Should You Sleep Train Your Baby?

Parents, I have to rant for a minute. This is long, but stick with me because it’s important.

(Okay, I’m nice, so here’s the TL;DR: You can sleep train or not sleep train. Both are perfectly safe, appropriate, and loving parenting choices. The end.)

The other day, a post popped up in my feed that said “If babies weren’t meant to wake at night, they wouldn’t.” As is the norm with posts like this, it was directed at mothers, and was captioned with some mom guilt about how you’re basically supposed to keep putting up with the night wake-ups for the rest of eternity, and feel great about it because you’re a mom and it’s what you do now. Your baby needs you, and your needs don’t matter. Feeling tired? No problem! Just ask someone for help. (Let’s ignore the fact that the vast majority of mothers are extremely unlikely to ask for help—even when they desperately need it—and MANY don’t have the option to ask for help at all.)

Of course it’s not the first time I’ve seen a post like this, but for some reason, it’s the one that pushed me over the edge. Statements like these make me a bit ragey. While perhaps not intended to be, they come across as being just a couple letters shy of being full-blown mom-shaming. And I really, really hate mom-shaming.

First of all, ‘If babies weren’t supposed to wake at night, they wouldn’t” feels a lot like “If kids weren’t meant to live in our basements forever, they wouldn’t.” Sometimes, kids need a bit of encouragement from their parents to do things they don’t feel ready for.

There are a lot of opinions on the internet—we know that. Sleep training is no exception. I can clearly remember researching it when my girls were babies. After reading ALL the things, I had two conclusions: it was either going to be the best thing I ever did and would result in me having two amazing sleepers; OR, I was going to break their brains and ruin them for life. Just as with every other parenting choice I was trying to make, there are very strong beliefs on both sides of the debate, and the information out there is aplenty!

In the end, we opted to sleep train, and we quickly knew that it was the right choice FOR US. But, I also know that it’s not the right choice for every family. There are hundreds of decisions we all make about how to parent our kids—what to feed them, where to raise them, which school to send them to. Sleep is obviously a major one, but it still follows the same rule: just do what’s right for your family.

What fills me with fury is this growing amount of (mis)information pressuring you not to sleep train. It’s not that I care whether you do it or not. I don’t, as long as you’re happy. What I DO care about is when parents DON’T do it for all the wrong reasons: guilt, peer pressure, fear. Because here’s the thing: it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. Your kiddo is going to be fine.

I could get into all of the science-y things and tell you about the studies that show sleep training isn’t harmful. I could tell you about all the benefits, and how the studies quoted in the anti-sleep training stuff usually have N.O.T.H.I.N.G. to do with sleep, sleep training, or anything remotely broaching the topic. One day I’ll write a post to bore you with all these things. But today, I just want to tell you that your decision really should be based on what makes your family the happiest. That’s all. It’s okay if you choose to do it, and it’s okay if you choose not to. Just be a loving and supportive parent, and you’re winning.

So please, scroll past the fear-mongering posts that are dripping with mom guilt about all the evils of sleep training and how you HAVE to run to a child’s every beck and call, and how you’re not “training” them to sleep; they’re just giving up. It’s all crap, just like the posts that tell you you HAVE to sleep train to have a healthy child. You don’t.

Look, I know that the people writing these posts (probably) have good intentions, and that’s lovely. But the result is that we as parents end up feeling guilty, stuck or hopeless, when we really don’t need to. And I can’t stand that.

The takeaway is this: you should do what’s right for your family, and feel comfortable that you’re making a perfectly fine decision either way. Do you LIKE getting up with your child at night? Are you happy with the way things are? Then don’t change anything! Don’t let anyone pressure you into thinking something needs to change.

On the flip side, if you’re ready to collapse and you’re searching for an answer, sleep training might be what you’re looking for. There are a kajillion methods, and if you’re ready, there’s one you can use that feels right for you and your little one.

But only if you want to.

This post was originally published on November 25, 2019.

It was edited October 3, 2023.