Let’s Talk About: Self Soothing
Ahhh--- self soothing. What everyone thinks the goal of sleep training is and must be impossible to achieve.
This is the definition I found: (of a young child) able to stop crying without being comforted by a parent or caregiver, in particular when left to fall asleep on their own.
People who oppose sleep training (in all forms) will refer to this as “shut-down syndrome” of which there are no scientific studies about-- basically a made up term by Dr. Sears (from what I’ve found) for an infant that was failure to thrive and everyone latched on to it in order to describe the above phenomenon.
Dr. Anders coined the term self soothing to describe the non-signaled awakenings they saw on time-lapse videos. We are aware of the signaled awakenings because they cry and we hear them. But we are unaware of the simple, protective and biological normal wakings where a child wakes up and returns to sleep without making a peep.
We don’t get rid of those with sleep training! And we can’t shut out all signaled awakenings by sleep training.
Again, the wakings that happen throughout the night are normal and protective. Adults do it too. We just aren’t as aware of them (or we get up, go to the bathroom and go back to bed).
You absolutely cannot, as a responsive and attached caregiver, teach your child that you’ll never respond between the hours of 7pm-7am. Because they can’t read the clock and research from Ed Tronick shows that we only have to be attuned to our child 20-30% of the time to form a secure attachment and relative trust that a caregiver will meet needs.
This is also a really great podcast to listen to about attachment theory and how attachment is formed with repeated actions over a period of time. Not something that can be impacted by sleep training (or not).
As a parent, you’re not a Romanian Orphanage where your child is never taken out of their crib or responded to when they cry.
Even CIO sleep training cannot change the attachment with your child.
Here’s the thing- self soothing is being misused in most (all?) scenarios. It’s this idea that a child who is in distress (key word) can regulate themselves into a state of calm.
A lot of adults struggle with this! So to think a 4 month old can do it, is absurd.
But that’s not what is happening with sleep training. One, because working on independent sleep isn’t a scenario that should cause distress to the point that a child cannot regulate and calm down.
Children do have self-soothing behaviors (self-settling or self-regulating is a better word). Things like: finding their hand/thumb to suck on, finding their pacifier to suck on, rubbing their head, playing with their hair, rhythmic movements (wiggling back and forth, slamming their legs down, head banging), rubbing their sheets/blankets, cuddling with a lovey, etc.
These are all things newborns and up can do to help them regulate/soothe themselves before sleep, in the car, when they’re frustrated during tummy time.
Self-regulation is an ongoing thing that we are all learning, and we teach our children this by:
Co-regulating with them. This looks like soothing behaviors, narrating their feelings, being present during big feelings, etc
Offering opportunities for self-regulation.
(Read more about co-regulation with this resource!)
If children are never given the opportunity to self-regulate then learning the skill can be more difficult. If they never practiced rolling, then they’d have a hard time rolling.
Same. thing.
In reality, several studies have shown that the one thing “self soothers” seem to have in common is that they are put to bed awake at night and take themselves from ready to sleep to sleepy to asleep independent of being rocked, fed, bounced, etc.
This means that when they wake at night and nothing else is prohibiting them from falling back asleep (hungry, cold, unable to connect sleep cycles, or waking where they didn’t fall asleep) then they can go right back to sleep without having to signal to you.
This doesn’t mean that when you want to give them opportunities to self regulate that your only option is to use extinction or CIO. It’s really totally fine if that’s your jam! But we aren’t limited to that.
Once you’ve done your routine, and put them down awake, they’ll either settle or need some help co-regulating. You can do that by soothing them with presence, words, touch, pick ups, etc. This allows them to reset and once again, try to fall asleep from that regulated state.
It allows you to be responsive, both emotionally and physically without leaping in and taking over the role of falling asleep.
This study even found that just waiting 3 minutes before responding have developed the skills necessary for regulating and going back to sleep.
(This is very similar to the pause that we recently discussed!)
So…. is self-soothing (or giving opportunities for self regulation) wrong?
No.
Let’s consider the fact that these soothing skills are present very early on, as young as 3 weeks! Knowing this and wanting to encourage sleep patterns by understanding sleep needs, giving opportunities for regulation, etc isn’t wrong.
If it suits your parenting style and your goals, you’ve done nothing wrong.
Self soothing, self settling, self regulation-- whatever you want to call it is a naturally occurring behavior in all children at some point.
Sometimes we simply influence our child’s sleep by being curious of what they’re capable of, not automatically assuming they can’t, and understanding that we absolutely do have influence over their sleep should you choose to!
