Baby sleep: learn to sleep in 10 steps

Sleep learning programs promise exhausted and desperate parents an improvement in their offspring’s falling asleep behavior and a restful sleep for the baby within a few days. These programs are often linked to phases in which, when the child starts crying, they are not supposed to comfort them, but to let them cry for a certain period of time. An aspect that many parents cannot agree with. In her book “Sleep instead of Screaming”, Elisabeth Pantley presents her successfully tested 10-point plan for staying asleep, which guarantees that no tears are shed.

Prerequisite for the implementation of the 10 point plan

The most important requirement for the successful implementation of the plan is patience. It may take time before you see an improvement in your baby’s sleep patterns. In Pantley’s test phase, which included 60 children between the ages of two and 27 months and even a five-year-old child, more than half of the children slept through the night after 20 days, compared to 92 percent after 60 days. According to the medical definition, “sleeping through” means at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep. In the following, we present the 10 steps that your child can use to learn to sleep through the night without crying and screaming. As with all change processes, you should only implement the plan if you have a good feeling about it and can absolutely stand behind it. Pantley also recommends only picking the dots

Don’t let the baby cry

Unlike sleep programs that include brief periods of crying, Pantley’s approach doesn’t require your child to shed a tear. If your child starts crying during implementation, always go to him, take him out of his bed and calm and comfort him. You can do whatever you think is right at the moment. Whether breastfeeding, rocking or singing, the main thing is that your child feels safe and secure.

Factors in poor baby sleep

If the child cannot fall asleep or stay asleep, there can be various reasons for this. In addition to certain sleeping habits, which are covered in this 10-point plan, other factors can also play a role. They can also be the reason for a perceived setback when the program has already had an effect:

• teething
• separation anxiety
• Developmental progress, such as learning to walk, that “wears out” your baby
• growth spurts
• Diseases
• flatulence and colic
• afraid to fall asleep

The 10 point plan in detail

Before you start with step 1, you should make sure that one of the above factors does not explain your child’s sleeping behavior. If this is the case, you should first get to the bottom of it before you start the 10 point plan. If in doubt, talk to your pediatrician about it.

Step 1: Security check

Make sure your child sleeps in a safe and comfortable environment. You can find the most important safety precautions, such as maintaining the supine position, in our article “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)” . You will also find useful suggestions for a child-friendly ambience in our 13 tips for a good sleeping environment .

Step 2: Understand sleep patterns

Sleep is a science in itself: both children and adults move between deep sleep and dream sleep, waking up and falling asleep again or not falling asleep. If you know what happens when your baby sleeps and why your baby may not continue sleeping, it will certainly be easier for you to understand the reasons for your baby’s problems falling asleep and sleeping through the night. In our article “What happens when your baby sleeps” you can read the most important insights into sleep behavior.
The length of sleep also plays an important role in healthy sleep. Babies and children need more sleep than adults. In our article “This is how children’s sleep develops”you will find out how much sleep babies and small children need on average and how the sleep of the very little ones is distributed over the day and night.

Step 3: Sleep Log

Learn to understand your baby’s actual sleep needs by keeping a sleep log. Daytime naps play a special role, as they influence night-time sleep patterns. For example, if your baby sleeps a lot during the day, it may not get tired until late in the evening. This is important to know in order to be able to put together your individual plan for a good night’s sleep for your baby in the following steps. To get a good overview, you should keep a sleep log for the day, the evening and the night. The protocols are included as templates in Pantley’s book. If you want to create your own template, it should include the following points:

• Number of daytime naps
• Length of daytime naps
• sleep time in the evening
• Wake up time in the morning
• Number of nocturnal waking hours
• Longest sleep phase
• Total daily sleep time
• Do you already have a bedtime ritual?
• How does this work? Quiet, quiet and with dimmed lights?
• Does the ritual contribute to your relaxation and that of your child?
• What, if anything, is conspicuous?

The graphic in our article “How children’s sleep develops” can also give you an idea of ​​the average sleep requirements of children. You can then compare this with how long your child sleeps and develop a feeling as to whether your child is sleeping enough or too much.

Step 4: Analysis and selection of the best sleep solution for your child

In this step, Elizabeth Pantley presents a series of ideas and tips that you can use to put together a personalized sleep schedule for your child in step 5. Because every child and every family is different. What works well for one child may not have the same result for another. You should therefore choose the advice that you feel best suits your situation. You can also vary these individually. Elizabeth Pantley divides the proposals into two sections:

4a: For newborns up to four months of age

Hardly any newborn will probably sleep through the night. However, if you heed the advice, you can create a good basis for your child’s later sleeping habits. The suggestions relate to the following situations and can be found in detail in our article “10 tips: How your baby learns to sleep”:

4b: For babies and children from four months to two years of age

This section is about making targeted changes to your child’s sleeping habits. You should ask yourself in advance how important it is to you to change your sleeping habits. Is it really your wish and also the wish of your partner to change something in your situation? Or is it perhaps influences from other people that give you the feeling that you have to do something? Only if you are absolutely sure that a change is necessary should you also tackle it.

