“Is there a wrong way to sleep train?” I’m going to be answering that question today with six mistakes parents often make when sleep training.

I don’t know about you, but we attempted to “sleep train” our oldest several times before actually sleep training her – or maybe I should say before “successfully” sleep training her. And we work with families all the time who have tried sleep training before and something just isn’t sticking!

They have tried but quickly gave up because it was just too hard, or it just wasn’t working, or they just didn’t know what to do next. Or families have truly sleep trained, but something is still off – their toddler still protests for 20 minutes every night, or still experiences night wakings, or early mornings, or short naps.

And it’s most often due to one or more of the following six sleep training mistakes: 

1. Lying their little one down “drowsy but awake”
2. Keeping the pacifier
3. Not having a plan
4. Not having age-appropriate schedules or routines
5. Making changes too quickly
6. Not making changes quickly enough

Those are the most common mistakes people make when sleep training, so now let’s dive in more specifically…

1. Lying your baby down, or tucking your child in, “drowsy but awake”

I have talked to countless parents who are still trying to lay their babies and toddlers down “drowsy but awake” before laying them in their crib. I mean, that’s what we were doing for the first 10 months of our oldest’s life!

The problem is, “drowsy but awake” really only counts for newborns – and even then, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t!

Once babies are four months and older, however, “drowsy but awake” no longer works. We’re actually interfering with our child’s first stage of sleep, and it’s going to backfire on us in some way, like immediate protest, night wakings, early morning wakings, short naps, etc.

The way I explain it to families is this…

Picture yourself going to sleep at night and your phone is on the night stand next to you. You’re almost asleep, and out of nowhere your phone buzzes. You’re awake enough to realize you weren’t sleeping, but the phone buzzing now makes you wide awake and it’s going to take a good 20 more minutes to fall asleep. That’s because you were drowsy, almost asleep, and the phone buzzing took off that sleepy edge that had you almost asleep.

This drowsiness is what we’re trying to avoid with our kids!

So when we’re sleep training, we lay our babies down and tuck our toddlers in AWAKE! Not so awake they’ll be up for three more hours (that’s why we follow age-appropriate sleep schedules), but we want them to do the work of getting drowsy and asleep on their own.

When I became a sleep consultant, this made everything with my daughter’s sleep make sense. We had sleep trained her about a year before and she was sleeping through the night and taking great naps, but she always cried for a good 10 minutes before falling asleep. And I just didn’t understand why she couldn’t just fall asleep happily like other babies I heard about!

But once I learned more about our sleep cycles and understood this drowsiness, it hit…we were singing to and cuddling our daughter for a 3-5 minutes before we laid her down each nap and bedtime. We let her get all cuddly and cozy and heavy-headed, and then we laid her down. Little did we know that laying her down in that drowsy state was the reason for all the tears! We were making sleep harder for her, because when she hit the crib, she was startled awake and had to essentially get sleepy again.

The moment we cut the singing down to just one verse of one song and then laid her down, she went to sleep so much more happily.

So if you’re wondering why you’re still struggling with your little one’s sleep after doing so much hard work with sleep training, and you’re laying them down drowsy, or they’re getting drowsy in their bedtime routine (which we’ll get to soon!), stop laying them down drowsy.

2. Keeping the pacifier

This one always surprises or scares parents, but I feel so strongly about it – you should take the pacifier away when sleep training!

I have worked with several families who have sleep trained and they seem to have the “perfect” schedule, the “perfect” routines, everything else checks out, BUT they’re little one still wakes up for two hours in the night, or starts the day at 5 am, or has really inconsistent naps…and the only “red flag” is that they are still holding on to the pacifier.

The point of sleep training is teaching our little ones how to fall and stay asleep independently, which means by themselves! But what is a pacifier? It’s a sleep prop! And it’s a sleep prop that prevents babies and kids from learning how to fully fall asleep independently.

