Sleep training is a group of methods aimed at teaching babies to sleep “independently” and, more specifically, to not need their caregivers during the night.
It usually includes techniques such as:
- Letting the baby cry without intervening (Extinction method)
- Controlled crying intervals before comforting (Ferber method)
- Gradually moving away from the baby (Camping out)
All of this with the goal of having the baby “learn” to fall asleep alone and sleep through the night.
But… where does this idea come from?
We often ask ourselves this at HONEST, and the answer is not as intuitive as we might think.
Because this social pressure that a “good” baby sleeps 12 hours straight… doesn’t come from biology, but from history.
???? A bit of context:
In 1894, American pediatrician Dr. Luther Emmett Holt wrote the book “The Care and Feeding of Children.”
He literally recommended letting babies cry so they would learn to sleep alone.
This was one of the first systematized approaches to “sleep training.”
Decades later, this view was adapted and popularized by figures like Dr. Richard Ferber in the 1980s, with the well-known “controlled crying” method, or Ferberization.
This model spread across the Western world.
And that’s how the idea began: a baby who wakes up is a problem. A baby needs to “learn.” A baby must sleep alone—and the earlier, the better.
Personally, I find it curious that two men (not even mothers) created the method that was followed for many years—even still today.
It completely ignores maternal instinct and the biological information we now have about a baby’s development.
But what about biology?
From a human development perspective, it makes no evolutionary sense.
- For thousands of years, babies have slept close to their mothers.
- Night wakings were (and still are) a survival mechanism.
- Mature, consolidated sleep is not taught. It develops over time.
As Dr. James McKenna, a specialist in infant sleep anthropology, explains:
Babies are not designed to sleep through the night without contact.
They are designed to seek safety—and that includes seeking their parents at night.
So what do we do at HONEST?
At HONEST, we do not use sleep training.
Because we don’t believe babies need to be trained to sleep.
We believe they need to be accompanied, held, and understood.
We offer:
- Respectful strategies that genuinely improve sleep
- Gentle, realistic changes that ease exhaustion
- Tools to help you understand what to expect and how to respond. But never at the cost of crying without comfort, or breaking the nighttime bond.
And what about “hidden sleep training”?
Sometimes we think that if we’re not leaving the baby to cry alone in a crib, we’re not doing sleep training.
But sleep training can take on more subtle forms.
For example:
- We decide to remove night feeds, but when the baby wakes up and asks, we deny the breast—even if they cry.
- We stay by their side and say we’re “supporting their emotions.”
- But in reality, we’re letting them cry in our arms, without responding to their actual need, hoping they’ll learn to fall asleep without the thing that used to help.
This approach feels gentler because there’s no physical abandonment.
But the message the baby receives may be confusing:
“I’m here… but I won’t give you what you need.”
Even if we are physically present, if we don’t respond emotionally, the baby might feel just as alone:
confused, dysregulated, disconnected.
At HONEST, we say it clearly:
Changing a baby’s behavior for our own benefit, without considering their developmental or emotional readiness, is still sleep training.
Just quieter.
And here, we’re not here to quiet anyone down.
We’re here to listen, hold, and accompany—with respect.
