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True self-soothing requires capacities that younger infants don't yet have.

The ability to self-soothe depends on the child’s age, temperament, and the amount/duration of distress.

Coregulation—soothing in relationship—builds the neurological foundation that true self-soothing grows from.

"Hi…um, I'm worried because my six-week-old just does not know how to self-soothe. He needs me to hold him, and if I let him cry, he just can't calm down on his own. What am I doing wrong?"

To read most sleep advice, it would seem that teaching a baby to self-soothe is the most important task of parenting—and if parents don't establish this skill right from the start, their child could struggle for years. Parents are warned that rocking or feeding a baby to sleep puts a full stop on the child's ability to do it themselves. Expert advice submits that crying (even intensely or for a decent period of time) followed by falling asleep means that the baby has “learned to self-soothe.”

When you examine this from a developmental perspective, it's curious. Nowhere else in childrearing do we tell parents that the only way a child learns is in the absence of help. We don't hand a child a bike and say, "I can't help you or you'll never learn." No—parents hold on for dear life, then gradually let go as the child starts to find their balance. They don’t stay totally hands off, and they don't keep hanging on. It's a dance between capacity and growth.

This is what self-soothing advice consistently misses: development and capacity. The ability to tolerate and manage distress is not a given but grows with the brain and nervous system (Gee, 2016).

The Theory Behind Self-Soothing Advice

Self-soothing advice is rooted in behaviorism—a theory from the 1920s that holds that babies arrive as blank slates, shaped entirely by which behaviors are reinforced. If you respond to a crying baby, the thinking goes, you're teaching them that crying “works.” The problem is that behaviorism does not consider biology, development, or temperament as relevant. It puts enormous pressure on parental behavior and ignores most of what actually influences behavior.

What "Self-Soothing" Actually........

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