Now I know what you might be thinking…your little one sleeps with a pacifier and is a great sleeper! Or your friend’s toddler still sleeps with a pacifier and has been a champ!

What do I think about that? Good for them! I am so thankful they’re sleeping well, because sleep is absolutely the goal.

But what happens when it’s time to take the pacifier away? When will that happen? 12 months? 2 years old? 4 years old? And what will you do then?

There’s a good chance you’ll have to, in essence, sleep train again. So why “sleep train” with a pacifier, with the chance that sleep won’t fully consolidate, knowing you will have to once again, down the road, sleep train without it? Let’s do it right the first time!!

I chat all about taking the pacifier away in this post, so if you want to learn more, check it out!

3. Not having a consistent plan

The third sleep training mistake families often make is not having a consistent sleep training plan.

This was us the first, second, and fifth time we tried “sleep training.” We would lay our daughter down, walk away, and wait 10 minutes before going back in there. But at the 10 minute mark, if (when!) she was still crying, we’d go in and rock or feed her to sleep.

When that wasn’t working, we extended that wait to 12 minutes, because surely that extra two minutes would make her fall asleep. But if she didn’t, we’d go in, and again, just rock or feed her to sleep.

And when she woke up in the night? Sometimes we’d snag her right away to help her, sometimes we’d wait 2-5 minutes, but we’d inevitably just feed or rock her back to sleep. We didn’t have any plan for what to do each time, and we had zero confidence anything would actually work, so we winged it until she eventually fell back asleep.

So whether you work with a sleep consultant or sleep train on your own, make sure you have a PLAN!

• What will you do once you lay your baby down, or tuck your child in? Stay in there or walk out? For how long?
• What will you do if they cry or protest? How will you respond? At what point will you respond?
• What happens when they wake up in the night?
• How do you determine if it’s time to feed your baby or not? What will you do you after the night feeding?
• When is it considered morning time versus still a night waking?
• How should you approach naps? What if they just won’t fall asleep?

You should have an answer to all of these questions before sleep training your child so you can be consistent! Both for your sake and for your child’s sake.

And if all of this sound foreign to you and you have no clue how to even begin thinking about all of this, don’t worry, it did to me 6.5 years ago, too. Check out our post about the four most common sleep training methods so you have an idea of what options are even out there.

4. Not having age-appropriate schedules and routines

Not having schedules and routines that support your chid’s age and development will also likely make sleep training not work for you!

When our oldest was a baby, we followed her tired cues really closely. And sometimes they were spot on, but sometimes she clearly just yawned out of nowhere and rubbed her eyes, but she was not ready for sleep. Knowing about awake windows would have been a game changer!

Or when our oldest was almost two, her bedtime was 7 pm, because that’s when bedtime was “supposed to be”. But we had no clue that maybe she wouldn’t be tired enough at 7 pm. So sure enough, she started protesting bedtime and we had no idea why, and again, no clue how to fix it.

In hindsight, pushing her bedtime back by 15, maybe 30 minutes would likely have changed everything.

So when I’m talking schedules, I’m talking about making sure your little one’s sleep pressure is in the sweet spot of tired enough but not too tired. If they’re no tired enough, they are going to protest sleep! And they could wake overnight or early in the morning or have short naps.

And if they’re too tired? They could protest sleep, wake overnight or early in the morning, or have short naps. So the appropriate schedule really makes a difference!

And for babies, we’re following awake windows, or clock-based schedules that are determined by awake windows. And for toddlers and older kiddos, we’re following clock-based schedules based on both what’s the “norm” but also what our child actually shows they need.

So if you’re reading this and have no clue where to start with schedules, make sure you snag our free schedule guide here.

I’m also going to lump routines into this same category, because the order of your little one’s bedtime routine, and even what’s in the routine, can make a difference, too!

For example, remember that drowsiness we talked about? When nursing or bottle feeding is at the end of your baby’s bedtime routine, there’s a great chance it could make them drowsy, or at least have milk and sleep very closely connected. So to try to separate the two, we recommend that feed be the very first step of the bedtime routine!

