Hi Dana here. What is the Ferber Method? That’s a question I get asked quite often. And how is The Sleep Sense program different from the Ferber Method?

Well, let me summarize what the Ferber Method is. It’s a big, thick book and he talks a lot about sleep science. So if you’re curious about sleep science and the props and associations and habits we make around our sleep then I would definitely give it a read. But the basic program for teaching a child to sleep well is leaving and checking.

So essentially, you would put your child to bed without the prop. So if you don’t know what a prop is, that’s the first step we need to investigate. What is our child’s sleep prop? And a prop is anything that helps or assists our child into sleep. Common ones are breastfeeding to sleep, bottle feeding to sleep, rocking to sleep. So if you’re doing any one of those three or all three, then those are the sleep props that need to stop so that the child can start creating associations between sleep in a new way, in their own way, in an independent way. I love to call it independent sleep skills because we all need those. That’s what we all end up having.

So teaching a child independent sleep skills is the goal and removing the props is the first step to accomplishing that goal. So we put our child into the crib without the prop and we do a series of leaving and checking. So the Ferber Method is increasing the time that you check back. So first check back is maybe, you know two or three minutes. Next check back is six or seven minutes. Next check back is eight or 10 minutes. So you’re basically increasing the amount of time that you’re gone before you check back in on your child. And you know, you could do every five minutes, you could do it every 10 minutes. It’s really up to you. I think there’s some specific timelines in the Ferber Method, and I think that’s just to make it a little more textbooky like let’s follow the rules exactly the way they’re laid out.

But I don’t find that there’s really any magic benefit to waiting exactly this many minutes before you do a check in. I think it’s a good strategy. Leave and check is something that I talk about in The Sleep Sense program. You could check back every two minutes, every five minutes, every 10 minutes. You don’t need to make it longer and longer each time. That’s where my program is different then the Ferber Method. The Ferber method suggests that every time you check the space should be longer and longer between your check-ins. And I don’t really find that there’s any benefit to that. Again, this is not about you being there or not being there. This is about a skill that is learned, a skill that is being learned. And so once your child figures out how to get to sleep without the sleep prop, then the crying time declines. And then now your child is learning some skills for getting comfortable and falling to sleep that are independent.

And so this has really nothing to do with the crying. The crying is just the side effect to the fact that they don’t know yet what to do. They’re, you know, trying a brand new thing. They were used to the breast or the bottle and now that’s no longer happening. And so of course, that’s gonna cause some level of upset. I mean, if I came into your room tonight and said, you know we’re gonna change a bunch of ways in which you fall asleep for the greater good, yes, but still getting there is gonna be hard and you’re not gonna like it. You wouldn’t like it. In fact, I suspect you wouldn’t cry, but some of you might, right? We’re very protective and habitual about our sleep strategies, and so babies are too and toddlers and all children are gonna be resistant to that kind of change.

But the good news is that they can learn and they do learn really quite quickly within, you know usually I say by the third night, they’re doing a lot better like a really shocking and surprising amount better. So it definitely is worth doing. So that’s the Ferber Method. Longer and longer check-ins, the Sleep Sense program you can do the leave and check method. And again, no reason to space out your checking longer and longer, just decide what feels best for you and go with it. You might even decide as the days go on that, hey, you know what? Maybe going in there is causing a little bit more upset than we hoped for, so let’s stretch it out a little bit longer between checks, you know 10 minutes is a great time frame for check backs, but I also have a plan in The Sleep Sense program. Well, you can stay the whole time if you want to. It makes some people really uncomfortable and upset to think about leaving their child to figure this out all by themselves. And so they can stay and be supportive. You know, we’re not interfering because we do want them to learn the skill and they can’t do that if we’re gonna be, you know offering the prop and intervening in a lot of ways.

But just being there calmly in the room can be reassuring to a lot of babies and toddlers. And so that’s absolutely an option too. Again, I mean, you could be standing on your head in the corner. I mean, it doesn’t matter what you are doing whether you’re leaving or checking or staying, it’s about skill, it’s about skill development. So we just wanna make this as easy as we can on our child. And easy does not mean no crying. There’s gonna be some crying. Easy does not mean that the skill just magically falls into place. But easy in the sense that how do they do better? Are they doing better with some support from you in the room, or are they doing better with you being a little less present and doing more of a leave and check style?

So those are the questions you need to answer for yourself as you embark on teaching your child to sleep better.

Thanks so much for watching. Sleep well.