Sleep Training, Gentle Weaning, and the Question of Co-Regulation

I share this blog post in response to the hundreds of comments that I got on a now deleted post in which I shared a sleep training study and my personal and professional opinion. What I realized last night - in conversation with a staunch supporter of sleep training - is that if you have an agenda: no study in the world will change your mind. And so, whilst I do reference empirical studies and data within this article, I write this from the heart from one imperfect mother to another. I invite you to take or leave it as you will, in the knowledge that every one of us is doing our best all of the time and that is more than enough.

Trigger Warning & A Note From My Heart

This post is written from my perspective as both a mother and as a former teacher of 13 years with an MSc in psychology. If you have sleep trained in the past - especially if you felt it was the only way you could survive - I want you to know that I see you and I hear you. Many parents have made this choice because they felt they literally could not go on without rest and I have no judgment for that. No one knows your situation better than you did at the time, and I believe you made the best choice you could for your family.

In case there is any question on my stance towards other mothers:

I am no better or worse than the mother who gave birth naturally and unmedicated.

I am no better or worse than the mother who formula fed from day one.

I am no better or worse than the mother who only feeds her children organic, home-made food.

I am no better or worse than the mother who sleep trained her baby. 

At the same time, I feel called to share my personal and professional perspective on sleep training - not as a verdict on anyone’s past decisions, but as one voice in a wider conversation. My view is shaped both by developmental psychology research and by my lived experience of supporting families for over 17 years. 

There is a whole body of research on sleep training, and some studies suggest that babies sleep longer stretches when they are trained. Other (older) studies contradict this. What’s missing, though, is an objective measure of the emotional impact on the baby or toddler. We know that around 80% of the brain’s adult size is reached by the age of three and that relational experiences in those early years help shape how children regulate stress and trust others for decades to come. But we do not yet have conclusive research showing whether sleep training is either harmless or harmful in the long term. And that absence of evidence matters - no university ethics board would ever approve a study that required babies to cry alone at night as an experiment. For me, that in itself is telling.

What I resist most is the dominant narrative I see pushed daily: that sleep training is not only harmless, but universally beneficial. I simply do not believe it is that black and white.

Why I Draw a Distinction Between Sleep Training and Gentle Weaning

The crux of the issue is co-regulation. As a former teacher of children with additional needs and social, emotional, and mental health difficulties, I saw every day how even teenagers and young adults still need support to regulate their emotions. To me, it is not rocket science that babies and toddlers need loving co-regulation too, particularly overnight in the dark.

That is why the foundation of my Weaning With Love course is responsive, gentle weaning. I don’t believe in forcing a child to accept a form of comfort they clearly dislike - for example, insisting they are patted or left alone in a cot when it doesn’t comfort them at all. Instead, I encourage parents to explore what form of comfort their child can accept and to shift gradually, so that you are offering different comfort, not no comfort.

This, for me, is the key difference. Sleep training - in its various forms - is about choosing not to respond to a baby’s cries, either for set intervals or until the baby eventually falls asleep. Gentle weaning, by contrast, is about responding in new ways, staying fully present and helping your child find alternative sources of comfort without leaving them to figure it out alone. I am not suggesting that that is easy for a moment - if it was, it wouldn’t be the culmination of my life’s work. 

My Bottom Line

I do not ever recommend leaving a baby or toddler in distress to, “Self-soothe.” If your child already knows how to fall asleep peacefully without support, that isn’t sleep training. But if they are signalling - crying, calling, reaching out - I believe that is their nervous system saying, I need you.

You may have made different choices in the past. You may feel you had no other option. And that does not make you a bad parent. It means you did the best you could with what you had at the time. We all make decisions like that in our parenthood and none of us deserve to be condemned or judged for it.

For me personally and professionally, I cannot support methods that normalise leaving little ones to cry for comfort they are asking for. Babies don’t have wants masquerading as needs. They just have needs. And when we can, I believe it is our role to meet those needs - sometimes with milk, sometimes with touch, sometimes with presence, but always with love.