Sleep training goes beyond helping your baby sleep through the night – sleep coaching also has incredible health benefits. Here we’ll explain how sleep training helps your baby’s mental, cognitive, physical, and emotional development and helps you as a parent, too!
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To get step-by-step guidance on how to get the benefits of sleep training, download the Smart Sleep Coach by Pampers™ app. Co-developed with pediatricians, this easy-to-use app from Pampers is a game changer when it comes to solving your baby’s sleep. Get started today by taking this free sleep assessment.
What is Sleep Training?
Sleep training, also known as sleep coaching, is a proven process in which you work with your baby’s natural circadian rhythms to gently and effectively shape their sleep and help them become comfortable falling asleep independently. You do this by watching their wake windows and putting them to sleep when they start to show sleepy cues. Sleepy cues include yawning, rubbing their eyes, or turning away from you.
In addition to using your baby’s natural cues in sleep coaching, you’re also supporting lifelong healthy sleep habits with sleep training. This is done by maintaining a calming, consistent bedtime routine you perform every night before bed and (or naps), setting your baby’s sleep environment up to optimize their sleep.
Did you know: when you sleep train your baby you can still respond to their needs at night such as to feed or change a diaper? The goal of sleep training is for your baby to fall back asleep if they wake without you needing to rock of feed them.
Note: Your baby’s sleep schedule and sleep needs shift and evolve as they age. The amount of sleep a 6-month-old needs is far different than the amount of sleep an 18-month-old needs. That said, while sleep training is effective and easy – most users see results in 1 week or less – developmental milestones and sleep regression can cause temporary sleep disruptions. However, babies that are sleep trained often get through sleep regression easier because of their healthy sleep habits.
While getting the most out of the benefits of sleep training may sound like a lot of work, when you deliver your chosen sleep training approach consistently it can seem easier – and the life-long results are worth it.
What are the Benefits of Sleep Training?
Sleep training has long and short-term benefits for your baby.
Multiple studies from a range of sources show that babies who sleep well, nap regularly, and have early bedtimes are better emotionally adjusted, do better in school, and have reduced risk for health problems down the road. Meanwhile, parents with well-rested babies who have early bedtimes are also happier, healthier, and have more free time.
Here’s a brief rundown of the science of your baby’s sleep and how sleep training can effectively and safely guide it.
Short-term sleep training benefits:
- Fall asleep faster: Sleep training ensures your baby is tired enough to sleep and anticipates sleep, so they fall asleep faster with less protest.
- Wake up less at night: Sleep training encourages your baby’s innate skill of falling asleep independently, so they can put themselves back to sleep when they wake at night. If they do wake at night for feeding, sleep training helps them fall back asleep in their crib without needing to be rocked or held.
- Sleep longer: Sleep training gets your baby on a biologically and developmentally appropriate schedule which will help them sleep longer overall.
Long-term sleep training benefits:
- Improved learning skills: The Journal of Epidemiology and Public Health published a study finding students who had consistent bedtimes performed better in school, while similar research from The Japanese Society of Child Neurology found that later bedtimes in 18-month-olds led to poorer results on cognitive development.
- Emotional and Linguistic Improvement: A study published in Sleep Medicine Reviews, suggests that the routine aspect of sleep training has benefits, as well: “…Bedtime routine(s) can contribute to an array of positive developmental outcomes beyond improved sleep, inclusive of language development, literacy, child emotional and behavioral regulation, parent–child attachment, and family functioning, among other outcomes.”
- Improve mood: A study in Early Human Development found that well-rested babies are more approachable and adaptable to new situations than babies that don’t get enough rest – a fact many of us parents can confirm based on our own empirical evidence!
- Reduced Obesity: Getting enough sleep as a baby and toddler is shown to reduce the likeliness of obesity in children. One study, by the journal SLEEP, concluded, “Greater increases in nighttime sleep duration and more consolidation of nighttime sleep were associated with lower odds of being overweight from 1 to 6 months.”
- Marishka Brown, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, suggested that the patterns created in those six months may be predictive for the rest of their lives: “What is particularly interesting about this research is that the sleep-obesity association we see across the lifespan appears in infancy and may be predictive of future health outcomes.”
Why Nap Training is Important for Babies
Naps are extremely important to your baby’s overall health now and in the future. Ensuring your baby gets the daytime sleep they need is crucial, meaning there are many benefits of sleep training during naps.
The benefits from sleep training naps include:
- Memory Consolidation: There are two types of sleep: REM sleep and NREM sleep. While REM sleep aides your baby’s cognitive and learning skills, NREM helps with memory consolidation. NREM sleep begins earlier in a sleep cycle; since naps are so short, they’re packed with healthy NREM. By nurturing your baby’s NREM sleep, you help them remember more of what they learn and lay the foundation for continued mental development in the months and years ahead.
- Quicker Locomotor Problem Solving: Daytime sleep may help your baby solve problems using their bodies, such as solving how to crawl through a tunnel.
- Flexible Cognition: Such as recognizing two identical but different-colored puppet
How Sleep Training Helps Parents
Your baby is the star of sleep training, but this process also has tremendous benefits for you and your entire family.
- You Enjoy More Sleep: Since your baby falls asleep faster and stays asleep longer – and because sleep coached babies often wake less at night – sleep training benefits include more sleep for you – and what parents can say no to that?
- You’re in a Better Mood: As with babies, and all humans, being tired or not well rested can put you on edge. With more rest, your mood will improve, too. And that’s not just based on our experience – a Canadian study showed less depression in mothers who sleep coached their babies.
- You Have More Alone Time: When your baby sleeps more, you also have more time to yourself.
- Your Relationships Benefit: Whether with your romantic partners or friends, if you are well-rested and in a better mood, you may have more interest or an easier time reconnecting with people who are important to you.
- You’re a Safer Parent: Drowsiness can lead to clumsiness or slower reflexes. According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, drowsy driving contributes to about 83,000 car collisions each year and about 900 fatalities. That said, when you're better rested, you’re a safer, more alert parent.
- You’re More Attentive, Too: Since sleep training helps you be more rested and happier, you’ll also be a more patient, attentive, and enthusiastic parent for your little one. Everybody wins!
When you’re ready to start your sleep training journey, download The Smart Sleep Coach by Pampers™. The app for baby sleep training benefits include a proprietary algorithm that will automatically adjust your baby’s schedule every time you track a sleep, so you never miss a sleep window. It also offers a personalized sleep plan with sleep training approaches designed uniquely for your baby.
Final Thoughts
There are many benefits of sleep training. In addition to supporting your baby’s long-term health and wellness, sleep training benefits include more consistent and calm bedtimes, longer sleep stretches, and improved learning, physical health, and emotional health in the future.
If you’re still not sure if sleep training is right for you, that’s okay. Sleep training is not for everyone, and many parents are still able to support their babies sleep without sleep training. Oftentimes just a few tweaks to your baby’s routine and sleep schedule can help!
