Is No-Cry Sleep Training Real?

Soooo, here’s something I hear all the time—”I only want to use no-cry sleep training with my child. Can you make that happen?” 

Today I’m sharing the truth, just for you. 

The answer is… sort of. 

Here’s the long version:

Everyone wants to sleep train with the least amount of tears possible (I mean, that’s a given– hearing our children cry, feel frustrated, etc is extremely triggering). But the truth is, there is no true way to sleep train without any tears. 

So is no-cry sleep training real? Here’s why it doesn’t exist: 

When your child needs something.. anything.. they’re going to cry to signal that, especially at night when we are sleeping ourselves and cannot anticipate their needs. 

So when we think about sleep training, the difference in methods is how WE respond, not how your child responds. 

Every child will have a different propensity for crying; some kids are super flexible and will breeze through any sleep training method with very little crying. Others who may be more sensitive are going to cry no matter what you’re doing– even helping them to sleep! 

The best way I can describe “no-cry” sleep training is that you’re trading tears for time. You invest a lot of time—weeks or months even—in making very small changes so the crying each night is less, BUT the crying is spread out over those weeks. This is different than when you “rip the band aid off” and have more crying up front, but you reach the finish line faster. 

This study breaks it down a bit. 

The scientists used sleep diaries and actigraphs (sensors the babies wore to detect and measure movement) to determine how much sleep they got. They also took saliva samples from the babies in the morning and afternoon to measure cortisol levels. Measurements were also taken in the week before interventions started. 

Infants sleep trained with graduated extinction fell asleep 13 minutes faster and woke up less often than they did the week before. Infants in the gradual group fell asleep 10 minutes earlier than they had but didn’t wake any less often. The control group didn’t change. 

All of the children spent less time awake during the night after first falling asleep than they did at the start, but those in the graduated extinction group showed the biggest drop in awake time at night; the control group was next, followed by the gradual group. Similarly, the graduated extinction group got more sleep, followed by the control group, then the gradual group. 

Re stress levels: the cortisol levels were less in morning and even less than that in the afternoon; the control group only had a small drop in the afternoon. 

Here’s the thing: I know gradual methods of sleep training work. I use them every single day. 

But you have to manage expectations on the results and how quickly you see progress. You can absolutely manage crying—but before you take any steps to changing their sleep and becoming more regulated, you need to be aware of how crying triggers you. And how you manage it is going to be even more important. 

After that, having a plan in place for exactly how you’ll execute making changes around sleep is the next thing I recommend tackling!

Not sure how to tackle sleep training with intention? Apply to work with Ashley and you’ll get the personalized support you need!