Is it too late to sleep train a 1-year-old? (And do you need to?)

A mother of a one-year-old who breastfed to sleep, co-slept part of the night and never got round to sleep training asks whether she has ruined it. She has not.

Short answer: is it too late to sleep train a one-year-old?

• No. Any age after about four months works, and one year is a perfectly good age to start.
• But first ask whether you need to. One waking at a year old is normal. If the current arrangement works for your family, peer pressure is not a reason to change it.
• Sleep training done out of guilt or obligation fails, because you will not carry it through — and you will regret it afterwards.
• One sign that it may be time: feeding to sleep takes longer and longer and stops working. That is often the disappointed baby syndrome — your baby falls asleep on you and wakes somewhere else, and starts resisting sleep because of it.
• The fix is consistency of place, not a particular method: the child should wake up where they fell asleep, whether that is next to you all night or in their own cot.

Would you like to listen to a podcast episode about this? I've done everything "wrong" - is it too late to sleep train?

“I have done everything wrong and need to sleep train my 1-year-old”

I've done everything wrong and need to sleep train my 1-year-old. This is hard for me. I've done all the things I shouldn't for sleep training for the first year of my little one's life. He sleeps next to us quite a bit. I breastfed him to sleep, we used the truck ride for naps sometimes, etc. The crazy thing is, I've been reading this sub the whole time, preparing and planning sleep training, and just never did it. I'm annoyed with myself, but also trying to move forward and be better for my little guy. He sleeps well through the night, wakes up for 1 feeding around 3 a.m. and gets good naps. I do playtime in the crib so he doesn't have negative thoughts about it, and I do put him in the crib once he's asleep for the first part of the night. I'm tired. It's so much easier to side lie and breastfeed, so that's what I've been doing. His room is at the front of the house, and I have a hard time when he's sleeping up there, because although we live in a nice neighborhood, there have been some incidents of car break-ins and things getting stolen on porches, and I think it adds to already new mom anxiety. I've talked to my therapist about this, and we have an alarm system. I guess my real question is, has anyone started the Ferber method at 12 months? How did it go?

You did nothing wrong

So, as usual, there's a lot of missing information, so I'm going to have to make some assumptions. So based on what you've wrote, here's what I assume. I assume that your schedule is good because your baby sleeps well. I assume that he gets enough sleep and that he takes 1 or 2 naps during the day, and probably there's no problem with his schedule.

So you said that he falls asleep during breastfeeding, then you put him in his cot, I assume it's in his room, and then when he wakes up in the middle of the night around 3 a.m., you take him to your bed and then you breastfeed him, and then after that you go sleep until the morning, right? And you also mentioned that breastfeeding is not working like it used to, and it takes longer and longer for him to fall asleep with breastfeeding in the evening, or is it in the middle of the night? I'm not sure, but I assume that it's in the evening, because in the middle of the night I guess that you fall asleep quite quickly and you don't even notice when he finishes breastfeeding, right? Okay, first of all, don't worry, you did nothing wrong, really.

You just did what worked, and it's completely okay. And actually, his sleep is really, really great. I mean, waking up once in the middle of the night is completely normal at 1 year of age. So if he gets enough sleep, then there's no problem with this.

Do you actually need to sleep train?

So I think you don't have to sleep train if you don't want to, and I'm not sure why you want to sleep train. In the comments you mentioned that you are tired, so it might be that the 3 a.m. feeding and maybe after that you don't sleep that well. So if you feel like that co-sleeping doesn't work for you anymore because you are too tired, maybe you cannot sleep that well together with the baby, maybe he started kicking more or turning around in bed more, or maybe he breastfeeds nonstop after 3 a.m. and that bothers you a little bit, then these are valid reasons for sleep training. But if you want to sleep train him just because that's the norm, or you feel like there's a peer pressure coming from your friends and family, or if you feel like you have to sleep train just because everybody does, then don't do it.

Please consider not doing it, because if you don't really feel that you need it, it won't work. Also, even if it works, you might feel guilty about it, and it's not worth it if you feel guilty about it. And what happens if someone doesn't really have good reasons to sleep train? They feel guilty about it afterwards, and they will regret it.

