How to Succeed in Sleep Training, the Mindful Way
I call BS on everyone who says there is one “right” way to approach baby sleep in your home. Cry it out, care it out, wait it out, or something in between might be the best path forward for you, depending on your unique family’s needs. Parenting is hard enough without feeling like you have to do something you don’t feel good about doing, or like you’re going to harm your baby by doing what’s best for your family. As we touched on in the sleep blog last week, all the sleep training methods can be broken into two categories (more responsive and more restrictive) and so long as you love the heck out of your baby and implement the method consistently, they all work! None of them are “right” and none of them are “wrong.” If you’re not sure what we’re talking about, go back and read that blog first.
But there’s a fundamental piece of the successful sleep puzzle that all of the sleep training methods (which are otherwise quite effective) leave out: YOU. You are the parent. You are the teacher. You are 50% of the baby + parent equation and your feelings matter.
The feelings you bring to the sleep teaching process are the single most important variable in how successful any sleep training/teaching effort will be.
Why do parental feelings and mindset matter when it comes to sleep training and baby sleep?
If you don’t feel good about a sleep training method, you’re more likely to be inconsistent. It’s really hard to stick to something when it gets tough if you’re not 100% invested in it. And if you’re not consistent in how you put your baby to sleep during sleep teaching, they will have a much harder time learning the new skill.
If you don’t believe that you are capable of teaching your baby new sleep skills, or you don’t believe they are capable of learning, you’re more likely to give up prematurely. As cheesy as it may sound, you gotta believe in yourself. Your brain likes to act out what you tell it, so if you tell your brain that you’re an inadequate parent and your baby sucks as sleeping, you’re fighting an uphill battle. In parenting, sometimes we’ve got to fake it until we make it.
If you’re a nervous wreck, your baby will pick up on the stress and have a harder time learning and settling. A baby’s nervous system is co-regulated with their parent’s, so a calmer parent equals a calmer child (or a frantic parent equals a more frantic child, as the case may be). We don’t have to tell you that it’s really hard to keep your calm when your baby is screaming. Our fight or flight response activates, the crying escalates due to co-regulation of our baby’s nervous system, and we get stuck in a parent-baby tumbleweed of nerves, anxiety, and frantic reactions until someone finally crashes. This is NOT conducive to sleep, or to learning, so you can see how it's unhelpful in the sleep teaching process. If you are trying to do the chair method, for example, and you’re next to the crib with a Category 5 hurricane raging inside, your baby will feel it. Or, if you’re doing a Check & Console type method, and you’re a hot mess when you go in to “console” your baby, you’re not doing your baby any favors at all. No consoling is happening. Only checking and spreading of chaos. Choosing the sleep training method that you suspect will cause the least stress for you (NOT anyone else), and then finding a way to minimize your internal distress while you implement the chosen method, will help your baby feel safe and secure so that they can learn the new skill of falling asleep on their own.
Now you know why parental mindset matters in teaching sleep independence, but how can you make it happen?
Mindset Hacks for Successful Sleep Training
Pick the method that feels right to you. Check out our blog that breaks down the 6 most common sleep training methods and who tends to do best with each. If you know you’ll cave with cry it out or feel like it’s cruel, don’t do it! If you know that the more responsive methods will be too tedious for you and you need your baby sleeping better yesterday, don’t do it! Again, choose the method that feels right to YOU. Doesn’t matter one damn bit what the mom next door did with her baby. You love your baby and should do what’s best for your family.
Tell yourself: my baby can and will sleep well. I am the perfect parent and teacher for my child. If you don’t believe these words already, write yourself an encouraging note and put it somewhere you will see every day. Your brain likes to act on the messages you send it. Tell it something positive and your brain will try it’s best to make it happen! PS - WE BELIEVE THAT YOU AND YOUR BABY ARE THE PERFECT PAIR AND THAT YOU WILL BOTH BE SLEEPING WELL, REALLY SOON. We see it happen every day, and many parents come to us feeling hopeless.
Find a way (before you start sleep training) to keep your calm when you are helping your baby with sleep. This could be popping in some ear buds with calm music or a meditation. Or maybe its prayer, dance, mantra, doing 100 jumping jacks, or mindful breathing that helps you best. Whatever works for keeping you centered will ensure that your baby’s nervous system is co-regulated with yours in a pro-sleep, pro-learning, and pro-soothing way.
We used to keep the Mindful Method for Sleep secret until folks signed up to work with us. But we can’t keep it a secret any longer. It’s helped too many parents already (including our own Little Dipper Sleep Coaches and their littles) and we want you to have it in your toolkit tonight. Download our Mindful Method for Sleep Guide for a tried and true method to keep you centered, even when your baby is screaming.
The Mindful Method for sleep isn’t magic, but it is science. If your baby is crying, they may not stop right away just because your breathing is calm and your thoughts are positive. Children pick up on your stress, anxiety, and anger by way of mirror neurons in their brain. The calmer you can be, the calmer your child will be. We can control our own nervous systems with our breath, and by doing so, we give our babies the opportunity to experience a calm and centered parent.
It is impossible for us to force calmness or sleep on our child. But if we find calmness within ourselves, our children have a much greater chance of calming down and absorbing those pro-sleep vibes.
The Mindful Method for Sleep is effective with newborns, babies, toddlers, or even with yourself or an older child. But its not a sleep training method—it’s a mindset tool that you can layer on to any other sleep training method to keep your nervous system in the green zone and your chance of success closer to 100%. Or, if you’re not planning to sleep teach or train, you may use this tool anytime your child is having a hard time falling asleep, or just having a rough day.
Safety check: If you are sleep training or planning to do so, please wait to sleep train until your baby is at least 4 months old, ideally 6 months old if you’re using a more restrictive method such as Ferber or Cry It Out. And with all sleep training, please ensure that the healthy sleep foundations are in place before you begin. Here’s a handy dandy checklist to help you with that!
With the Mindful Method for Sleep in your back pocket, a healthy sleep foundation laid, and parents who feel good about which sleep training method they are using, ALL BABIES CAN LEARN TO SLEEP WELL!