Post 12: Sleep Training

For S’s first 90 days or so, we as parents didn’t have many choices to make. For the most part- parenting has been a reactive affair- we generally respond to whatever S needs- and thus far, that’s just food, diaper changes, and nap time.

But in the past few weeks, we embarked on our first truly deliberate act as parents: Sleep Training. I’ve never heard the term prior to becoming a parent, and so for the non-parents out there, sleep training is about trying to get your baby to sleep on their own as long as possible. As parents know, the significance of this cannot be overstated- being able to put a child down at 7 PM and not worry about having to do anything until 7 AM the following morning is one of the great milestones that all new mom/dads look forward to. As I read various parenting websites, it appears that S is a great sleeper, but that basically meant that he slept from 7 PM until 1 AM, and then 1:15 AM until about 5 AM, and then 5:15 until about 7. Apparently 6 consecutive hours qualifies as sleeping through the night for a newborn, but the aforementioned schedule certainly didn’t meet my standard of mom/dad being able to sleep through the night.

There is no shortage of theories and materials out there written by folks with diametrically opposing views on both the methods and virtues of getting a child to sleep through the night. One camp advocates for letting a baby “cry it out”, which at the extreme implies that you plop a baby into the crib at 7 PM, shut the door, and don’t return until 7 AM the next morning. The expectation is that a child may cry- up to several hours if they’re the persistent type, but eventually they’ll give in and go to sleep, hence the term cry it out. No sooner did this method develop some modicum of acceptance that a class of “researchers” came out talking about the dangers of allowing a child to cry for too long. The claim was that a child’s mental/emotional development could be severely compromised if subject to long periods of crying, and they therefore advise that parents constantly tend to a child’s needs. The downside to this attachment theory approach was obviously spoiling an infant to the point where, well, they become spoiled children/adults and nobody wants that, and so we can naturally see how the cry it out method started to gain some traction in the first place. And the pendulum continues to swing...

What surprises me as I read a lot of the literature out there is the deep, borderline fanatical passion with which each group argues its case. Like most things in life, the answer to the question of how to get a child to sleep through the night is probably “it depends”, and what’s best for most kids is probably some combination of the two extremes. But when you combine the neurosis of parents, and the dogmatic religiosity of most researchers, you end up with is something that resembles our public discourse. Each side claims to have “the answer”, and whichever path a parent chooses- there’s this lingering voice in the back of our heads warning us that we’re creating some kind of permanent damage- either by raising impetuous pansies, or emotionally stunted future criminals.

As one might expect, my inclination with S was to put him in the room at 7 PM and come back at 7 AM the next day. The little voice in the back of my head whispers, “Don’t raise a wimp... It’s time for him to be a man!”. Thankfully, the wife resides on the other end of the spectrum, and she’s ready to pull her hair out if S so much as cries for 30 seconds. We met in the middle, and so far, the results seem to be promising. When we put S down at around 7 PM, he usually puts himself to sleep with minimal whimpers, if any. The past several nights, he’ll stay down about 8-9 hours- not quite the whole night, but certainly an improvement to two weeks ago. The hardest part has been that 3:30AM to 6 AM window- keeping him down during that time is a challenge, and one we’re still probably a couple days/weeks from declaring victory. But freedom does appear to be around the corner.

Regardless of when we get there, there’s still the theoretical possibility that we were either too harsh (or too easy) on S in this endeavor. As wise parents remind us, you don’t really know what kind of job you did as a parent until it’s basically too late to do much about it. I don’t think they’re trying to be fatalistic about things; they’re simply highlighting the basic reality that our control over the child-rearing process is inherently limited and our best bet is to just roll with who we are and let the chips fall where they may. While I have no idea if this sleep training is causing some form of longer-term harm, I do believe that there is no doubt in S’s mind that his parents love him very much. Him knowing that is actually all I really need in order to sleep well through the night.


100 Days Old


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