So try to make it crystal clear in your head why you want to sleep train. Is it just because you're afraid that that's the right way to do things, or is it because the current situation is not working for you anymore?

Is one year too late to sleep train?

If it's the latter, then please do it. 1 year of age is perfect for sleep training, as any other age after like 4 months of age, so you don't have to worry that it's too late. But if it's actually quite okay for you, what's happening now, then don't do it. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks about this.

When breastfeeding to sleep stops working

That said, you made one little comment that made me think that sleep training might be necessary, even if not now, then maybe in a few months. And this is that you said that breastfeeding your son to sleep takes longer and longer, and it's not working like it used to. This was exactly the case with my daughter. She started to sleep worse around 9 months of age, and before that it took her like 10 minutes to breastfeed in the evening, and then she quickly fell asleep and I put her to her cot.

So after around 9 months of age, breastfeeding in the evening took longer and longer, and she took longer and longer to fall asleep. And she also started to wake up more often during the night. So by the age of 10 or 11 months old, it took her about an hour to fall asleep in the evening, and she woke up like every hour or every other hour during the night. And also, there was a lot of crying, so even when we held her, it seemed like she didn't let herself fall asleep because she was watching us not to leave the room, if you know what I mean.

The disappointed baby syndrome: why your baby fights sleep

The reason for sleep getting worse and worse after usually 6, sometimes 7 or 8 months of age, is what I call the disappointed baby syndrome. And the culprit here are dependent sleep associations. In your case, it's breastfeeding. So when you breastfeed your baby and he falls asleep, and then you put him into his cot, when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he will see that he's in a completely different place from where he fell asleep.

And this is really confusing, even frightening for him. Just imagine that you fall asleep in your comfy bed, and when you wake up in the middle of the night, as we usually do, and usually we wake up several times at night just for a few seconds, we don't even remember it. We just turn around, adjust our pillows, and we go back to sleep. But imagine that you wake up in the middle of the night and you are lying on the living room floor.

What would you think? You would think that something really bad happened, that someone carried you into the living room, put you down on the floor, and then you would wonder who this was and why did this happen, and you probably wouldn't go back to sleep on the living room floor, right? You would make everything back to normal after checking the house. You would probably go back to your own bed and try to go back to sleep there, but because of the scare, it would be much more difficult for you to go back to sleep after this strange thing happened, especially without knowing how this happened.

So this is something similar to what your baby might feel after falling asleep on your breast and then waking up in a different room, in a different bed, without you. And since he cannot go back to you on his own, he will cry for you. And that's when you go in and you put him to your bed, and then you breastfeed him again, which is the familiar thing for him before falling asleep. So he will fall asleep again now in your bed.

Okay, so breastfeeding to sleep can work, and breastfeeding to sleep works for many babies, but usually for younger babies. Older babies often develop this problem where falling asleep and then sleeping during the night is not in the same environment and not in the same context. So if you want to avoid this, and your baby might have started developing this so-called disappointed baby syndrome, because he's disappointed when he wakes up in the middle of the night, and that's why now he doesn't want to fall asleep in the first place, because he remembers now. He got to this stage in brain development when he already remembers that last time he fell asleep on your breast, this strange thing happened that he woke up in his cot.

And what if it happens today? So he won't let himself fall asleep because he's afraid that if he does, then this strange thing would happen again, and it scares him.

Attachment parenting, and the guilt that comes with this

So I was actually quite disappointed and also felt guilty when I've learned this, because I was really into attachment parenting, and I thought that breastfeeding my baby to sleep is a good thing. And it was a good thing until a certain age, but after that, I was really sad to learn that my baby might feel this disappointment every night, and also she might be scared to fall asleep because she doesn't want to get this strange thing happen to her every night when I put her into her cot. And she wakes up in her cot, and she doesn't understand how she got there, and now she's watching me, and she doesn't want to let me go out of the room. So she would rather not fall asleep, even though she was really, really tired.

And then it caused a lot of frustration from my part, and also a lot of crying on her part, because she was too tired to stay awake happily, but she was too scared to fall asleep, so she just cried for 20, 30 minutes. Even though I held her, so that was not sleep training. I was still holding her, trying to breastfeed, but that didn't work anymore. So I felt really kind of disappointed and felt guilty that I caused this to my baby, even though I really thought that breastfeeding her to sleep was good for attachment, you know?

