Sleep Training Won't Hurt, Might Help My mother may still be laughing. She called last night to report the results of a study, just published online in the journal Pediatrics and apparently scoring a TV sound-bite-of-the-moment, confirming that "behavioral techniques" for helping infants "learn to self settle and sleep independently" have no long-lasting negative effects. "We used to pat you on the bottom and tell you it would be all right, to just go to sleep, and eventually you did," she said, between some very undignified giggles. I tried to assure her that I was still suffering from her neglect, but she was too busy remembering my desperate attempts to get my first baby to sleep, which amused her to no end at the time, too. As the researchers and authors report, modern parents have "unproven concerns" about the "patting on the bottom" technique (which they would call "controlled comforting") and other behavioral interventions. But after a five-year follow-up of families' participating in a randomized trial, no long-term differences, either positive or negative, were found between families helped to use behavioral techniques to teach infant sleep and those left to their own devices. But the targeted intervention did help at the time: families who were given techniques to teach their babies to sleep did report lessened infant sleep problems and maternal depression. We therefore conclude that parents can feel confident using, and health professionals can feel confident offering, behavioral techniques such as controlled comforting and camping out for managing infant sleep. The controversial, all-in "crying it out" technique wasn't one of those offered in the study (it causes, said the researchers, too much infant and parent distress). Both the controlled comforting and camping out are considered "gentler." I found a useful description of both, with strategies, here, from the Royal Children's Hospital. And as much as I'm chuckling, with my mother, over the amount of angst young parents can bring to the question of getting baby to sleep through even part of the night, I remember the desperation of those constant 1, 3 and 4 a.m. wake-ups all too well. When you're sleepless, uncertain, and new to this parenthood thing, this is the kind of practical research that actually helps.