Self soothing.. what age?

[Tink1987]

Hi everyone 😁 my little one is now 5 weeks old and I’ve been practicing self soothing day and night for him to get himself off to sleep. Don’t get me wrong we do have a cuddle and he goes to sleep too but just don’t want him to rely on me all of the time. I did this with my daughter (although I can’t remember the age I started) and she’s a great sleeper! Always has been. I just don’t know if I’m expecting too much of him because he is still only very young.

Because of this I’m kean to know what your thoughts are on this and if anyone else did it? If others did it what age were the children? Thankyou ☺️ x

Hello what you're doing is extremely great and very beneficial for your baby and yourself. My coworker(nursery teachers) studied child dev from birth to 2 years old specifically and she's told me self soothing starts from birth. So keep up what you're doing

I think this isn’t entirely right IMO. ‘Self soothing’ is developmental and actually the brain doesn’t start to do this on its own until at least 2/2 and a half. That doesn’t mean you can’t guide babies towards independent sleep with things like swaddles, dummies/thumb sucking. A 5 week old will not be able to self sooth! They don’t even know they’re out in the world.

Well - my first didn't do this until 2+ years but my second has done it from early on (weeks). My first was very obviously not going to do it - crying straight away. My second more contented all around and just lies in cot and drifts off.

Thinks it worth a try and he will soon let you know if he isn't happy xx

With my 3, when they’re out of the Moses basket, kind of sleeping through, I’d put in a bath, book, bottle/boob - into the cot with a mobile on, and they’d settle. I think being relaxed about it helps, if you do it young they know no different.

7 week old - I sometimes feed and hold to sleep, sometimes walk in the pram/sling, sometimes in a swing and sometimes she falls asleep alone in the cot/bouncy chair or on a mat. I think the most important thing is to have lots of different ways for them to get to sleep, with my eldest I always fed to sleep every nap and bedtime and it became a habit to break. Subsequent babies I have tried to get them to settle all different ways from birth.
At bedtime I feed then put her in her cot - sometimes she grumbles a bit and then falls asleep, sometimes she cries so I pat her to sleep.

I put my twins down awake.
Not sure about self soothing though as they had dummies. They gave up the dummies at 15 months by themselves

I agree there's a difference between self soothing as in calming themselves down when upset (my 7 year old still needs help sometimes) and going to sleep independently and without upset - which babies can do from birth.

There is an opinion amount child psychologists (that I agree with) that you can start teaching basics of independent sleep as soon as the baby begins to smile. It means he/she has got sufficient cognitive skills to begin differentiating between night and day, responding to bedtime routine and developing his/her own independent settling methods. Of course, it is just a start and the actual journey may take time but I personally found that starting early makes it easier in the long run.

Starting early for me meant following EASY routine during the day and re-settling DD during the night (initially - from midnight to 6am and eventually extending the stretch) without feeding. By 12 weeks DD consistently slept 7pm to 7am with one dream feed at 11pm.

I think it varies for each baby. If I leave my 14 week old to fall asleep on his own, he’ll cry and become overtired. I don’t want to leave him crying so I’ll pick him up and soothe him, then he’ll usually fall asleep.