Want a good night’s sleep? Let the baby cry, say psychologists

The Telegraph:

For academics claim to have shown that letting an infant cry itself to sleep is the best way to ensure a good night’s rest for all.

While most babies sleep through five or six night a week by the age of six months, according to the study by American psychologists, a third continue to wake much more frequently until they are toddlers.

They looked at sleep patterns in 1,200 children from birth to three years and found ‘wakers’ tended to be boys. They also tended to be breast fed.

The research was led Marsha Weinraub, professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. She concluded that babies should be left to go to sleep on their own – even if that meant they cried for a bit.

Doing so enabled them to learn how to “self soothe” and settle themselves to sleep on their own, which also gave frazzled parents a break, she argued.

Read the whole story: The Telegraph