If you’d rather read than watch, here’s a transcription of the video…

This week’s question comes from Carrie. She writes:

“My 18-month-old has never been a great sleeper. At bedtime she uses a pacifier and we rock her. But when she wakes in the middle of the night it’s very hard to calm her down. We’ve tried to let her cry, but eventually we just rock her to sleep. And the minute we try to put her in her crib, she wakes up and cries again. Please help!”

This is a great question, Carrie, because I think what it does is really shines a light on some of the things people do wrong when they’re trying to teach their children how to sleep through the night. And what I want you to look at here is this: It sounds like at bedtime she is rocked and she uses a pacifier and then through the night sort of a bunch of things are happening. Sometimes you let her cry, sometimes you’re going in there to comfort her, other times you’re eventually trying to rock her to sleep again and that’s where you’re having your struggles.

And in my opinion this is good news — in a sense. Whenever I hear clients tell me that a prop, such as rocking, used to work great and all of a sudden it’s not working well anymore — meaning it’s taking longer or the baby seems to be fighting it or you just get her to sleep and she wakes up again — in my opinion that’s good news because it usually means that your child is really ready for their own skills.

They’re not really enjoying this rocking anymore. They’re getting frustrated with all this night-waking and usually that’s what it looks like, too. Your child looks frustrated; they’re sort of squirming and maybe they’re pushing against you and arching their back and doing lots of crying and those are signs of frustration and it means that a gentle push in the right direction and your child will probably take to this very well, because I think it’s what she’s looking for.

So, what I want you to do is start at bedtime. That’s where everything needs to start. That’s step one. So I want you to set up a solid bedtime routine for her with you know, a bath and then she gets her jammies on and story and if she’s having any kind of feeding at bedtime, while you can keep that, but make sure she stays awake through it; all the way, wide awake through the entire feed. And then maybe add an extra step, just between the feed and the bed; maybe a story or a song, just to break that connection if there’s any connection, and then you’re going to put her in that crib awake without the pacifier. Because the pacifier is a prop just like any other prop. And if you want to teach her to sleep well do it right right from the beginning.

Then, I would suggest you do the stay-in-the-room method with her, which is outlined in The Sleep Sense Program. You know, you want her to learn the skills she needs for sleeping well without relying on the pacifier and the rocking, but you do also want to be supportive while she learns this new skill. So, you can be present and supportive but she is the one who has to figure this out so, you know, it’s just like any other skill. I can’t master it for you; you have to do that part yourself.

And then you’re going to do the same thing for the night wakings. And the tricky part here is going to be the night wakings because that is already the tricky part. You know, with her middle-of-the-night wakings are the harder ones. So expect that to be the case for the first couple of nights, but handle it the same way; so you’re there, you’re being supportive, you’re using your key words, you’re doing some careful touch, you’re doing some coaxing to lie down if she’s standing and you’re being with her and riding this out until she’s back to sleep without the rocking.

And that will make things very clear to her because every wake-up will be met with the same response, every bedtime will be handled in the same way, so there’s no chance of confusion and she’ll figure out these skills and start sleeping really well and through the night. So thanks a lot for your question, Carrie, and sleep well.