17/03/2020
What is a negative sleep association/prop?
A sleep association is anything your baby uses to fall asleep and to stay asleep/resettle. So if they need someone to come in to replace/resettle using those same things you know it is a negative sleep association. It only becomes negative when it no longer becomes sustainable, for instance baby isnāt sleeping for long, your exhausted, baby is unhappy due to not getting enough sleep and its starting to affect your everyday life. Most common ones are:
Dummy, Feed to sleep, Rock to sleep, pat to sleep, hold hands to sleep, bounce to sleep.
However your child is falling asleep is how they want to be resettled. Say you baby is currently falling asleep with you rocking them, as they transition between sleep cycles your little one is naturally going to wake up looking for you to come back and rock them again to fall back to sleep resulting in cat napping and frequent night waking. When sleep training we remove these sleep props and gently teach your bub how to self-settle so they are able to fall asleep and stay asleep independently which is such an important skill that they will then have for life! āØ