A method to promote sleep in crying infants using the transport response [pdf]
For kids over 1 year, some sanity saving notes (I have more than 4 kids, was about to go crazy when I got my second and then learned the things below):<p>- everyone wakes halfway up multiple times each night to see if everything is OK. Make sure they don&#x27;t fall asleep with anything that can&#x27;t stay with them during the night: music, tv, light, food, drink or another person (you or others).<p>- to teach kids to sleep, make them feel safe about it. What I did was walking in at a fixed schedule, starting at exact 3 minutes between the first night (I used a digital kitchen timer back then, a smartphone later) and increasing by two minutes every night. Surprisingly fast, my kids learn that I didn&#x27;t disappear, and he&#x27;ll be around even if they don&#x27;t cry. Once they realized this they started playing with the toy the were allowed to keep in the bed. But, keep in mind: don&#x27;t stop coming back if they are silent. A major part of the idea is that they realize that they don&#x27;t have to do anything to make sure we don&#x27;t forget them. Oh: and keep a very close ear with them in the beginning so they don&#x27;t wake up and think they are alone.<p>I never really could get myself to accept the idea that &quot;they need to cry themselves to sleep&quot; and every thing I tried before this didn&#x27;t work on my oldest.<p>This worked on my oldest kid, she started sleeping through the night within a week and also became calmer and I got my sleep back. With the rest of them it took 2-3 days only since I started earlier (shortly after they was a year old).<p>Maybe other methods work too, but this was easy for us and we didn&#x27;t have to let the kids cry to sleep or anything else I have seen recommended online that I didn&#x27;t like.