How to train
6 Month Old To Sleep
Sleep training for infants - Akron Children's Hospital video
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- Newborn infants, so about zero
to two or three months old
need between 14 and 17 hours of sleep at night,
whereas as slightly older infants, so three to 12 months,
need more like 12 to 15 hours of sleep.
There is kind of what's called
the classical extinction method,
some parents might of heard it as called cry it out.
And that is when you essentially put your child down
in bed, in a crib, a safe space for them,
drowsy, but not fully asleep,
and you leave them and you allow them to self soothe,
which often looks like crying for infants,
until they put themselves to sleep.
Some parents will choose to do a more gradual
sleep training method,
when they're present with the child
but kind of gradually reducing
the amount of physical contact they have with them.
So they may instead of picking them up or rocking them,
they may be present in the room
but still allowing their child to fall asleep on their own
without a lot of parental interaction,
and gradually fading further and further from their child,
gradually reduce the physical contact.
Or, they may put their child down,
allow them to try to go to sleep,
but then come back and check on them from time to time
so that they are seeing how their child's doing,
allowing them to self soothe,
the child knows that the parent's there
but they're not physically present the whole time.
Infants, like all of us, can certain be having illnesses
that can be interrupting their sleep,
so if a child is overly fussy,
has a difficult time self soothing,
then it could be good for parents
to reach out to their doctor to see if maybe
their child's dealing with something like colic.
Infants often go through teething at this age as well.
Another reason that would be important for parents
to reach out to the doctor is if
they're noticing their child
having any difficulty breathing at night.
So if they're doing any snoring, choking, gasping
while they're trying to sleep,
it would make sense to talk to their pediatrician.