When you start implementing it, make sure your child is always full when you put them to sleep. It should have covered its calorie requirement during the day and with the last meal in the evening. If your child is older and is already eating solid food, make sure that it is healthy and easily digestible. You can also find valuable information on healthy nutrition for children in our special. In addition, your baby must be healthy. A sick or hungry baby will always wake up. We have summarized Elizabeth Pantley’s specific tips for falling asleep better in our article “10 tips: How your child can learn to sleep” .

In addition to these recommendations for falling asleep better, Pantley gives specific recommendations for action for the following problems:

• Give up the habit of sucking: Many children associate sucking on the breast, the bottle or the pacifier with falling asleep. When they wake up in the night, many children need exactly this again to find their way back to sleep. To reduce this so-called sleep-sucking association, Elizabeth Pantley has designed her gentle weaning plan, which gently and step-by-step guides your child to falling asleep without suckling. You can find the details of the weaning plan in our article “Falling asleep without breastfeeding and bottles “.
• Back to their own bed: Elizabet Pantley shows various ways you can familiarize your child with their own bed. You can find a detailed description of this in our article “My child does not stay in his bed”.
• Continue to sleep alone in your own bed: step by step, your child will be introduced to sleeping through the night without your help. You can find the individual steps in our article “How your baby learns to sleep through the night “.

Step 5: Creation of the individual sleep schedule

From the suggestions and advice presented in step 4, you can now put together your individual sleep plan. Choose the solution that you think makes the most sense and is the most practical. Elizabeth Pantley provides a template for this in her book. However, you can also easily create your own plan by writing down the solutions that you want to tackle. You can also record specific processes, such as the time at which you want to put your child to bed immediately or the timing of the evening ritual.

Step 6: Implement the plan for ten days

While it’s not always easy to set up, try to strictly follow your baby’s sleep schedule. The more consistently you follow the plan, the greater the chance that success will come quickly. Instruct other family members as well and, if possible, reschedule appointments that conflict with your plan. The effort is temporary, but it will certainly be worth it for you. Also, don’t get discouraged if you’ve already noticed a success and it already seems obsolete the next day. Sometimes unforeseen things come up, for example your child could get sick. As long as that’s the case, it wouldn’t be appropriate to get him used to his own bed if he’s always shared your bed with you. Better to postpone the implementation of your plan and start a new attempt,

Step 7: Create a new log after ten days

After ten days, the time has come to draw a first summary. As described in step 3, record the results in a log for day, evening and night sleep. Of course you can also choose a different interval to create a new log. However, according to the author’s experience, this should not be shorter than ten days, since then successes cannot be recognized so well and you may be disappointed.

Step 8: Analysis of progress

Compare your initial log (step 3) with the log you created after ten days by calculating the changes. Then analyze your approach based on the following questions:

• How consistently have you implemented your plan in the past ten days? (exactly, partially, started consistently and fell back into old patterns, not implemented)
• What positive or negative changes have you noticed?
• To what measure are these changes due?
• What else have you noticed about your child’s sleeping habits?
• Which parts of the plan worked and which didn’t?
• What plan changes are necessary?
• How do you implement the changes?

Take stock of your analysis. What result do you get?

• There has been a (partial) success: That is very gratifying. Still, keep pursuing your plan. It will take a while for your child to get used to the new rhythm. Be prepared for fluctuations and setbacks. The latter can also happen, for example if your child sleeps in a strange environment while on vacation.
• You notice progress, for example when you fall asleep: This shows that you are on the right track. If you have identified points in your plan that no longer make sense to you, you can remove them.
• Nothing has changed: Cheer up! Everything is going to be fine. Try to find out why. Did you really follow every step of the plan? Maybe you just chose the wrong measures? Were you patient and did you stand behind your plan? Were there unforeseen events? If necessary, put together a new plan with different solutions and try again.

Step 9: Implement the plan again for ten days

Go back to your existing or renewed plan. Do not put yourself under pressure if the hoped-for success has not yet materialized. If you’re about to give up at this point, are thinking about letting your child cry until they fall asleep, or are just too exhausted, Elizabeth Pantley has the following advice:

• Take time off: For at least a week, try to sleep as often as possible and make it your top priority. Also reset the sleep schedule for your baby and get your child to fall asleep as before. When you feel rested, you can start again with new strength.
• No half-heartedness: You may not have approached the matter seriously enough up to this point. If you can admit this to yourself, start a new, serious attempt.
• Only in an absolute emergency: If you have tried everything and are at the end of your strength, have run out of patience or don’t know what else you can do, it might be better to let your child cry. Give him an extra portion of love and security the next day.

Step 10: Repeat steps 7, 8 and 9 every ten days

Create a sleep log according to step 7 every ten days (or at the interval you choose). Analyze it and draw your conclusions as described in step 8. If necessary, adjust your sleep schedule again and then implement step 9 again. Keep track of your sleep plan for a while after success has set in and your child falls asleep and sleeps through on their own. As already described, your child’s sleeping rhythm still needs to be established. The same applies if your child’s sleeping behavior deteriorates again.

As you can see, with patience and leisure it is possible to help your child to fall asleep and stay asleep better without tears. The success of the book, which became a bestseller in the US and has been translated into 22 languages, speaks for itself.