Teaching a Baby to Self Soothe

When new parents start out life with their new born life, all is new, strange, scary, fascinating and exciting. But after a few days, weeks or months of possibly not sleeping well we as parents start to hear these words.

"Babies need to learn how to 'self soothe' otherwise they will never be good sleepers".

I think first we need to look at who is backing this myth and where it has come from.
When I first heard these words it was from one of my Plunket nurses, she said these words to a large group of new mothers, we (the Plunket nurse, new mothers and I) then went on to talk about how to "train" our babies to self sooth with controlled crying (well I of course didn't encourage CC).
I'm sure there are many other originations around the world like Plunket who support this idea of self soothing but they don't seem to have any backing such as research or studies to show that children do in fact become bad sleepers if not left to cry.

Carrying on with my discussion group of new Mothers I would have to say nothing really came of the talk as the Plunket nurse could not commit to any length of time that was safe to leave the baby (this was after a talk which was on the damages to a baby's brain development from prolonged crying) and no mother there really felt that any time was right.
I feel that this comment by the Nurse about - needing to learn how to self soothe - is very irresponsible, very untrue as well as creating more stress and pressure on new parents. These words are often said to a new parent as something they must do to their children. The parents are left with little guidance or understanding of what "self soothing" actually is and really why they should do it and are the reasons really a part of the parents beliefs.

I suppose we must look at the reasons why we feel we 'must' train our babies to self soothe.
For a start, organizations like Plunket, like to enforce cot/crib sleeping and sleeping alone.
Co-sleeping is a another whole question which I have and will answer in time but if you would like to see some good web sites like the Mother Baby Sleep Lab or this article on "why babies should never sleep alone" or Ask Dr Sears or Baby Reference (yes I know this web site needs up dating but it does have really good information) to help you on your way.
In the short we are taught in our culture that babies must sleep alone these teaching seem to be based on fear and sex (the lack of, the seeing of).
Baby sleeping alone can be very draining for parents who then need to get up and down all night to re-settle their children. This is also very draining for a poor breastfeeding Mother who has to get out of bed to go into another room to feed her baby.

So here is born the need to learn how to "self soothe".
It is born from the myth that children must sleep alone in another room. It is born from the need to quell parent’s fears hearing their children cry out for them in the middle of the night (or even the middle of the day).
It is enforced by organizations like Plunket whose information come out of yesteryear and it is spurred on by "Chinese Whispers" of fear through our communities.
If we take away the idea that children must be in another room to "learn" how to sleep and replace it with they should be with their parents to learn how to sleep…then the whole need for "teaching a baby how to self soothe" becomes a non-event as they learn from their parents each night how to become good healthy sleepers.
Learning by following example or mirroring is how we learn best as young humans.
We as parents also need to learn that this learning takes time and may be done at a different time from other children…but in the end we all do learn how to sleep.