crying, trained night

Trained night crying, trained night waking, or trained night feeding refers to habitual waking and crying several times a night that starts at around 7-8 months of age. It often appears in a child who was sleeping well before, and is blamed on a variety of erroneous causes (teething pain being #1). It is the result of habitually rocking or nursing a baby to sleep in the early months of life.

The problem arises because the child starts having normal adult-type arousals every 90 minutes or so beginning at around 7 to 8 months of age, and then finds himself unable to settle back to sleep without assistance.

This problem is almost invariably exacerbated by the appearance of a phase of intense separation anxiety at about the same age.

For this reason, parents who ignore the advice to let baby fall asleep in his own crib do so at their own peril. The cure for this problem involves retraining a proper habit for going to sleep, and teaching the child to separate gradually without stimulating intense fear and crying (that is, NOT to make the child "cry it out.") This is of course the method taught on my most excellent video.

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