ago
I'll favourite this :-) Maybe even add a bookmark for it, filed under a new tag: bragging_rights ;-) But please remember I did not come up with this, see sibling comment (pjgalbraith). It seems the method is called the Ferber method although I learned a modified version from what I found when I looked it up[1]: the way I learned it was to increase by two minutes each day, not more, ie first day 1 and then 3 minutes, second day 3 and then 5 minutes etc. I believe this will be even gentler and it has worked wonderfully for both children and adults. Now to your question: > Got any tips for when they wake up freaking out in the night? Two things: Once kids learn to associate bed with relaxing on their own they can often find their way back to sleep easily but not always. My rule of thumb has been that if they have been asleep and wake up I walk in immediately as soon as I can so to make sure they aren't worried about being alone. Then it is up to ones judgment as a parent: if it is just old habits, start the countdown timer. If however they are scared (nightmares etc) stay a bit longer or if necessary take the child out of bed and hold them. This is easier to judge if one arrive quickly because otherwise it is hard to know if they were scared when they woke up or if they became scared after thinking they were alone. [1]: https://www.parents.com/baby/sleep/basics/the-ferber-method-explained/ https://www.parents.com/baby/sleep/basics/the-ferber-method-...
- burticlies 5y ago
  I think this speaks to how when learning a concept, just having it framed in the right way can really help. I’d heard of the Ferber method before and we tried it a bit to no success. But just hearing the same idea framed as “the parent checking back in regular like a metronome”, rather than “the baby needs to learn to self settle” just clicked in my head. Thanks for the tips, will keep trying this and see if it sorts out the late night wakes too.