We all know that being a parent is inviting judgement on yourself. Whether it’s from people without children for the way your kids behave in the queue at the shop, your mother when she notices your baby doesn’t have socks on, or from the Tesco delivery man when he sees the state of you and your children at 16:30 in the day.
It’s frustrating. It shouldn’t happen, but it does.
Most of those scenarios can be laughed off easily, but the hardest judgements to receive are from other parents. Other parents who make comments that make you feel almost ashamed of what you have done, or just simply a bad parent. This can come in all shapes and sizes, but sleep training is one that sticks out.
My husband and I, at some point, decide it’s time to start some sleep training. The baby is bigger now, they don’t need feeding throughout the night, I want to wean at night, and the wake-ups are starting to get more unsustainable. The benefits for us are clear: our children will develop healthy sleep habits and ways to wind down, everyone will be better rested (which affects all our moods), you can prioritise your spouse a bit more, and you prevent any build-up of resentment you might start to get from the lack of flexibility in your kids’ sleep needs.
But what always surprises me is if the topic comes up in conversation with another parent, the words ‘sleep training’ are seen as dirty words. What I’ve come to realise is that most people hear “sleep training” and, in their mind, the baby is screaming and you’re downstairs just happily ignoring the tears and tucking into a bag of chocolate, watching TV quite unaffected. But that concept is quite uneducated. There is a mass of information on the internet about hundreds of variations of sleep training; it is not synonymous with cry it out.
Sleep training is something that we have done with our child’s needs first and foremost. We don’t have a set time to start doing it, because our children have been different and what was right for one wasn’t right for the other. Sleep training is done when they are older and don’t require night feeds. It’s not done during any periods of illness or teething.
It’s counter-intuitive, in that when we’ve started sleep training we’ve had less rest, because changing habits takes a lot of time. That might mean I’ve patted my child’s bottom for 45 minutes, but they’re still restless, so I decide to get them up and feed them, rather than just picking them up and feeding them straight away. It means it takes them longer to go to sleep because they haven’t been fed to sleep. It might mean they lie in their cot, chattering away to themselves, rather than falling asleep quickly on us.
It’s never been a case of shutting the door on my child and letting them figure it out themselves. But there may be a few tears or whinging here and there, and that’s OK — we’re there to support them and help them, but not to be the solution for everything. They start to learn how to settle themselves. And long term, that’s a real game changer.
But when you hear “I’m sleep training my child” — ‘Oh, I could never let my child cry, I love them too much to do that.’ ‘Oh, I’ll be there for my child for as long as they need me.’ ‘My child is too sensitive for that.’ ‘That will definitely traumatise them.’
If someone is talking about their terrible night’s sleep, I don’t say, “Well, you have created this for yourself because you always did the quickest option to get them back to sleep.” If someone is saying their child kicked them all through the night, I don’t say, “Well, that’s on you for co-sleeping, isn’t it?” If someone says they haven’t shared a bed with their husband for years, I don’t say, “Oh, well, I could never do that because it’s important to prioritise your marriage.”
We need to respect each other’s choices. As Ted Lasso would say, “Be curious, not judgmental.” If you don’t sleep train, why don’t you say, “Oh, that’s interesting, how are you sleep training them?” if it comes up in conversation.
I am not saying that sleep training is the right thing for everyone to do. If you want to co-sleep with your child for 10 years, that’s your prerogative. What I truly believe is that we need to stop judging each other for choices that have nothing to do with us. Don’t carry assumptions around and make comments to people based on those assumptions. Make informed parenting decisions, looking at the different options, and talk to more experienced parents that you respect. Be curious about other people’s parenting decisions, because you might not be right about everything.
At the end of the day, everyone loves their kids. Don’t make comments that would make someone feel like a bad parent. Engage respectfully and curiously. If you don’t want to engage, gently change the conversation. But let’s work harder to make parents feel a bit less judged and a bit more applauded.
