Written by Smadar Zmirin, Twin Specialist
Smadar Zmirin is a twin specialist with 15 years' experience and the founder of Twinful Life. With her extensive experience and twin-oriented early childhood education approach, Smadar provides exclusive services for twin families to help parents raise twins with peace and joy.
There is a lot of fear spreading online these days about the impacts of sleep training and parent-child relationships, and how it may compromise secure attachment in the long- term. So let’s take a closer look into what toxic stress is, what sleep training is and isn’t, and how the process can benefit rather than interfere with parent-child relationships.
What is toxic stress?
There are three different types of stress:
Positive stress
Tolerable stress
And Toxic stress.
Toxic stress can impact children’s brain development, social and emotional skills, and ongoing physical development. It has serious long-term consequences, and it should be avoided at all costs.
The American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) research into toxic stress and its impact on the development of young children states:
“In contrast to positive or tolerable stress, toxic stress is defined as the excessive or prolonged activation of the physiologic stress response systems in the absence of the buffering protection afforded by stable, responsive relationships.”
Toxic stress is unhealthy levels of stress that arise due to prolonged exposure to stressful experiences without support. In these instances, children are left unsupported in an emotional and psychological state of stress and anxiety.
This is not the case in a professional sleep training programme.
While some forms of settling techniques involve more or less support from caregivers, the process is never devoid of support. Likening sleep training to childhood adversities, which can result in toxic stress, is a big misrepresentation of what sleep training is.
Can sleep training cause toxic stress?
Supporting children to learn to settle in their cots or to self-settle with the nurturing guidance of caregivers falls under the category of tolerable stress, much like the first day at preschool. It can be challenging, it can be hard, yet it is not unsupported.
The guide for Toxic Stress and the different types of stress from The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University helps shed light on what happens to children when they experience stress. Following their guidance, it is easy to see how sleep training will not cause your baby to experience toxic stress.
While some parents do not feel comfortable letting their babies cry for long, that does not mean that when their babies do cry, they are experiencing emotional neglect or are at risk of toxic stress. Babies who have siblings cannot have their needs met at all times and do need to wait, sometimes while crying. This does not mean their parents aren’t attending to their needs or dismissing their crying.
Crying isn’t pleasant for anyone to hear, yet parents who wish to minimise their babies’ crying can still help them sleep better.
Sleep, stress, and maternal well-being
While advocates for gentle parenthood and attachment parenthood point out the importance of prompt response to babies' cues and attending to their needs, it is equally important to address maternal mental health, well-being and needs.
Lack of sleep and sleep deprivation raise the chances of postnatal depression and anxiety (PND/ NDA). Mothers who cannot sleep well and who wish to attend to their babies’ needs as soon as possible are experiencing elevated anxiety and stress levels, which impact their mental health.
When your babies don’t sleep well due to accumulated sleep deprivation, they will struggle to link sleep cycles and enter deep sleep. Thus, they will wake up too early crying, and get tired quickly after their sleep finished. The result is unsettled babies who are desperate for sleep, who cannot engage in play, and who are easily irritable.
We all know how hard it is to tolerate anything when we are overtired. We don’t eat well, we struggle to concentrate, we are easily annoyed, and we simply can’t handle life very well.
The same goes for overtired babies. Sleep regulates appetite and mood and is crucial for learning and development. It is when memories are stored, and frankly, we can’t function without it.
The Harvard Medical School video about Why Sleep Matters explains it in detail here.
Sleep is a biological need, like food and water. While learning to settle independently can take some time to learn, it is not an indication of less supportive or attentive parenthood. Having two unsettled babies who are tired and irritable at the same time adds to the mother’s existing stress levels due to her own fatigue. Asking her to promptly attend to her babies’ every need is rather harsh, considering she needs to look after herself too.
A study by Dr Jodi Mindell et al. examines the reduction of parental stress and successful sleep training. The study used four types of techniques, ranging from hands-on to hands-free. The study shows that parents who intervened less had greater success in supporting their babies to settle to sleep. The duration of babies’ crying reduced faster, and parental stress reduced significantly within one week. It isn’t hard to assume that when crying and stress are reduced, parent-baby relationships can improve, too.
After many years of working with parents and babies, and settling babies to sleep on my own, I can vouch that this is my 1st hand experience too. When babies learn to settle on their own, they sleep better and longer, they are in a better mood and eat more, they cry less during the day and when trying to settle to sleep, and their parents’ mental health improves.
Will my twins experience toxic stress while sleep training?
Crying is a baby’s means of communication. Babies cry when they are tired, hungry, upset, disappointed, hurt, sad, uncomfortable, etc. It’s natural and it is important. We can then know they need something.
Twins learn early on that sometimes they will need to wait before someone attends to their needs. It’s part of their reality. If your baby needs to wait for their feed because you haven’t finished feeding their twin, they might get loud and unsettled, yet they do not experience toxic stress.
The same goes for sleep training. One or both twins might need to wait (how long is a personal decision depending on the method you choose to use), yet they are at no risk of experiencing toxic stress. They will receive support and be comforted. That is the difference between a supportive and unsupportive environment.
Furthermore, your relationship with them is not affected. As long as caregivers nurture a loving and responsive relationship throughout the day, the stress babies feel when life is challenging will return to baseline levels when they are offered support.
While you may not be able to use a completely no-cry settling method with your twins, as they require a 1:1 adult-baby ratio at all times, you can employ a gentle settling technique that involves minimal crying.
You can find out more about gentle sleep training with twins in my blog post.
Will sleep training damage my babies’ brains?
As noted above, given that sleep training does not cause toxic stress experiences, your baby’s brain will not be affected by learning to self-settle or settle in the cot. Sleep training is a process of supporting babies in developing self-settling skills, co-regulating to assist in self-soothing, and reducing parental assistance in settling to sleep to promote independent settling.
The notion that sleep training will impact parent-child relationships or compromise secure attachment is also not based on research but rather speculated. There is no evidence to suggest that parents who have sleep trained their babies are less responsive, supportive or loving than those who chose not to sleep train.
The article Is Sleep Training Harmful offers a deep dive into online fear-mongering around sleep training. It examines the facts behind misused research to paint a grim picture of sleep training and its long-term impacts on parent-child relationships and a child’s brain development.
The author quotes Dr Mindell:
“Studies show no long-term negative psychological effects of sleep training through at least five years out. Unfortunately, no studies have been done looking at 20 or 30 years later; instead, there is just speculation.
However, based on science, it is highly doubtful that a few nights of sleep training that leads to improved sleep and family well-being is going to result in long-term harm.
Equating a few nights of sleep training within the context of a loving, responsive home to long-term neglect and abuse is fear-mongering. Families need to decide for themselves what fits with their parenting style and work best for their family and baby.”
If you don’t want to sleep train your babies, that is 100% your decision to make, it is not for everyone. Yet I will argue it is a valid choice for many parents, and it should stay a personal decision for every family to make.
You can read more about peer pressure not to sleep train your twins in my blog post.
Read more from Smadar Zmirin
Smadar Zmirin, Twin Specialist
Smadar started her twin journey when she got her first job as a twin nanny. Quickly realising the impact adults have on twins’ well-being and emotional development, Smadar felt drawn to advocating for and supporting each child’s unique identity and independence. She established Twinful Life to support twin families raising emotionally healthy twins, and became a twin-oriented early childhood educator.
