Ethos

Position STATEMENT: What is sleep training?

It can be hard to know what is and isn’t sleep training at first, especially with the slick marketing of sleep consultants. This make it very tricky for a tired parent to distinguish techniques that have been cushioned and trussed up with words that sound gentle and caring. For us, sleep training is any action which draws a line in the sand about what comfort a parent is willing to provide their child.

TBSTP Perspective:Responsive Feeding

Regardless of what your baby is fed, every parent can feed responsively. Bottle feeding does not need to go hand-in-hand with schedules and sleep training as popular myth would have us believe – you can parent gently and responsively with a bottle.

Position STATEMENT: Safe Sleep

We take safety seriously. That means we work hard to ensure that members are aware of the current research and recommendations experts in baby safety. We encourage our members to look at risks logically and teach people to reduce risks, be they bedsharing or cot sleeping. Whatever the sleep set-up, we advocate for babies to sleep in the same room as a caregiver day and night for 12 months, and explain why different practices are dangerous or present risks.

TBSTP Perspective: Supporting Parents’ Mental Health

One of the key understandings for people who are committed to responsive parenting, day and night, is to recognise that your own physical and mental health are not at odds with your baby’s needs, or your desire to parent gently. 

TBSTP Perspective: night weaning

At The Beyond Sleep Training Project we encourage parents to consider waiting until around 18 months of age as a minimum before beginning night weaning, from the bottle or the breast. Why? Because an 18 month old has a much better understanding of time, and language than a 12 month old (or younger) and can therefore better comprehend the changes.

Position STATEMENT: Car Seat Safety

We advocate for extended rear facing car seats as the safest option when travelling with infants, toddlers and young children. We work to make sure that members are aware that laws are minimum recommendations, and to help members understand best practices.

TBSTP Perspective: Crying In Arms

Sometimes babies cry no matter what we do to try to soothe them. However, we also see a trend for parents and parenting bloggers to use crying in arms as a purposeful technique or as justification for not meeting their child’s actual needs. Crying in arms can still be extremely distressing and traumatic for a baby when they are needing something more than to be simply held, therefore we do not support the concept of “necessary stress release crying”.