A Plea to Parents – Please stop capping naps, controlling wake windows, and waking babies to feed them at night (unless your pediatrician has advised it due to low weight, growth issues, or other reasons aligned with medical recommendations).
This is common advice now all over the internet and in at least one major sleep consultant’s DIY “Sleep Training” program. And it is training the brain out of an evolutionary brilliance. One built over thousands of years – called the circadian rhythms.
By the time parents come to me, the call opens like this…
The common result: We sleep trained at four months (too early), and 5 months later, my baby wakes multiple times in the first part of the night, or at odd hours, then wakes for long periods in the night, has difficulty returning to sleep, seems tired all the time, but resists sleep and thinks morning wake-up is at 4 am. In an effort to correct this chaos, parents increase wake windows, cap naps, and adjust bedtimes or create strict schedules to increase “sleep pressure” and correct what has become a habit. This leads to more of the same and frustration for the whole family. No one’s fault – just bad advice for this particular baby. It works for some babies, but not for all, and not for most.
The bad news – but good news ahead: This baby is in a classic “split night” and “early morning wake” cycle. This is what happens when a baby’s natural homeostatic drive is constantly interrupted. By forcing a baby to wake up when their brain is demanding deep sleep, and then forcing them to stay awake when their brain is demanding rest, the entire circadian system loses its anchor.
Loving, well-intentioned parents come to me confused and saddened, needing “repair work” when a child’s internal regulatory system has been overridden by a clock for months. Their intentions were loving, and yet their baby has lost the natural ability to sleep when tired and wake when sleep is sated.
The good news – but first more bad news: And the solution to correct this for the baby is (sadly and often) too big a trade-off for the parent. The solution is: let your baby sleep when your baby is tired, and wake when sleep is sated, even if it is after a 3-and-a-half-hour nap. Keep the room dark at night and expose your baby to sunlight during the day. Do not use blackout shades for naps. This baby needs a major reset, and it will take a while. Likely longer than you are willing to tolerate. Let your baby eat when she is hungry and don’t feed her if she is not hungry.
Return to a rhythm that is attuned and follows your baby’s cues
and communication.
This is how you know it is working – you experience the exact thing you were trying to avoid – chaos and entropy. The result of this correction is more chaos and more interrupted sleep until the baby’s natural rhythms are restored. And this can take over a month, depending on how long this has been tried. And since most families choose this method to avoid that in the first place — the solution looks like the 9th circle of Dante’s frozen river of hell. Especially if a parent has OCD, ADHD, anxiety, depression, or perfectionism.
If babies had a say in this….
A Letter from Your Baby: Please Just Let Me Sleep Already
Dear Mom and Dad,
I’m not a project to be managed, and I’m not a machine with a “reset” button. I am a human being with a brain that has been perfecting the art of survival for thousands of years.
When you wake me up from a deep sleep because a clock on the wall says I’ve had “too much,” you aren’t helping me. You’re confusing my nervous system. You’re teaching me that I can’t trust my own body when it tells me it needs rest.
When you “cap my naps” to build “pressure,” you aren’t making me sleep better at night—you’re making me overtired. And when my brain is overtired, it produces cortisol and adrenaline just to keep me going. That’s why I’m screaming at 2:00 AM, up for an hour or more, and wide awake at 4:30 AM. My rhythms are broken. I don’t know when I’m hungry or when I’m tired anymore because I’ve been told my internal signals are wrong.
Please, just stop.
Stop trying to squeeze me into a schedule that makes modern-day life easier but makes my brain feel like it’s in a blender. I have a built-in biological clock—a circadian rhythm—that wants to sync with the sun and with you.
I don’t need a “program.” I need a rhythm.
- Feed me when I’m hungry.
- Let me sleep until my brain is done resting.
- If you must wake me, wait until I’m stirring in light sleep, not when I’m in the basement of a deep cycle.
Treat me like a person, not a set of data points. Let me learn the language of my own body, and I promise, I will find my way to sleep—just like every human has since the beginning of time.
Love,
Your Baby
Now – Be Gentle with Yourself
You were likely following guidance that you trusted and believed was best at the time. Most parents are doing that—making decisions in good faith with the information they have.
If reading this brings up discomfort or regret, that’s part of the human process of realizing how complex early caregiving really is. Repair is not only possible—it’s normal. Babies and parents are remarkably adaptive, and relationships reorganize and heal through continued contact, attention, and responsiveness.
We all miss things as parents. We all screw something up. Not one of us gets it perfectly right. The work is not about perfection, but about noticing, adjusting, and staying in relationship.
Your child does not need perfection from you. They need enough consistency, warmth, and repair to safely return to connection. That is what builds resilience.
And yes—there is often grief or guilt in seeing this more clearly. That, too, is part of becoming a more conscious parent. It passes more easily when it is allowed to move rather than when it is avoided.
What remains is simple: you and your child are still here, still shaping each other, still able to rework the rhythm between you. Your baby is incredibly resilient, and in the loving container of your bond, all can be re-formed.
An Invitation To Guilt https://compassionatesleepsolutions.com/2025/03/an-invitation-to-guilt-once-it-shows-up-we-might-as-well-invite-it-in-for-tea/
