Sleep training (sometimes known as sleep coaching) is a set of parental (or caregiver) intervention techniques with the end goal of increasing nightly sleep in infants and young children, addressing “sleep concerns”, and decreasing nighttime signalling. Although the diagnostic criteria for sleep issues in infants is rare and limited, sleep training is usually approached by parents or caregivers self identifying supposed sleep issues.[1]
The idea of early independence and sleep training in babies was promoted by Dr. Luther Emmett Holt, who published The Care and Feeding of Children in 1894. This is widely believed to be the basis from which, modern sleep training has evolved. Popular methods of sleep training include extinction or “cry it out”, the Ferber method, The Chair Approach, and more improvised “gentle” methods.
Sleep training tends to be popular in countries such as the USA and UK, and is mostly unheard of in societies that practice cultural cosleeping.[2]