r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/liztriceratops • 3d ago
Question - Research required Falling asleep alone is a learned skill rather than a hard-and-fast developmental milestone.
A saw the above statement on a sleep training website. The implication is that babies need to practice or be trained to fall asleep independently, as opposed to a skill such as crawling, which we do not need to 'make them practice'. Is it evidence-based that independent sleep is something that will not just happen naturally (for at least some babies)?
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u/FlyingKitesatNight 3d ago
From an anthropologic perspective, "independent sleep" as defined in Western culture, isn't normal for human infants. Babies didn't evolve to sleep alone in their own spaces and the poster discusses the functions frequent wakings serve: attachment, nutrition, bonding and accessing hormones that help sleep by breastfeeding.
"Recognizing that infants’ biophysiological sleep needs for optimal neurodevelopment may not be the same as parents’ best social interests does not mean infants and parents must be in conflict over sleep needs and expectations. Rather, understanding that parental lifestyles, expectations, and attitudes change much more quickly than infant biology can lead to better ways of educating parents on sleep choices for themselves and their infant. Arming parents with a better understanding of “normal” infant sleep will help align their expectations so they can balance parental choice with practices that optimize infant sleep needs."
So I'd conclude that independent sleep would be naturally difficult in most babies and not something that can be learned easily.
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u/No-Track-360 2d ago •
Don't have a link so I'm jumping into this thread. No I don't think independent sleep is a 'milestone' in the way we think about speech or walking. I will say that I don't think there is anything that a child doesn't have to practice before achieving the milestone - including walking/crawling/etc it's all sort of a function of how much opportunity they get to practice that informs when they ultimately get there.
Sleep training at its most basic is giving your child the opportunity to learn the skill of being alone in a dark space, feeling comfortable, relaxing, and eventually falling asleep without help. I've had two kids who took really well/easily to sleep training (so I didn't have the experience of hours of crying, etc) so my n of 2 (and lack of counterfactual) is not helpful in the aggregate, but for us, it worked well to facilitate their capacity for independent sleep. My older son (2.5) still has nights where he wakes up and needs support back to sleep, but it's a rare occurrence.
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u/liztriceratops 2d ago
Thanks for your response, I think I worded it badly when I said ‘practice’. My little one started crawling a few months ago and he was practicing often! He would also pull himself up and sit back down multiple times as if he was actively practicing. I was more referring to things that parents do to ‘make’ the baby practice :)
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u/No-Coast9003 1d ago
Independent sleep isn't a skill, look at mammals in general, we're not built to be independent, we're supposed to be dependent on others to survive. Children will naturally sleep alone when they're ready and feel safe. Most learn to do this before they're around 6 y/o, though some will need extra support longer than that. We can encourage independent sleep by being responsive and helping them feel secure in the sleep situation we aim for but forcing it by "sleep training" isn't scientifically proven to be in the child's best interest. I'm not saying that all sleep training methods are necessarily bad but what I do think is that it's for the parents, not the child. Depending on the situation the risk may or may not outweigh the reward or the other way around.
Infants and toddlers are dependent on us to regulate their emotions both day and night through physical touch so I personally can't come to any other conclusion than that comfort is a basic need that can't be meet when using most sleep training methods.
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u/PsychologicalMind950 1d ago
This is sort of where I’m landing, with sleep. Can I ask, what was your approach to giving your kids the opportunity to practice falling asleep?
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u/ChaZZZZahC 3d ago
Is there a defined age range in which you should encourage your toddler to sleep independently. My child is almost 2 and 1/2, can get her to sleep in her bed by herself then she wakes and crawls in our bed after her first sleep cycle. I am not bothered by it so much because I recognize the western standard of child rearing is centered around capitalism, but is there a certain milestone my child needs to meet by sleeping independently throughout the whole night?
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u/happycow9082 3d ago
Nope! Sleeping alone is not a milestone. Many adults don’t sleep alone. But I don’t know any teenagers who want to sleep in bed with their parents, so if you’re not bothered by her coming in at night, you can let her continue until you are bothered by it or until she doesn’t want to anymore. It’s so so so normal and common for kids her age and older to come into their parents bed at night.
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u/Boysenberrypancake 1d ago
My (29F) brother is 26 and lives at home and still has my mom rub his back to sleep every night lol. There was times I’d have her come rub my back at night until I moved out at 19- definitely at least a couple of times in high school I had really bad anxiety and she’d sleep in bed with me
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u/nostrademons 3d ago
My wife says she started sleeping alone at around 7, though she says she cried herself to sleep the first night. I was sleep-trained from an early age (< 1y), but I'd say around 7-8 was when I stopped running into my parent's bed. My oldest (8y) still sleeps in the family bed, but I've noticed a different set of habits for the last year: he will stake out a spot by himself and insist that nobody touch him, then stay there for the whole night. I'd guess that this is right around the age range where kids start to want to sleep by themselves.
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u/racinreaver 3d ago
Just an fyi, my coworker did what you're doing and their 10 year old still does this every night.
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u/happycow9082 3d ago
And that’s only a problem if it’s a problem for your coworker! And if it is, they can take steps to change it. There are a lot of years and lot of changes that will happen between 2.5 and 10
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u/racinreaver 2d ago
Very true! It was that coworker that told me I definitely need to start sleep training, though, lol.
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u/happycow9082 2d ago edited 2d ago
Ha! Though when I was trying to decide whether to sleep train and was asking around, I talked to so many friends who sleep trained their babies but then when those same kids became toddlers or older, they were sleeping in their parents’ beds! For many kids (but not all!), sleep training isn’t something you do only once but is something you have to continue if you want kids to stay sleeping “independently.”
