What is gentle sleep coaching?
Anyone can call themselves ‘gentle’ or ‘holistic’ in their approach to child sleep support. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people working with families and children today are doing just that, when in actual fact, the advice and strategies that they are advising parents to use is anything but.
Of course, the term ‘gentle’ is subjective and one person’s idea of gentle might not be the same as someone else’s.
But when people are deliberately misleading families and selling at best, false promises and at worst, harmful misinformation: they need to be called out.
So I wanted to share with you what I believe to be truly gentle and holistic sleep coaching and more importantly, what I believe isn’t.
Truly gentle sleep coaching does not include any of the following:
Training babies to be more predictable by introducing strict feeding/nap schedules.
Mother and very young baby separated at night
Premature night weaning
Introducing solids or formula to ‘fill baby up’
Ignoring parental instincts
Strategies that promote little ones crying alone for any amount of time
ONLY focussing on sleep
Ignoring the biological and developmental norms of a child
Opinions
Limiting eye contact/hugging/touch/parental presence.
It does include the following:
Following infants’ daily rhythms and cues (cues might include sleep, hunger, boredom, over and under-stimulation)
Mother baby dyad kept close for at least the first 6mo
Acknowledging night feeding norms and how it can be managed to optimise sleep for the family
Not trying to ‘fix’ something that is completely normal
Reassuring, normalising, validating and encouraging parents to make decisions for their family.
Not promising that little ones will be sleeping through the night within X amount of time. This is unfair, false and simply impossible to promise without some form of behavioural sleep training.
Acknowledging that little ones may cry even with very gentle and respectful change; but that a parent will ALWAYS be with their child every step of the way.
Looking holistically at lots of aspects of the child’s life and anything that may be impacting on their sleep
Always being mindful of where a child is at developmentally, biologically and psychologically.
Supporting families to make respectful changes to their child’s sleep - it isn’t doing nothing.
Written by Claire, IBCLC and founder of Latch.
Claire supports families with evidence-based breastfeeding and responsive sleep support and volunteers with Leeds Bosom Buddies and the National Breastfeeding Helpline.