Or similarly, after 12ish months old, once solids are the main source of nutrients, we actually recommend milk coming out of the bedtime routine. So a two year old still having a bottle or a glass of milk in their bedtime routine could actually be the culprit to sleep just being off!

As I mentioned earlier, singing and cuddles in the bedtime routine is so sweet. But if they last more than 30ish seconds, we’re starting to dance with drowsiness, and it could backfire.

Or if your little one has screen time right before bed, or a bedtime snack that’s on the more sugary side, those could also interfere with falling asleep and/or staying asleep.

So if you’re curious to learn more about age-appropriate bedtime routines, make sure you check out this post.

I have worked with families who tried so hard to sleep train their little ones and just didn’t understand why it took three hours to fall asleep at bedtime. And most of the time, it’s a schedule and/or routine issue. Otherwise it’s likely a pacifier issue or a consistency issue, as we’ve already chatted about.

5. Making changes too quickly

Sleep training is a process. And like most processes, it takes time to see progress and then consistent results!

But when families piece together a sleep training plan, there’s often a lack of confidence that comes with it. And if the first night is hard, you second guess yourself, maybe change up the method, or schedule, or routine. Or throw the towel in altogether. And maybe you really did need to make adjustments, but after just one or two nights, there’s really not a great way of knowing yet.

So another common sleep training mistake is makign changes too quickly!

When we work with families of babies, it’s a two-week plan. And we say that by day three or four they should start seeing progress – not perfection, because again, it’s a two week plan – but progress. And if they’re not seeing progress, it’s time to make adjustments.

But that means if night one, two, and maybe even three are tough, we hang tight to see what’s a matter of time versus needing an actual change!

With toddlers and young kids on a three-week plan, sometimes it takes closer to a week to see that progress (though it’s often sooner!).

But again, if you’re sleep training on your own and you don’t know what’s normal, it can be easy to say it’s just not working, or that your child is a unicorn and this just won’t work for them, and you start changing things up.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is hang tight, log what’s going on, and then after a few days reevaluate and see what adjustments you might be able to make.

The next reason is the exact opposite…

6. Not making changes quickly enough

Like I said before, with babies, we’re looking for progress within 3-4 days, and for an older kiddo, within about a week. And if we’re not seeing some sort of progress, we’re going to make changes!

But some people get to day four, and then day 10, and day 15, and day 20, and it’s still just hard. But they’re using the exact schedule they got from that free scheduling resource, they’re using the Ferber method they read about, they have that “magical sleep sack” everyone says will do the trick, yet their little one still takes 45 minutes to fall asleep every night, or still wakes up for two hours at some point.

In those situations, something clearly needs to be adjusted. You might be following the perfect schedule on paper, but your little one needs more awake time than others their age. Maybe something is lingering in the bedtime routine that shouldn’t be, or maybe the check-ins you’re doing are too stimulating.

Something needs to be adjusted if you’re not seeing progress!!

You CAN Sleep Train without a Sleep Consultant!

I want you to know that my goal of this post is not to say, “therefore you need to work with a sleep consultant to avoid those mistakes!” NO! You can absolutely sleep train on your own – that’s why I’m sharing these with you, to make sure you’re successful in reaching your sleep goals.

That’s also why we have our online sleep classes, Baby Sleep from A to Z, and Big Kid Sleep from A to Z. We want to make sure you know all of these things and so much more, so you can go into sleep training with a plan and with confidence that it’ll work.

So if you’re looking to put together a DIY sleep training plan for your little one soon, check out those classes so you are able to tick off all of the considerations you need to in order to walk into sleep training with confidence, and so you can avoid these common mistakes.

