How Can I Teach My Baby To Self-Soothe?
Hello friends!
I've been sharing and thinking a lot about this topic recently so I figured I would share it with you as well in case you missed it. This concept of self-soothing. It's a complicated one! This term is very misunderstood and thrown around a lot in the baby sleep industry. You've probably heard from well-meaning friends or family saying things like “he needs to learn to self-soothe," and it's typically in the context of “teaching” your baby to sleep independently. If your baby could only “self-soothe,” she will be able to put herself to sleep without your support. Ahhh how easy that would be!
Here's the history. There was a doctor in the 1970's, Dr. Thomas Anders, who studied solitary sleeping babies by reviewing time lapse videos of them. (Note: this does not include bedsharing/cosleeping infants). What he discovered was that all babies at 6 months have brief awakenings throughout the night. Some babies tended to wake up and just kind of look around and go back to sleep, and some babies would cry out for help from a caregiver. He was at a loss to describe these brief awakenings when babies would just go back to sleep, so he coined the term “self-soothing.” This term was used to describe a particular type of behavior among SOME babies. He didn't intend for this term to be understood as a skill we could teach our babies, especially in the context of leaving them alone to cry.
You've heard the term drowsy but awake right? Have you ever tried it? You just put your baby down when they're drowsy, but not too drowsy, so they're still awake, slightly awake, and voila! They will learn to fall asleep on their own. My experience of this was more like I'm really drowsy mommy and now I'm well, wide awake! Thanks a lot! Does it work for your baby? If so, that's amazing! If not, there is absolutely nothing wrong with your baby, or with the way you are supporting your baby to sleep. Whether or not a baby wakes and signals for a caregiver has more to do with their temperament than anything else.
Anyway, here's where it gets confusing. Self-soothing actually means to calm down from a dysregulated state, which babies are incapable of doing. Babies co-regulate, meaning they need the response of a calm caregiver when they are upset to help their nervous system get to a place of calm. Co-regulation is the beginning of self-regulation, and self-regulation takes many many years into adulthood to develop. I love this quote:
"The capacity for self-soothing is born out of hundreds and hundreds of instances of being soothed by someone else."
-Rachel Samson (attachment-focused clinical psychologist)
Self-settling is more like what Dr. Thomas Anders was observing, which is a baby's ability to be able to go from awake and alert to sound asleep, without any help from you. Just like how you go to sleep at night.
So, do you have a self-settler, or a signaler? Both types of babies are perfectly wonderful babies. Learning to accept our baby's temperament is one of the most important factors when looking at baby sleep from a holistic perspective. Because their temperament will not only affect their sleep. It is a part of them. A beautiful part of them that may challenge you along the way on this mind-bending journey of parenting.