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Sleep training is not just CIO or not... it's about a philosophy of establishing good sleep hygiene for your kids and helping them learn how to self-soothe! There's a huge spectrum of ways to achieve that... I find that sleep training often gets reduced to just "crying it out," but that's just one extreme option!

Not sure what you mean by not believing in it... do you mean, babies can't learn to self-soothe? Or that CIO isn't effective as a way to help babies learn self-soothing?

I'm very much like you! We were very strict in our sleep training with our first, and this time around, while we ARE letting her cry, it's not nearly as structured or rules-based as last time. She's a much better sleeper than Wagon Jr. was (she learned to self-soothe on her own and STTN without crying) but we are still applying a few little things we learned from the strict sleep training we did the first time around.

We don't sleep train and we're unlikely to change that with this next one due in a month or so.

I don't think it's necessary for every child or parent. I was so convinced that we wouldn't sleep/nap train. We've never had to sleep train for night, but we did for naps. Her not napping = me going crazy. It sucked at the time, but it was worth it. Naps make for a happy momma in our house.

@runsyellowlites: You are not alone. I also do not believe in sleep training. I do not want to knock any of the sleep training mama's either but the thought of letting DD CIO really upsets me. I can't even imagine doing that. I also did not sleep train DS and he is doing just fine at the age of 4. I did however move him to his room at 3 months and really regret doing that now. DD is almost 4 months and likely will not sleep in her own room until she is 9months-1 year. DH and I both love having her in our room and in our bed. She does sleep in her rock n play for her first sleep stretch of 2-3 hours at night then is in bed with us the rest of the night. I also do not feel the need to night wean DD.

I think CIO types of sleep training are probably very effective for many babies/families. We don’t practice it (yet), because we don’t need to. If my LO were nearing 1 year old and still waking up multiple times a night to feed, I would try different types of sleep training fo’ sho’ – but that’s just me. I don’t think that is necessarily “forcing” anything that a baby isn’t ready to do to encourage them to sleep through the night or for longer stretches of times; people fall into patterns of behaviors that they enjoy. A baby might enjoy waking up for a snack every few hours, while they don’t actually need to do so. I don’t think it’s questionable to retrain their behavior in that case.

@runsyellowlites: I'm of a similar mindset, though I try not to overanazlyze how I handle his sleep. He basically started soothing himself to sleep around 5 months, and I very rarely have to help him go to sleep now. Does he sleep through the night? Not really. Maybe once a week, but he's typically only up once for a bottle, then puts himself right back to sleep afterwards. We do have trouble keeping him asleep when he's teething, but I don't consider that a normal circumstance, so I don't feel the need to "fix" it. And maybe that's just where I'm at now at 9 months...I just don't feel like his sleep is so broken, or that waking up once a night (and maybe more if his sleep cycle wakes him up), is a burden, so I don't feel I need to do anything about it.

That said, if he was suddenly wanting to wake and eat more than once, or if he was suddeny never sleeping, I'm certain I'd take a different approach.

And just as a side note, we rocked him and nursed/bottle fed him to sleep every single time (nap and night) until he suddenly started not being able to fall asleep if we held him around 5 months. We also co-slept pretty regularly, out of pure exhaustion. We did nothing to warrant this change, and in fact, according to the books, we were doing everything wrong and I fully expected him to never be able to go to sleep on his own. I truly feel he just hit a spot in his sleep maturity that allowed him to soothe himself down.

It's not that I believe in sleep training but I do believe in healthy sleep habits and babies and parents getting adequate rest. Every family and baby is different, so if you're a-ok with getting interrupted sleep and everyone is happy and healthy, then there's no need to sleep train, right?

The funny thing is that whenever I hear about a baby being a terrible sleeper and waking up multiple times a night, they're always the ones that seem to be hitting milestones early!

It's not really that I don't "believe" in it... It's just that CIO of any kind, didn't work for us with both girls! They would just get worked up and get to that point of no return. I also feel like it's all temporary anyway, like you said. My first daughter is an awesome sleeper so we lucked out with her, but my second daughter is not and she's 18 months now, but hardly ever has STTN. But I'm so okay with it because it's not going to go on like this forever and it gets better month by month. But for the families who do sleep train, I think that's awesome if it works for them!

ETA: What can get annoying though is sometimes when Sleep Training Families push their experience on other new moms and they SWEAR that by "day 3" your kid won't cry at all... It doesn't work for every family or every kid... I always tell moms to just go with their gut when it comes to stuff like this. It's great to hear about others' experiences, but not every kid will react the same to sleep training.

