If you have not already done so, please read Blog Posts 1 through 5 that describe how sleep is important and beneficial. I will post specific information for parents and children based on my book, “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Please do not be put off by my book’s length. This is a reference book. Read only the topic of interest to you.
Parents who have already sleep trained one child sometimes find the second harder — not because they know less, but because they think they know exactly what to expect. J.’s letter arrived after I asked her to set aside the sleep log and tell me her story. What she sent back is worth sharing.
“When we first reached out to you, it was in regards to our son approaching 6 weeks of age and implementing an early bedtime. From birth he has been a good sleeper and nothing was a real concern or challenge for us, until he developed a witching hour.
We did not have any reservations about your guidance because we sleep trained our older child and it worked amazingly. However, our son’s sleep has been different than our daughter’s so we were facing some obstacles we hadn’t faced before. Our daughter never had a witching hour, she did not eat as much or as frequently, and she pretty much slept through the night from the very start. As a result, we were a little blinded to how much time it was actually going to take to help our son with his journey to better sleep. Getting out of our own head and not comparing our son’s sleep journey with our daughter’s — that has been our biggest challenge in all of this.
Implementing the super early bedtime definitely helped, especially once we strictly followed drowsy cues, which meant we didn’t always make it to 5:30 pm — that was a misinterpretation error on my part. We can now see how his sleep has shifted not only with clock time to be more in tune with day and night but also with his length of night sleep and lack of pre-sleep arousal. All of those things have improved. We no longer have a witching hour and we can reliably count on long stretches overnight.
While doing extinction, knowing when to intervene was difficult. At first, I didn’t think extinction was going to work because we didn’t see the decrease in crying like it was with our daughter. It took us a while to understand our son’s eating habits and to be able to distinguish when he was actually hungry versus overtired. Trial and error was our friend in the long run. It was just hard to be patient.
My husband was supportive overall. We both lost faith as it wore on and wasn’t going as smoothly as it did with our daughter. We both made it a priority to keep at it and have my husband involved with feeding and putting down as much as we could even with his work schedule.
Before, it was daunting to think about how things were going to evolve as the months ahead approached. We didn’t leave the house because we didn’t want to mess anything up. As we’ve moved forward, I am happy to say we still monitor and prioritize both of our children’s sleep, but we are not so attached to it. When we have a family outing, we do our best to prioritize sleep but also don’t get worked up when it isn’t perfect because we know we can count on reliable sleep at home. Just because things don’t go as easily or smoothly as they did with our daughter doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
Every child writes their own sleep story
J.’s daughter was an easy sleeper from the start — predictable, rarely fussy, quick to consolidate. Her son was different in almost every way that matters to sleep: a witching hour, frequent feeds, a longer and less linear path through extinction. Same parents, same home, same book, same commitment. Completely different journey.
This is not unusual. Children are born with different temperaments, different neurological thresholds, different susceptibilities to overtiredness. A child with a more reactive temperament is harder to settle, harder to read, and harder to keep in the drowsy window before pre-sleep arousal takes hold. None of that reflects parental failure. It reflects biology.
The witching hour is a signal, not a sentence
The witching hour that prompted J.’s first call is one of the most misunderstood phenomena in early infant sleep. It is not colic, not hunger, not a sign that something is wrong with the baby or the parent. It is pre-sleep arousal — a state of heightened neurological activation that develops when the interval of wakefulness has stretched too long and the sleep tank is running low. The brain, in an effort to maintain wakefulness against mounting sleep pressure, produces stimulating neurochemicals that make the baby harder to settle, not easier. The solution is almost always an earlier bedtime, not a later one. When J. began strictly following her son’s drowsy cues — sometimes before 5:30 p.m. — the witching hour resolved.
The drowsy period, not the clock
J.’s self-identified “misinterpretation error” is one I see constantly: treating the recommended bedtime as a fixed target rather than an approximate guide. The clock is a starting point. The child is the authority. Drowsy cues — the slowing of movement, the glassy eyes, the brief inward turn of attention — tell you when the brain is ready for sleep. Miss that window, and pre-sleep arousal builds. Catch it, and the child goes down easily, sleeps longer, and wakes in better condition. Start as you mean to go: watch your child, not the clock.
When extinction doesn’t look like the book
What “really good” looks like
J.’s definition of “really good” is worth noting: the swaddle transition complete, rolling both ways, and the freedom to have a family outing without dreading the consequences. Not perfection. Not a baby who never has an off day. Confidence — the knowledge that when things go sideways, they know how to find their way back.
That is exactly the right goal. Sleep is not a problem you solve once. It is a skill you build over time, in a child whose needs will keep changing. The families who do best are not the ones whose children never struggle. They are the ones who have learned to read their child, trust the biology, and adapt without panic.
J.’s son is almost to “really good.” He got there on his own timeline, by his own route. That is how it works.
— Marc Weissbluth, M.D.
