Protesting During Sleep Training

Protesting during sleep training is one of the main reasons that sleep training is hard to do! No one (I repeat, NO ONE), likes to hear a baby cry. I hate it, my husband hates it, and I know that I want to do whatever I can to stop my child from crying.

It’s physically upsetting to hear crying and often times mothers with PPD/PPA are triggered by protesting and crying.

Understanding WHY protesting is happening can help it make a little bit more sense.

Children and adults tend to be very protective of their sleep environment. We all like things to be the same every night and we don’t like any surprises, so making a big change to anyone’s current sleep habits will definitely be met with some protest.

The key to helping your baby through it and minimize any upset, is to hold firm to your boundaries and remain consistent 100% of the time.

Crying is a way for your little one to express big emotions. Those big emotions don't need to be stopped or "shushed." It's okay for your baby to have big feelings about things like change to their whole bedtime routine.

Here a few reasons why your little one might be protesting:

·      She's tired - but not quite sure what to do about it - overtiredness almost always causes more protest at beditme.

·      She's expecting a different outcome - I mean, it has worked before, right?

·      She's exercising her new sleep skills which is really hard work!

·      She prefers the "old way" of doing things - with sleep props and lots of assistance from you!

·      She is frustrated as she is navigating this new process

One common mistake that parents do is to allow the protest to go on for a period of time, and then “give in” and resort to an old sleep prop to get them to sleep. This is counterproductive because instead of your baby practicing their budding sleep skills, they are quite literally being taught to cry. This is called conditioned crying. Whenever you make changes to your child’s sleep environment, you’ll want to make sure that you are 100% consistent with your approach. You’ll also want to make sure that your sleep training approach is age-appropriate and that it aligns with your parenting style.

While protest almost ALWAYS happens with sleep training, I can promise you that your child will quickly learn how to put themselves to sleep and this is not because they don’t think you will respond to them. In fact, I don’t even teach a CIO or extinction based method to my clients. The 2 main methods that I use are very responsive and they are easy to follow for parents because they are structured and consistent.

If YOU need help with sleep training your child, head on over to my Baby Sleep Course and register! Through video sequence I’ll walk you through exactly how to get your 6-17 month old sleeping through the night.