@runsyellowlites: not so much that I don't believe in it, I know so many people that swear by it! But it was just not for us, personally.
I went back to work at 7 weeks PP and I really wanted breastfeeding to work out. For me that meant lots of time with DS on my person when I was home. Pretty much from the time I got home until the time I left for work he was with me nursing. It was exhausting and it was really challenging at work to be focused and on top of my game at 8am after breastfeeding throughout the night. But to me it was worth having that time with my baby. I knew that time wouldn't be forever.
And it wasn't.
I also went home at lunch to nurse and around 6/7 months he didn't want to nurse during the day. And then around 9 months he stopped nursing at dinner time. Then he started sleeping through the night. Then he stopped nursing in the morning and lastly dropped the before bed nursing.
There were times when we coslept, some nights we still do. But DS has no trouble falling asleep on his own. He's a good self-soother. Honestly I miss nursing, so it's been harder on me in that way! haha
I'm glad I didn't let him cry. Sleep wasn't worth it to me.
So many friends and coworkers tried to get me to follow different methods to get him to sleep through the night at an early age. The only thing I did do was a bedtime routine. I started the bath, pjs, read a book, turn off the lights, turn on the music routine really early and I feel like it encouraged him to learn how to fall asleep. But every kid's different. We just did what I felt like was right for our situation.

Maybe we were doing it wrong but it didn't seem to work for my daughter. And hours of crying for weeks was out of my realm of comfort. I think some of it comes down to the uniqueness of each LO, just like a lot of things. We do try to encourage good sleep habits but we haven't accomplished the STTN consistently yet, there's always something like moving, traveling, husband working overnights, teething, etc .

When someone says sleep training, I think more about consistency in bedtimes and nap times & establishing routines. I do know some people that don't believe in that as in their kids go to bed at different times, sometimes nap, sometimes don't, etc. Whatever works for your family- it would not work for us. My husband and I both full-time and we wouldn't be able to function at work or as human beings in general if my son (10 months) was still getting up 2-5 times a night. We never did a lot of sleep training because my son has naturally been a good sleeper (minus the 4 month regression) but we would have if we had needed to. I think a good night's rest is just as important to kids as it is to parents.

I didn't believe in it until my second child was nearly a year old. We were (are) still very gentle and present about it, but it seems that some children learn to sleep well on their own and some need you to help them learn.

Granted, I have zero experience with any of this yet, but I don't really dig how obsessive the whole sleep training culture is. I started to panic that we hadn't read any books or anything on sleep and nap training, and then I mentioned sleep training to my stepmother and she gave me a look like I had 3 heads. "You think you can train your kid to sleep the way you want them to? OK... good luck." And that's when we decided to just kind of let things go organically and use common sense and go with that. That's what our parents did with us, and we're fine.

so much depends on how good of a sleeper your child is, your threshold for being tired/waking up, what sleep habits you instill.... sleep training is not black or white and it's a catch all phrase for many different methods of helping your child learn how to sleep.

it's easy for someone with a naturally good sleeper or even a decent sleeper to say they don't believe in sleep training. every family has to make the decision that's best for them and i understand why people do or don't cio!

@ladyfingers: Yeah, I think there is definitely a generational difference as to how sleep training is perceived. When I mention "sleep training" to my mom she doesn't get what I'm talking about, but for us the misunderstanding is down to the terminology. When I talk about sticking to a bedtime routine/consistent bedtime, pretty solid daytime schedule with naps, etc. (which is my family's form of "sleep training") she's like, "Ohhh yeah, of course we did all that." I just think there are more labels for such things.

For me, it wasn't really about forcing my child to be on my schedule. To be honest, if anything I feel like it's tougher when you sleep train because you're pretty much always at the mercy of your child's schedule. It makes it tough to get out of the house whenever I want since she has a nap schedule and I believe she should be in her crib for sleep, but my daughter is a very happy and well-rested baby. So I guess it's worth the sacrifice to me.

@PurpleUnicorn: Such a good point about not responding to every peep! I learned quickly that babies make a lot of noise when they sleep and not every little cry is necessarily a cry for help. Often, my LO would make a little noise and then fall back asleep immediately. Had I jumped to comfort her or feed her, I would have just been disturbing her sleep.

@ladyfingers: Totally! I think there was less information back in the day and sometimes that's a good thing

@runsyellowlites: Somewhat random, but just fyi... we can only send up to 9 email alerts per post. So some of the people you @ replied to may not have gotten email alerts!