Two More Potential Sleep Training Challenges

I’ve now expalined the six most common sleep training mistakes to avoid, but I actually have two more honorable mentions I want to add. These last two can’t be as generalized, but they could impact sleep training success, so I wanted to include them…

1. Trying to night train and nap train separately
2. Parents and caregivers being on separate pages

Trying to nap train and night train separately

Has anyone ever told you to sleep train at night first, and then once night time starts settling in, add on naps? Some families have certainly done this and have seen success! I even know some sleep consultants who often do this, and it works. So again, when it works, it works! But when we work with families, we do both at the same time.

At Via Graces, sleep training = nighttime AND nap time. Because when it comes to sleep, we’re looking at the whole picture. If you choose to just focus on nights, it can be so confusing on your little one, and takes out that consistency piece that is so important.

• Why does she rock me to sleep at nap time but makes me fall asleep on my own at bedtime?
• Why does he feed me to sleep during the day but not at night?
• Why can I cuddle in their bed every nap but sleep in my crib at night?

When we write a sleep plan for families, we always start the plan at bedtime (because good old melatonin is on our side!), and then we continue right into naps the next day. Yes, naps often take longer for little ones to “master” than bedtime and even night wakings, but that consistency across the board is key!

So if you’ve been sleep training just nights but not naps, and you can’t figure out why nights are still so hard…it might be because your child can’t catch on to what’s expected at different sleeps.

Parents and caregivers being on different pages

I’m going to say it again…consistency is SO important during the sleep training process! If one parent is all about sleep training and the other is not on board, or both parents are on board but the nanny, or grandparent who takes care of the little one every day is not on board, it can be really challenging!

[Just a quick sidenote: if your little one is at daycare, this is a bit different – sleep is often a, “what happens at daycare stays at daycare,” for better or worse. And we talk all about it on this post and this post.]

But when it comes to parents and caregivers at home, want our little ones to know that whether it’s mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, or the babysitter putting them to sleep, the routines will be the same and result will be the same…sleep!

Making sure everyone is on board with the plan, or at least the routines and schedules, is so critical. If baby takes two naps a day with mom but grandma only does one nap, that’s confusing. If the nanny rocks to sleep but mom and dad walk out of the room, that’s confusing.

Now, have I seen families where there are differences like this, and it works? Yes, that’s why this is an honorable mention. But have I seen families where these differences really throws the kiddo off? Yes, which is why it’s here. Because again, consistency!

Will baby fall asleep more smoothly for one parent over the other? Maybe! Or will they struggle more with the sitter? Maybe!

Our third daughter used to scream when my mom put her to bed. It would only last for two or three minutes, but it broke my mom’s heart! Why does she go down so easily for mom and dad, but not for grandma? All I can say is, she’s a real person, not a robot!

So your little one may respond differently to whoever is putting them to bed, it happens. As long as they’re still falling asleep within about 5-10 minutes, that’s okay!

But in general, when families are sleep training and have other caregivers regularly in the home, it’s important that everyone is on the same page so the kiddo learns what to expect as quickly as possible and independent sleep can become the routine and the norm.

Conclusion

Why am I sharing all of this with you?

Because the whole plan here and the whole plan as a sleep consultant is SLEEP! Whether we work together one-on-one or not, we want every family to get the best sleep possible.

So if you are DIYing a sleep plan, we certainly hope you read this and check out all of the other resources we have for you. And don’t forget about our online sleep classes, Baby Sleep and Big Kid Sleep A to Z! So that when you do jump into sleep training, you see success! And you have a solid plan and you know if and when to change course, if necessary.

And if you find yourself reading this and the idea of coming up with a plan, and needing to course correct and problem solve on your own feels way too daunting, that’s what we’re here for! Learn more about how we can help you be successful.

Also remember that sleep training isn’t easy. You will probably have some tougher nights or tougher days, and you might have to adjust your plan or schedule as you go. And that’s okay!

Or you might be listening to this and it’s finally clicking why your little one’s sleep is still a challenge, and you feel bad – like you did something wrong, or like you should have figured out what to change before. Remember there is grace!

No one expects you to be the sleep consultant, that’s why we’re here. And you can always make changes, starting now.

With Grace,

Lauren