Tracy Hogg's EASY routine and her shush-pat technique still come up constantly in newborn sleep discussions, more than twenty years after her first book. Here is what the method actually is, a...

Guilt is the most common reason parents quit sleep training halfway through — and the most common reason they regret it even when it worked. It is also a useful signal. It usually means someth...

Short answer: The thing that makes bedtime limits hold is not willpower, it is deciding in advance. Once I knew with certainty that I would not sing another lullaby, the stress disappeared, because I ...

Short answer: Declutter the room before you start sleep training. A 2021 Leiden University study found that reducing household chaos, meaning clutter, noise and unpredictable routines, made parents us...

Short answer: Longer days cause three predictable problems. If your baby will not settle in the evening, make the room dark earlier and stretch out the dark part of the bedtime routine, not just the l...

Short answer: A toddler who will not fall asleep until 10 pm is usually held up by one of four things: a room that is not dark enough, a nap that leaves them not tired enough, a nap that leaves them o...

Short answer: A baby waking at 5 am is usually reacting to light and noise, to genuine hunger, or to not getting enough sleep overall. Work through them in that order: blackout the room and mask early...

Short answer: A toddler who falls asleep on their own but still wakes you in the middle of the night usually has one of two causes: too much time in bed, or a habit that formed over a few nights. Cut ...

Short answer: A good bedtime routine is sweet, short and doable on most nights: under 20 minutes, shorter for younger babies, and made only of things your baby actually likes. Bathing is optional and ...

Short answer: Bedtime settling and night settling are two different skills. A baby can fall asleep on their own at bedtime and still not know how to do it at 2 am, because bedtime sleep training does ...

Short answer: In a 2020 study of 353 US mothers of babies aged 6 to 18 months, about half the babies met the scientific definition of a sleep problem, but only 22% of mothers thought their child's sle...

What does CIO mean? CIO stands for cry-it-out, a sleep training technique also known as standard or unmodified extinction, and sometimes as ferberizing. You put your baby down awake in their crib, lea...

Short answer: You cannot fully avoid both. Two pieces of standard advice pull against each other: get your baby down before they are overtired, and do not create a sleep crutch. If overtiredness reall...

Short answer: You cannot stop a baby pooping at night, and they outgrow it within a few months. What you can change is how awake the diaper change leaves them: move your baby as little as possible, ke...

Short answer: The National Sleep Foundation's 2015 expert consensus puts recommended daily sleep at 14-17 hours for newborns, 12-15 hours for infants aged 4 to 12 months, 11-14 hours for toddlers and ...

Short answer: If your baby has suddenly started waking an hour earlier, sleep needs are rarely the cause, because they fall gradually rather than overnight. Four things to work through: try an earlier...

Today I explore the topic of sound machines. Do they boost sleep in babies? What sound levels are considered safe? How should you use them?

Short answer: what is a safe decibel level for babies?...

Short answer: At nine months a typical baby takes two naps, sleeps close to 3 hours in the day and around 14 hours in total, which puts the average wake window at roughly 3.5 hours. Individual childre...

Short answer: A sleep cycle is one stretch of non-REM sleep followed by one stretch of REM sleep. In babies it lasts around 30 to 45 minutes, reaching about 60 minutes by the first birthday and 90 min...

Short answer: Yes, there is sleep training for adults. It is called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I, and it works on the same three things as baby sleep coaching: your schedule, yo...

Short answer: A 15-month-old does not need to feed at night, so night weaning is safe. Two things keep the night feeds going: learnt hunger, meaning your child has learned to take some of her calories...

It takes more than an hour for my toddler to fall asleep — what should I do? Here are the four things that cause it, in the order worth checking.

Short answer: how long should it take a toddler to ...

Does sleep really beget sleep? Three questions about naps, later bedtimes and early morning waking — and why the honest answer to each is “it depends, and here is on what”.

Short answer: does sleep...

Sleep training and night weaning are two different things, and you do not have to do them together. Here is how to do either one on its own.

Short answer: can you do one without the other?

• Yes, bo...