Parents reports include sleep advice and sleep training stories from other parents who have had success with either extinction or graduated extinction.
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Healthy Sleep in Young Children Has Carryover Benefits in Adolescence
Benefits from early healthy sleep habits persist in preteens and teenagers, who continue, pretty much on their own, to get healthy sleep.
Sometimes I have recommended to teenagers who are short on sleep that they take a five-day “sleep spa” treatment. No, that doesn’t mean having their parents book them into an expensive resort! It simply means dedicating five days to going to sleep earlier than usual.
Antonio was born two weeks early and without difficulty. I remember thinking several hours after his birth that he was going to be a very easy boy, since my pregnancy and delivery were both routine and relatively easy. Three days after we brought him home, however, I realized that my expectations might have been a little off.
My son, now 4 months old, had colic. He lacked the ability to fall and stay asleep. He would startle at the slightest noise and required darkness in which to sleep.
Night waking may be associated with breastfeeding at night, a bedtime that is too late, or the failure of a child to learn self-soothing. Night waking is also a feature of babies with extreme fussiness/colic.
Don’t be a slave to a rigid bedtime hour or nap schedule. Once or twice a month, lighten up and enjoy holidays, family gatherings, or other special events. The well-rested child can easily tolerate infrequent missed naps or late bedtimes. But the sleep debt accumulated from the special event needs to be repaid! After the special event or illness, your child might be short on sleep and the strategy is a reset: A super-early bedtime for one night only and overnight, you might have to ignore protest crying. After a long holiday, especially if you cross multiple time zones, prepare yourself for one nasty re-entry night when you return home to fill up the now empty sleep tank.
When naps are going well, the bedtime might be a little later, but when naps are not going well, the bedtime needs to be a littler earlier. These reports include paying attention to early bedtimes.
Early bedtimes are based on drowsy signs (Blog Posts 7-9) because a late bedtime causes an increase in neurological arousal (a second wind) that interferes with falling asleep and staying asleep. Even a few minutes earlier might make a big difference (Blog Post 6). Better night sleep will cause better naps and as a result, and eventually, your child will be able to stay up later. A temporary, super-early bedtime might be needed to get things going. The wake-up time might be only a few minutes earlier or surprise, she might sleep in later! Sometimes, a slightly earlier bedtime alone, while responding to all crying, is an effective sleep solution for a parent that does not want to let her child cry.
Graduated Extinction and Extinction are safe and fast methods to help your child learn how to fall asleep at bedtime and return to sleep in the middle of the night unassisted (Blog Posts 24-27). Both methods work best when the bedtime is early, based on drowsy signs (Blog Posts 7-9) because a late bedtime causes an increase in neurological arousal (a second wind) that interferes with falling asleep. The younger the child is when you start, the better the outcome. Better night sleep will cause better naps and as a result, and eventually, your child will be able to stay up later. A temporary, super-early bedtime might be needed to get things going. When you establish an early bedtime, the wake-up time might be only a few minutes earlier or surprise, she might sleep in later!
Just a Few Minutes of More or Less Sleep Make a Big Difference: Move the Bedtime a Little Earlier
One of the most difficult ideas to convey to parents — and to anyone who has not studied the research closely — is that very small changes in sleep duration or timing produce measurable, and sometimes dramatic, effects on children's health, behavior, and brain development.
"When my son was about 4 weeks old and still waking every 1–2 hours throughout the night, out of desperation, we purchased a second-hand Snoo with the hopes that this smart bassinet would help him sleep better.
In China, napping is not merely tolerated — it is actively encouraged. Many schools and government agencies build extended lunch periods into the day specifically to allow for napping.
The earlier bedtime is not a single tool for a single situation. It appears at different moments in a child's development, for different reasons, and produces different results depending on the context.
"Sleeping Through the Five Watches": What China Has Always Known About Sleep
In Western medicine, the case for healthy sleep is built from randomized controlled trials, brain imaging studies, longitudinal cohorts, and epigenetic research.
This update comes from a Spanish sleep researcher and mother, now two and a half years into the experiment of applying what she knows professionally to the child sleeping in the next room.
Rúna Sif Stefánsdóttir is a sleep and health researcher in Iceland. She began her PhD studying how adolescents sleep and how sleep affects cognitive performance.
Even the Worst of Sleep Problems and Situations Can Be Fixed
This family did everything right in preparation. They read the book carefully before their son was born and worked hard to establish healthy sleep from the beginning.
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