Why You Don’t Need To ‘Teach’ Your Baby To Sleep – A Life-changing Mindset Reframe!

When it comes to babies and sleep, there is often the assumption that we need to ‘teach’ them how to do it, but this is a myth! Sleep is a physiological process that just happens and is a biological function that we, as humans, are born with. It’s just like our other bodily processes such as elimination or digestion – it just happens, right?

There is a powerful reframe to be had in shifting from thinking about ‘putting’ your baby to sleep, and instead focusing on how you can optimise conditions for this natural physiological process to happen with ease.

As we drift off to sleep, humans experience a vulnerability that highlights the necessity of feeling safe and secure. From infancy through adulthood, we instinctively assess our surroundings for comfort, safety and trust and us and our babies will find it extremely hard to drift off to sleep in a relaxed way if these feelings are not present.

Self-settling vs self-soothing

Before we explore this topic further, we need to understand the difference between self-settling and self-soothing. Self-settling as discussed is unteachable as it’s the physiological process of going from awake to asleep. This means babies can therefore self-settle from birth. Self-soothing, on the other hand, is the ability to regulate our emotions and, as discussed in Episode 1 (listen to the episode here) there is huge variety in different individual’s development of this skill. While it also is unteachable, we can foster safe opportunities to strengthen and explore our child’s self-soothing abilities.

Leaving your baby to cry for long periods alone won’t help teach them to self-soothe as faster. What we want to focus on is creating an environment that promotes safety and trust so when they are unable to self-soothe, they can explore co-regulation with us.

With this in mind, an important reframe to encompass is instead of thinking that it’s our job, as parents, to ‘put’ our babies to sleep, we can view our role as just being available to support them as much as they need in the falling asleep process. For some babies that might just look like having your presence there, whereas other babies may need a lot more hands-on support for that falling asleep process.

A calm state of being for both ourselves and our babies leading into sleep is the most important step of focus.

For many parents, I know this will feel out of reach, and you feel like your baby is anything but calm at sleep times! If this is the case for you, it’s important to reflect on our own state of being during these times – are you already feeling stressed, in a fight or flight response, tense about the upcoming job of ‘putting’ your baby to sleep and communicating this on some level to your baby?

So how do we create a sense of calm at sleep time?

One thing we can do is to recognise any sensitivities, or triggers that are happening around sleep that may disrupt this. Steps like placing on a sleeping bag or the sudden darkness of the room can feel stressful to some babies. By identifying these triggers, you can make changes to these which might make the environment more relaxed for them.

Another element to look at is the preparation and wind-downs leading up to sleep. We can be mindful that lots of stimulation and activity prior can make it harder to switch off and relax, so we can focus on creating a transitional process to bring their energy levels down, starting to relax their nervous system before.

Sleep cues can also tell us a lot, so learning to recognise your baby’s sleep cues can be helpful in getting those sweet spots and increasing the likelihood of a calm transition to sleep.

Sleep pressure also plays a powerful role. We can often see fighting around sleep times if they are not tired enough or If they’re too tired. Although awake windows are not evidence based, they can give us a good starting point to follow and an indication of what your baby’s sleep tolerance may be for their age.

There are so many ways we can support our babes to sleep and there may be certain ways that are preferable to you or you enjoy, such as feeding your baby to sleep. Continue to do what’s working for you, whilst also being open to the fact that things can change as our baby grows, and therefore developing a bigger toolbox can be helpful and can help you to nurture your baby’s own independence in self-soothing, whilst also being responsive and supporting them in this.

Parenting is a hard job and there is no manual out there explaining the ‘perfect’ way to parent your Individual and unique baby, so I want to tell you that you are doing a great job – you are showing up every day, doing your best, and your best is good enough.

I want to share this quote by Jill Milburn – “What if, instead of trying to teach our children everything we know about the world, we just love them. Children are natural learners. It is as natural as nursing. Or children are already being taught by the world around them. Even the grasshopper and the leaf have thousands of lessons for children to learn.  Only a child’s parents are capable of demonstrating the profound lesson of how to be loved with complete acceptance. Ensuring secure attachment through responsive caregiving I the single most important role every parent has. Keep it simple. Just love them”

For more support, just like this, check out my Thriving Parent-ing podcast here 

To listen to Episode 1, Why Having Self-Soothing As Your Baby’s Sleep Goal Is Your Parenting Nemesis, and What To Focus On Instead, click here

For my Sleep Godmother Program, my most tailored sleep program going beyond sleep itself, click here 

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