Sleep training is the process of helping your child learn to fall asleep in their bed on their own. It seems like it's something that lasts forever and then just stops because there's no clear answer on when you're done. For some, the point is obvious when they no longer need to sleep train. For others, however, sleep training tends to drag on a little bit longer. Success in sleep training is on a continuum, meaning that more than likely you are not going to ever be done. So what someone else may consider successful for them will not necessarily work for you and your family.
For example, some parents may think that sleep training involves allowing their baby to fuss for a few minutes and then they drift off to sleep for 11:50 hours straight. For other parents, they may not have things go as smoothly. It might take two to three weeks of using a no crying training before they have a child who can sleep throughout the night. Parents may even use a cry it out method, and then two to three nights later they have a child who sleeps through the night.
Even with all these categories, there are still families who do not fall into any of them. They struggle on and off for a long time. Perhaps they find something that works, but then it stops working after a short while and you have to switch to something else. There seems to be this path of consistently trying, and you may feel like you never get the chance to stop sleep training. This can be extremely frustrating, and even unsettling as you may wonder if you're doing something wrong or if there's something wrong with your child.
No need to worry, sleep training can look very different for each child. Continue reading to learn more about the signs that may appear when you are done sleep training. Now of course these signs are not hard and fast, so make sure to sort of apply these rules generally to your child.
The end line may be pretty obvious for some families. You will feel well rested as a parent, and so will your baby. There may be temporary setbacks and sleep regressions. However, your baby is able to bounce back to normal quickly. For others, though, they may still experience crying after the cried out method, the no cry method, the feedings more frequently throughout the night, everything. They may not feel like their journey of sleep training is over.
If your baby fusses or cries slightly from 5 to 10 minutes, then drifts off to sleep and you don't hear anything from them for 11:50 hours except for when they need feedings, then your baby is in a good place. They can unwind, and soothe themselves to sleep.
If your baby is crying really hard for 10 minutes, then is able to settle down, and may be possible that that is as good as it's going to be for a while and that's what you should define our success. It can be extremely frustrating, but at that point, a win is a win.
If your child is crying for really hard even longer than 10 minutes, and it's been more than a week of sleep training, then there's probably an underlying issue. And babies, this issue could be over tiredness so maybe their bedtime needs to be a little bit earlier. They can “fight” they were sleep for a long time, which seems counterintuitive when you're trying to get them to go to sleep. But, just feeling tired and being unable to speak, crying is a manifestation of those feelings.
For toddlers, crying at bedtime or resisting bedtime can be another sign of being overtired or under tired depending on their schedule and temperament. It's hard to give advice not knowing the specific details of your child, but you know your child. Therefore you should be able to tell when you think that they are just high energy and don't need to go to sleep, versus when they are overtired and probably just crying due to that. Regardless, if things have not improved in two to three weeks, you may want to reevaluate your methods and see if there's something else that's preventing your child from going to sleep – like hunger, discomfort, being too hot or too cold, and even major disturbances in the household can cause a child to have trouble going to sleep.
If you have a child who continues to cry, and you're unsure if this is the end point or if something else is going on, then please click the orange button below to take a free online sleep test on behalf of your child speak with one of our sleep health professionals.
https://www.babysleepsite.com/sleep-training/knowing-when-youre-done-sleep-training/