Sleep trainer vs responsive sleep coach, whats the difference?

Is there a difference between sleep trainers and holistic responsive sleep coaches? And does it even matter? I will let you be the judge of that once you have more information (see below).

I get asked regularly if it matters who you get to support you with your child’s sleep, one person kindly messaged me recently and suggested I “stop trying to make it sound like you do something special, all sleep consultants are the peddling the same sh!t”. This isn’t true, but I can see how parents think this, it is hard to tell the trees from the forest. So let’s break it down so you can understand the options you have when it comes to sleep support for your family.

Ultimately the choice you make for your family is the right one. Some families will resonate with one modality than the other and that’s okay. What matters is that parents have all the information and are able to make a decision based on facts and what they believe will fit their family best. This means it is important parents are educated on the different sleep support approaches so that they are aware of what they are buying when they are accessing support for sleep.

I often work with families who were guided by a sleep trainer who said they are a “gentle sleep trainer”, they say this because they don’t suggest anything that will make anyone uncomfortable or suggest a baby cries alone, however, after a week or so of working together that is indeed what the sleep trainer is suggesting, so how does this happen and why are parents being sold one thing and delivered another? The answer comes down to the education of that sleep coach/sleep trainer. The education difference between sleep trainers and holistic responsive sleep coaches lies in the premise of how they are trying to implement change and their background in how infant sleep works (sleep biology). So let’s unpack this below.

Parents deserve to have ALL the information so they can then make informed decisions.

Sleep trainers:

Sleep trainers are trained in techniques and strategies that are all behavioural-based. What does behavioural-based mean? It means they work on principals from the first wave of behavioural research in the 1930’s and 1940’s. These principals suggest that if you change how you respond to your baby, then the baby will change their behaviour. If we rip these foundational principles down to their core, they imply that:

• A baby is choosing the behaviour they are presenting with when it comes to sleep

• A baby has the cognitive brain power to manipulate the parent

• The way a baby sleeps is a representation of how the parent treats the baby and therefore the fault of the parent

• Sleep is a learned skill and is something that is able to be taught

All of the above principles are unfounded, have no evidence to support them and are simply incorrect. A baby does not have the brain power to manipulate a parent, sleep is not a learned skill (it is a biological process), a baby crying is not “protest crying” because they don’t want to be alone, they are communicating based on their primitive needs and their innate knowledge of how to stay safe (by keeping a caregiver close).

There is an entire multibillion-dollar industry built on the above premise (that sleep is a learned skill and needs to be taught to babies). 3 years ago I needed help with sleep and the only place I could find help with sleep was from the sleep training industry. But now, parents have options, there is a new wave of sleep support gracing it’s presence upon families and it is VERY exciting, up-to-date, evidence-based and works wonders for taking the stress out of sleep for parents.

Sleep trainers that use behavioural techniques typically use:

• Extinction crying

• Intermittent soothing

• Pick up, put down

• Discuss teaching babies to self soothe

• Have set routines and naps based on how old the child is (to be fair there are averages here, so holistic coaches will work with the averages as well, but it is used as a tool to explore where your child sits on the spectrum of how much sleep they need based on their age, rather than “this is what they should be doing”.

I guess, to some extent, I am part of that multi-billion dollar industry (as a sleep coach), the difference being that as a holistic responsive sleep coach my approach to supporting families with sleep differs from the above paradigm. Ultimately I would love to do enough education that what I teach becomes common knowledge, how amazing would it be if sleep coaches weren’t needed because as a society we all understood how infant sleep worked and it was handed down from generation to generation?

Holistic responsive sleep coaches:

Holistic responsive sleep coaches focus on supporting families with what is biologically normal when it comes to infant sleep. This means we work within the realm of what a baby is biologically, physically and emotionally capable of based on recent research, attachment science and infant brain development.

Responsive sleep coaches don’t use any behavioural techniques which means no extinction crying, no cry it out alone (this doesn’t mean no crying), no intermittent soothing, no spaced soothing, no gentle sleep training, no ferber techniques or any other names that jump to mind from the sleep training industry. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes there is crying, crying is communication, and isn’t a bad thing, sometimes when we hold a boundary that is upsetting for a baby, but the difference is that it is always supported when crying rather than crying alone and unsupported.