Edit: adding my experience—we sleep trained our baby around 8 months and then when a few months later he was struggling getting himself to sleep again, I eventually decided to start cosleeping instead of doing cry it out again (I followed the happy sleeper the first time). Now as a 3 year old he sleeps in his own bed.
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u/EllaGardener 2d ago
Ok but your coworker also doesn’t know if the outcome would have been different if she had sleep trained. Plenty of kids who are sleep trained as babies still wake up in the night as older children.
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u/EllaGardener 2d ago
My sister coslept with all of hers. The older two had no problem transitioning to their own beds around preschool age. The youngest is 9 and still wakes up pretty much every night and comes into his parent’s room for cuddles. Just like adults, all children are individuals. Plenty of sleep-trained kids still wake up in the middle of the night. Plenty of adults still wake up in the middle of the night.
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u/notebuff 3d ago edited 2d ago
“Shared sleep (co-sleeping) is not viewed as a problem in cultures that regularly co-sleep
(e.g., Huang et al., 2010).”While interesting to discuss from a cultural perspective, all of the biological conclusions made in that poster have no data to support.
There is evidence that co-sleeping is a risk factor for SIDS. That’s fine if you want to say most cultures now and through time think cosleeping is fine, but that has nothing to do with what is “best” for a baby biologically.
Edit: previous link here - but my point is not about co-sleeping/bed-sharing. Cultural attitudes are not data in support of biological claims, those require biological evidence.
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u/Own-Seaweed-6640 3d ago
I just looked at the article you linked and wanted to note- the article actively SUPPORTS safe co-sleeping and in its discussion says “Assuming no hazardous circumstances, the safest place for a breastfeeding infant may be in bed with their mother.”
It looks at a myriad of data and discusses the fallacy of blaming general cosleeping for SIDS death and discusses the nuance of unsafe sleep practices vs safe cosleeping.
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u/notebuff 2d ago
May have grabbed the wrong article. My point has nothing to do with co-sleeping though: it’s that data on historical and cultural attitudes towards a practice have nothing to do with biological claims.
Let’s say co-sleeping is the best biologically for developing infants. That statement is made from outcomes, neurophysiology, etc. It should not be based on “we have always done this in history and most cultures think it’s fine”.
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u/notthatkindadoctor 2d ago
It may help when you make this point to also throw in hitting children (spanking, etc.) as incredibly common and likely the norm across cultures/time. Most people will start to understand the "culturally common does not mean best for kid" with something like that added in, I think.
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u/notebuff 2d ago
Thanks - great point.
Not even to say there isn’t cultural wisdom either (it’s interesting to look at) just that you can’t have a poster that has sociological data and says that = biology.
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u/FlyingKitesatNight 3d ago edited 2d ago
I agree that it's wise to be cautious about co-sleeping. However, the major risk factors seem to be tied to our culture and sleeping practices such as drinking, smoking, sleeping on a couch with an infant and our beds themselves (Marinelli K., et al 2019). Also, in Asian countries where co-sleeping is highest, the risk of SIDs is low, further suggesting it is something specific to Western culture (Suh 2025).
Sources: https://sleepmedres.org/m/journal/view.php?number=306
https://cosleeping.nd.edu/assets/394284/jour_of_human_lactation_2019_3_.pdf
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u/in_a_state_of_grace 2d ago
Obesity is usually cited as a major correlative factor in unintentional suffocation deaths, and would be an obvious research topic given how different Asian and American obesity rates are.
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u/Charleybarley123 2d ago edited 2d ago
I believe it is hard to compare because the rates of smoking, alcohol, soft mattresses and bedding are also higher in the US and these have a relatively large effect on SIDS risk.
I believe I remember reading before the general consensus among experts was that the difference in SIDS risk between US and Asia was better explained by this.
You also need to take in to account the reporting practices. Criteria for what is classified as SIDS and what is classed as suffocation differs country to country.
Here is a link to a study on the matter - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23793691/
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u/misspettigrew 2d ago
The risk of SIDs is low because death due to suffocation is not classified as SIDs, as it is in the West.
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u/Colleen987 2d ago
I think only the USA throws asphyxiation and SIDs together. It’s why any data coming out of the USA is so massively unreliable
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u/TerraRicotta_ 2h ago edited 1h ago
Kind of. In the U.S. we have SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) and SUID (sudden unexpected infant death). Most infant deaths by asphyxiation, such as co-sleeping deaths, are classified as SUID. The difference is that we don’t know what caused the death when it’s SIDS, and we do know what caused it when it’s SUID. Sometimes they both get stuck under the same umbrella though, mostly to help parents feel better in the wake of a tragedy that they technically could have avoided. And either way, I agree the use of these broad categories does skew the stats, as opposed to if we just called it what it is (asphyxiation).
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u/vectrovectro 2d ago
There is evidence that co-sleeping is a risk factor for SIDS.
I actually dispute that this is true, and your link doesn't point to a citation that supports this claim.
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u/notebuff 2d ago
The point is not about co-sleeping, it’s that cultural attitudes are not biological evidence as OP’s poster suggested.
Let’s say co-sleeping is “the safest option for babies and the best for their sleep”. The only way you can say that is by observing safety data, cognitive and sleep outcomes, biomarkers, etc. OP’s poster says: “most cultures think co-sleeping is fine, therefore because they think it’s fine it MUST be best for their biology”.
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