Have you felt pressure to teach your baby or toddler to self-soothe?

Maybe you’ve heard comments like:

“They need to learn to fall asleep on their own.”

“If you respond, they’ll never learn to self-soothe.”

“Just let them cry. It’s the only way they’ll learn to self-soothe.”

So many of my clients have heard comments like these on a regular basis. It makes them feel alone, isolated, and even doubt themselves.

So do I really need to teach my baby to self-soothe?

The good news is that you do not need to leave your baby to cry to teach them anything! And in fact, leaving a baby to cry is the exact opposite of how you help them calm down. Self-soothing has no factual origins.

Though advice to leave a baby to cry to teach self-soothing is common, It’s incredibly outdated. So much sleep and parenting advice misses the very real neuroscience that disproves this concept as well as the important role of responsiveness in development.

The evidence behind an infant’s ability to self-soothe

The science is strong. Times have changed, or maybe they are just shifting back to what we’ve done throughout most of human history. No matter the question, the answer is connection and nurture not leaving babies to cry.

Decades of research on attachment and brain development tells us that consistent, loving, and responsive parenting promotes optimal development. When we respond, we build trust. We show our child that that their needs are valid, someone cares, and the world is a safe place. This message is literally being wired into their brain and will affect their physical, mental, and emotional health throughout their life.

To self-soothe, you need to be able to regulate or control your emotions.

You need the rational part of the brain to communicate with the emotional and survival parts of the brain. Babies do not have the necessary brain development to do this. In fact, the cognitive part of the brain doesn’t begin to develop until the preschool years and continues throughout childhood and into early adulthood.

Your baby or young toddler can’t think “I’m ok. Mom/dad is just in the other room. I’ll take 3 deep breaths and calm down.” All they know is that they are stressed, and you are either their providing safety and calm or they are on their own. A baby on their own that stops crying is not the same thing as a calm baby.

Your baby needs you.

Young children need a calm adult to calm down which helps their brain build the pathways for regulation when they are older. You help a baby build this foundation for self-regulation through co-regulation, responding, and modeling. It takes many repeated experiences of actively being calmed over years for a child to start actively calming themselves even in small ways. If we don’t show and support children to have healthy, connected ways to calm down and regulate their emotions, they won’t learn them. A baby crying in arms with a loving parent is experiencing the stress completely differently than a baby left to cry. Being with them, even if you can’t fix it, makes a difference.

Supporting real, lifelong emotion regulation skills is important. It’s vital that we recognize that leaving a baby to cry does not support this skill, and if anything, undermines it. Nurturing, responsive care builds a healthy emotional brain!

I hope this post will help you feel more confident in ignoring the “just leave them to cry” advice and trusting your intuition. Nurture pays off! It may be challenging at times, but it is valuable.

And if you are tired and struggling with sleep, my approach to improving sleep embraces everything in this post. Reach out if you want responsive sleep help and we can talk about how I can help.