It is important to remember that sleep happens in a state of calm (in rest and digest mode), sleep cannot happen in a state of fear (fight or flight mode). This is something holistic responsive sleep coaches excel in, we help families and little ones feel safe so they can sleep to the best of their ability.

So how in the world do we create changes for sleep?

• We work on optimising the biological processes that promote sleep and work on supporting families to optimise sleep based on what is normal for that child given their age and stage

• We figure out what your child’s sleep needs are in a 24 hour period

• We help you learn their communication cues

• We help you figure out what sleep structure would suit your baby and your family best

• We remove all the “should’s and shouldn’ts” from the sleep work and focus on what works for you and your family

• There is no set schedules or strict timings

• We optimise the child’s circadian rhythm

• We figure out how to optimise your child’s sleep pressure

• We look at parental sleep quality as well and give you strategies to increase parental sleep amongst the chaos that is infant sleep

We can’t make promises that we have a magic fix for sleep, and we don’t say your baby should be sleeping through the night or that you are reinforcing wakes by responding to your child. Because these things are simply incorrect and have no evidence base to them. What we do is support families to create more sustainable sleep in a way that suits them and allows them to respond to their children when they signal they need support.

A baby’s brain is wired to be responded to 24 hours a day, not just 50% of that time.

The thing is when we strip it all back and look at how sleep actually works from a biological perspective. Sleep is a biological function and not something that can be forced, and is certainly not something that can be taught because sleep is not a learned skill, it is a biological process. We cannot force an infant to sleep if they don’t have a biological drive to sleep.

Sleep is not a learned skill, so when you take a step back and start making that biology work to the best of it’s ability while holding space for what “normal infant sleep” actually looks like then families have a fighting chance to make sleep more sustainable for them. Does that mean the aim is to get a baby to sleep through the night and take 3-hour lunch naps? Not often. Often we don’t need to “fix” our babies’ sleep. We need to support them to sleep in a way that is unique to them which can make life a lot easier.

Have you ever been in a pitch black room, standing over a cot of an infant who should be sleeping according to their “age-based sleep schedule”, yet they won’t sleep? This is a prime example of how the sleep training industry can be problematic. All babies are different humans, have different temperaments and have different sleep needs. If you have a baby that doesn’t fit into a set schedule with X amount of sleep in a day, you can literally drive yourself to the edge of sanity trying to get them to sleep, when they just don’t need to be asleep. Alternatively, if you have a child that fits the age-based schedules well, then power to you, and rock that.

In today’s day and age there is a lot of information floating around about sleep and a lot of the information is conflicting or difficult to make sense of, this drives up anxiety for parents when it comes to sleep. The bottom line is that sleep will look different for every baby, and that is okay, taking the stress out of sleep is key. That is where holistic responsive sleep coaches excel.

When a family works with a holistic responsive sleep coach the skills they pick up when learning how to navigate sleep last with them a lifetime. Holistic sleep coaches work with families to help them UNDERSTAND how sleep works and how to navigate it, which means parents can continue to navigate sleep successfully moving forward, NOT just have a band-aid fix for the next month or until the next developmental phase.

It is incredible the positive influence you can have on a family’s sleep when you understand they are guided to make sleep work in a way that actually works for them.

If you want to read more about the myth of self-soothing you can do that by clicking here. If you want to understand why sleep training works for some families and not others (that is the part that sleep trainers don’t often share, how often sleep training doesn’t work for families!) you can read that by clicking here.

Holistic responsive sleep coaches work with sleep biology (sleep science) to help families make changes to the whole family’s sleep (not just the baby’s sleep) to allow for a more sustainable sleep set-up for everyone. Is it a magic bullet? Is it a quick fix? Not always, but you can guarantee you will walk away with real-life skills that are able to be applied to get the best long-term sleep outcomes possible. Sometimes it is about the long-term game rather than the short-term game. If you are having difficulty with sleep and sleep training doesn’t feel right for you, then holistic responsive sleep support is a great option. Alternatively, if you would like to learn more about how to make sleep more sustainable from the get-go, holistic responsive sleep support is a winner.

In the next blog I will share how to tell if someone is a sleep trainer or a holistic responsive sleep coach. Stay tuned!