152: Everything you need to know about sleep training

We've already covered a couple of episodes on sleep, including the cultural issues associated with sleep, then more recently we talked with Dr. Chris Winter about his book The Rested Child where we looked at sleep issues in older children.   But if you have a young child who isn't sleeping well, from the baby stage all the way up to about preschool, this episode is for you!  My guest is Macall Gordon, senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Antioch University Seattle, and who has studied young children's sleep for 20 years.  She's particularly interested in the intersection between children's temperament and their sleep, and how parents of the children she calls 'little livewires' can support these children so everyone gets more sleep.   If you have questions about sleep training - particularly when and how to do it - this episode is for you!     Jump to highlights 01:25 Introduction of episode 05:15 Age range of a child to be sleep-trained 16:15 What it's like to be a parent in a sleep training study 17:30 The active ingredient to sleep coaching 29:00 The differences of how babies sleep through the night 37:20 Only one method in sleep training the child 40:21 Limit setting disorder 48:54 Realization on the episode   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so   Jenny  00:09 Do you get tired of hearing the same old interest in podcast episodes? I don't really but Jen thinks you might. I'm Jenny, a listener from Los Angeles, testing out a new way for listeners to record the introductions to podcast episodes. There's no other resource out there quite like Your Parenting Mojo, which doesn't just tell you about the latest scientific research on parenting and child development but puts it in context for you as well. So you can decide whether and how to use this new information. I listen because parenting can be scary and it's reassuring to know what the experts think. If you'd like to get new episodes in your inbox, along with a free infographic on 13 reasons your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one. Sign up at YourParentingMojo.com/subscribe. You can also join the free Facebook group to continue the conversation. Over time you might get sick of hearing me read this intro so come and record one yourself. You can read from a script Jen provided or have some real fun with it and write your own. Just go to YourParentingMojo.com/recordtheintro. I can't wait to hear yours.   Jen Lumanlan  01:26 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we are going to be talking about a topic that we have addressed a number of times recently. We're coming back for another go at it from a different angle. We're looking at sleep and specifically this time we're looking at sleep training. Before we do that, I wanted to let you know that I am reopening the course that I ran with Hannah and Kelty from Upbringing in a few weeks and it's called right from the start. And it's really about how to get parenting right for you from the start, rather than that, there is one right way to parent. And so we cover all the essential topics that are really relevant to parenting in baby's first year, from sleeping to feeding to supporting physical, mental and emotional development. But the parents who have taken the course tell us that the part that they really needed that they didn't know they needed was the part that really speaks about "What is my experience as a parent? What are my needs as a parent? And how do I get those met along with meeting my baby's needs as well?" So, the course is designed for both first-time parents as well as those who have a child already and who know that parenting cannot be the same with this child as it has been with previous children because we don't have enough hands to go around. There isn't enough of us to give this child the same experiences our previous children have had. So enrollment for right from the start is open between April 3rd and 13th  and we all start together as a group on Monday, April 18. So, gift certificates are also available, so if a new baby is not in your present or in your future, then you may find that it makes a great gift for somebody if you're going to a shower or potentially an even an early Mother's Day gift for somebody who's important in your life. So if you would like to help somebody in your life to get the right start for them with their baby, then I invite you to go to YourParentingMojo.com/rightfromthestart to learn more. Today I’m here with Macall Gordon, who is the senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Antioch University Seattle. And she has been interested in the topic of baby sleep for over 20 years now. And it's a topic that took her back to graduate school in 2001. She's a certified gentle sleep coach at her company, Little Live Wires, as well. And Macall may actually, in addition to obviously being on the same page sartorially with me (we're both here in our navy blue shorts) she may be the best-prepared guest I've ever had on the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. She actually reached out to me and said, "Could I be on the show?" And I said, "Well, I've done a couple of episodes on sleep already. What new angle do you think we could take on this?" and she responded with a long list of topics that really get into the weeds on the research. So if you are the parent of a child who isn't sleeping well and particularly if that child is under a year of age, then do listen up, because today we're going to spend quite a bit of time talking about sleep training, and we'll learn what we know from the research as well as where that research base really lets us down, and what all of that means for struggling parents, particularly parents who have what researchers call a “Difficult Temperament,” but I imagined Macall might call a Little Livewire. So welcome, Macall. It's great to have you here.   Macall  04:16 Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.   Jen Lumanlan  04:18 All right. And so you have been at this for a while now. This is a long time to be interested in baby's sleep. What was it that really drew you to this topic?   Macall  04:28 That's such a good question. I started on this journey back with my first child that I had right at the very start of the internet so it was so early that all the websites that were on the web could fit in a book. It was actually a telephone directory of the internet, so we relied very heavily on books and then all these parenting magazines that you'd see in the pediatricians' offices and the magazines I was noticing that this was the era of critical periods of brain development, right? It's a big deal about the first three years, so important for brain development. And so, they were talking about the importance of responsiveness for brain development and attachment, and everything. And then, literally on the next page, they were saying, but for sleep, you gotta let your baby cry it out. And what I noticed was that the age to start was getting younger and younger. When I first started looking at was six months, and then it was five months, and then it was four months, and I thought, "Boy, this just doesn't totally make sense to me." There must be research to show that this is safe and a good idea. And back then I didn't really have a lot of resources to dig into the research but as the Internet became more and more available, I started poking around. And once I figured out, first of all, what researchers called "crying it out," which was a whole project by itself, once I kind of unlocked the research base, honestly, the more I looked, the less I found. And I kept thinking, "Okay, I'm just not finding it." It's out there. I just haven't found it yet. And even when I went to my very first conference to present my lit review, I was standing there quaking in my boots because I thought there's going to be some massive researcher who's going to come along and just look at me and shake their head and pity, and say, "Oh, honey, didn't you know about the whatever study?" That I had missed some huge piece, but really, what I found is that there wasn't a lot there, and in the ensuing 10 or 15 years, still not much more on this particular question, so many levels we're still in the same boat as we were even 20 years ago.   Jen Lumanlan  06:44 Yeah, and on that issue of the age at which to start sleep training. When I looked at one of your conference posters, and it has the bars showing the age at which the resource or the book or the study recommends sleep training, and the vast majority of them, they're doing a study on children who are aged between six months on the very young end, but usually around 12 months, and like 50 months, right? parents in the real world. Yes, there are a small fraction whose children are not sleeping through the night by then and they need help, but who are most of the parents who are searching for information on sleep training?   Macall  07:19 Right. They are parents of young babies. Yes, that's perhaps one of the most startling findings to me was that the research that we often use to support the need and effectiveness of sleep training in young infants was not even done on infants, but we know very little about how any infants in those studies experienced the intervention for being, you know, so big on precision, sometimes research really misses the boat on development so I think you probably saw, there's one study that had the sample was 4 to 52...