But after a while, I had to realize that it didn't work anymore. And then the kind thing to do was to actually teach her to fall asleep independently.

Could you simply co-sleep all night instead?

Another thing you can do, of course, is to just co-sleep with your baby all night, but that would mean that you go to bed when he does, and that is quite impossible because at this age, I guess your baby sleeps about 11 hours maybe at night. So that is usually too much for an adult. But if your baby wakes up in the middle of the night and you are not there, then he will be disappointed. Of course, it can happen that your baby doesn't wake up until you get into bed.

So let's say you put your baby to bed at 8, you go to bed at midnight, and if you're lucky, he doesn't get up between 8 p.m. and midnight. And then when he does wake up at 3 a.m., you are already there, and he doesn't notice that you kind of cheated. But if your baby started to develop this sense of disappointment and being afraid of falling asleep, and the thing that falling asleep takes longer and longer for him can be an indication of this, then the only solution is to provide the same environment, the same context for his sleep the entire night. And it either can be you sleeping with him, or it can be in the cot, in his cot, and falling asleep independently.

Which sleep training method should you choose?

Okay, so teaching a child to fall asleep independently is the goal of sleep training. So whatever sleep training method you choose, that will be the end goal of it. And I would not recommend for you the FERBER method or the cry it out method, because you are clearly quite close to the attachment parenting end of the spectrum of parenting styles. So I would recommend some more gradual or more gentle approaches to sleep training.

A practical alternative: move the cot into your room

And here's a thought. If you are scared that your baby is on the other end of the house, which is closer to the entrance, if I'm right, and you're afraid of or you're anxious about robberies, then why don't you just put the cot in your own room? I mean, sleeping in the same room might give you the reassurance that your baby is okay, but at the same time, if he sleeps in his cot and you can sleep in your bed, then it might give both him and you and your partner a good night's sleep. So that can be, I think, a practical solution to your problem.

And here's another thought. If you do decide to do this, if you put your baby's cot in your bedroom, then you might not even have to sleep train, right? So imagine that you just breastfeed your son to sleep, and then you put him into the cot, and then you leave the room and do your thing, have your me time, and you go to bed at 11 p.m. or midnight or whatever. And hopefully your son won't wake up between his bedtime and your bedtime.

And then you fall asleep too. And then when your son wakes up at 3 a.m., maybe you just try to shush him instead of breastfeeding him. And maybe your presence will be enough for him to go back to sleep. So that's one thing to try.

What if you want to night wean too?

The other thing you can do: you didn't write whether you want to night wean or not. If you want to night wean, I would definitely go in this direction. If you don't want to night wean, then you can just breastfeed your son at 3 a.m. and then put him back into his cot again. So these are two sleep training free possibilities, and I hope they help.

But if you decide that you need to sleep train your son, for example, if falling asleep takes longer and longer for him and breastfeeding won't work anymore, then choose some of the more gentle sleep training methods.

Frequently asked questions

Is it too late to sleep train a 1-year-old?

No. One year of age works just as well as any age after about four months. What changes with age is not whether it can be done but how you do it: an older baby has stronger habits and more will, so the process leans more on consistency and on explaining things than it does with a small baby.

Do I have to sleep train at all?

No. If your baby sleeps enough and the arrangement works for you, there is nothing to fix — waking once in the night at a year old is completely normal. Sleep train because the current situation has stopped working for your family, not because it is what everyone else does. Training you do not believe in tends to fail, and it tends to leave you feeling guilty.

Why has breastfeeding to sleep stopped working?

Because your baby has reached the age where he remembers. He falls asleep on you and wakes up in a different room, in a different bed, without you — and after a while he starts refusing to fall asleep at all, because he does not want that to happen again. I call it the disappointed baby syndrome, and it is why feeding to sleep works beautifully for small babies and stops working for older ones.

What is the hardest part of sleep training after co-sleeping?

Keeping the context the same all night. A child needs to wake up in the same situation he fell asleep in, so the choice is between being there the whole night and having him fall asleep on his own in his own bed. The half-way version — asleep on you, then moved — is the one that causes the trouble.

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