How to help your baby or child to sleep without leaving them to cry?
There is a common misconception that in order to improve your child’s sleep that you need to use crying strategies such as cry it out, leave and check, controlled crying, Ferber method or any other traditional sleep training technique that involves lots of crying.
However, not only are these strategies really difficult to sustain for most parents, the evidence suggests that they could be negatively impacting your child’s mental health and their ability to self regulate aka calm down.
Yet there are still traditional “sleep trainers” who are presenting crying techniques only to improve a child’s sleep. Let me tell you this, sleep is a lot more complex than that.
The problem is that you need to know how to regulate your emotions in order to reach optimum emotional health but also to fall and stay asleep, both in childhood and into adulthood.
It makes sense that if your child is falling asleep from being dysregulated e.g crying, hyperventilating that they are not learning the foundations of regulating their emotions. Instead they are falling asleep alone from pure exhaustion of crying. Can you remember what that feels like as an adult or a child?
Which is why proactive, gentle and holistic sleep coaching is essential for giving your child the best opportunity for sleep now and in the future.
What is gentle and holistic sleep coaching?
Gentle and holistic sleep coaching is sleep support for parents which looks at promoting good quality sleep for children from day 1 of their life.
The concept looks at sleep as a whole and considers all aspects that impact on sleep quality. For example, normal child sleep expectations, the impact of development on a child’s sleep, parental sleep behaviours and expectations, sleep hygiene, self regulation strategies, personalised sleep timings and associations, as well as gentle sleep coaching techniques.
As a gentle and holistic sleep coach, I am here to support parents every step of the way. I help to manage and cope in sleep deprivation, to make small yet significant changes so that you can see sustainable and long lasting change for your whole family.
What is it not?
Unlike traditional sleep training which focuses on the child’s sleep needing to be fixed. Gentle and holistic sleep coaching looks at all of the ingredients that affect a child’s sleep.
Whereas sleep training focuses mostly on generalised awake windows and leaving your child to cry either non stop or intermittently. Gentle and holistic sleep coaching aims to minimise crying and puts self regulation at the heart of everything.
Can I still improve my child’s sleep without leaving them to cry?
Yes, you most certainly can. The benefits of doing this are that you do not feel dreadfully guilty whilst improving your child’s sleep. Equally, you are going to make real long lasting change that is sustainable. You can also feel confident and reassured that you are not negatively impacting your child’s emotional wellbeing.
How long does gentle sleep coaching take?
I often get asked how long does it take to improve a child’s sleep. Honestly, it takes as long as it takes. It is difficult to quantify a result based on a tiny humans behaviour. I can say that consistency and commitment to making the changes necessary are key to the timeframe.
Each child is different, some of my clients have seen results within 4 weeks, others have been 6 months or more. Just know that you are making a positive difference to your child’s life and you have the support of working with me to support you for every hurdle and challenge.
