Sleep training is a set of strategies and techniques used to help infants and young children learn to sleep independently and develop healthy sleep patterns. It typically involves establishing a consistent bedtime routine, following an age-appropriate nap routine or wake windows, teaching the child to fall asleep independently, and gradually reducing nighttime awakenings and feedings as appropriate for the child's age and needs. While there are various methods, including Ferber, The Chair Method, the "cry-it-out" approach and some more gradual "no-cry" techniques, parents can choose one that aligns with their parenting style and their child's temperament.
Research has shown that behavioral sleep techniques, such as these, have no marked long-lasting effects, either positive or negative. Therefore, parents and health professionals can confidently use these techniques to reduce the short- to medium-term burden of infant sleep problems and maternal depression, knowing that they can be effective in promoting better sleep for both the child and parents, without causing harm. Quality sleep is vital for growing minds and bodies so parents and carers make a lot of effort to help their childen sleep. It's important to tailor these methods to the individual needs of each child and approach them with sensitivity.
The development of sleep over the first year
During the first year of life, infants spend most of their time sleeping. An infant can go through several periods of difficulty settling down, called sleep regression. These can start at 1 week, occurring weekly or fortnightly, until 8 years of age due to innate and external factors that contribute to sleep.
The long sustained sleep period (LSP) is the period of time that a child sleeps without awaking. The length of this period increases dramatically between the first and second months. Between the ages of three and twenty-one months, LSP plateaus, increasing on average only about 30 minutes. In contrast, a child's longest self-regulated sleep period (LSRSP) is the period of time where a child without sleep problems is able to self-initiate sleep without parental intervention upon waking. This means the child can fall asleep without the help of their parents. This self-regulation, also called self-soothing, allows the child to consistently use these skills during the nocturnal period. LSRSP dramatically increases in length over the first four months, plateaus, and then steadily increases at nine months. By about six months, most infants can sleep eight hours or more at night uninterrupted or without parental intervention upon awaking.
An infant from one to three months of age may sleep sixteen to eighteen hours a day in periods that last from three to four hours. By three months, the period of sleep lengthens to about four or five hours, with a decrease in the total sleep time to about fourteen or fifteen hours. At three months, they also start to sleep when it is dark and wake when it is light. There are two distinct napping periods: mid-morning and late afternoon. Finally, by six months the longest LSP is six hours and occurs during the night. There are two three-or-more hour naps with a total average sleep time of fourteen hours.
Though sleep is a primarily biological process, it can be treated as a behavior. Thus sleep can be altered and managed through practice and can be learned by the child, similarly how adults can alter and manipulate it. In Western European culture and elsewhere, these habits typically include sleeping in a crib (instead of a car seat, stroller, or swing), being put down to sleep when drowsy but awake, and avoiding negative sleep associations, such as nursing to sleep or using a pacifier to fall asleep.
Doctors Linda Mayes and Donald Cohen at the Yale Child Study Center conclude that the ideal bedtime for an infant falls between 6 pm and 8 pm, with the ideal wake-up time falling between 6 am and 7 am. At four months of age, infants will typically take hour naps two to three times a day, with the third nap dropped by about nine months. By 9 months, their sleep patterns normalize naturally. By one year of age, the amount of sleep that most infants get nightly approximates to that of adults.