Which sleep training method fits our family?

There is no best method. There is a method that fits your family, and that's a different kind of question than most lists answer. So below we don't compare them on speed, but on what they ask of you.

The spectrum

Kyra puts the methods on one line, from a lot of parental involvement to minimal support. In between sits a middle group. That's more useful than a list of names, because it shows what you're actually choosing: how much you stay involved.

The gentle side

Fading. You keep your current way of comforting and do a little less of it every day. Rocking gets shorter, then only a hand, then only your voice. That way, falling asleep shifts step by step from you to your child. Slow, and precisely because of that, doable.

Pick up put down. You put your child in bed awake. If your child starts crying, you pick them up right away, and as soon as they're calm you put them back. You repeat that until your child falls asleep on their own. Kyra is honest about it: this takes a lot of patience, and you don't know beforehand how long it will take.

Respectful sleep training. Not a fixed step-by-step plan but an attitude: safety and connection first, and responding to what your child shows you.

The Sleep Lady Shuffle belongs here too: you stay in the room and move toward the door step by step. That's the method of the course, and it's worked out separately in the Sleep Lady Shuffle.

The other side

There you'll find the methods with minimal parental support. The best known is Ferber, where you briefly check in at fixed, increasing intervals and don't step in otherwise. The extreme is cry it out: you put your child in bed awake and leave the rest entirely to them. The course works with the gentler side of this spectrum.

These often work faster. The price is more protest, and for many parents that's the reason not to choose them. That's a legitimate choice and not a weakness.

Why "which one feels right" is the right question

This is Kyra's core point, and it's more practical than it sounds. Choose a method that feels right for you as a family, because only then will you stick to the approach consistently.

A stricter method you give up halfway through the night works worse than a gentler approach you keep up for two weeks. Switching between methods is the fastest way to make things worse: see why sleep training isn't working.

What decides how much crying there is

Three things, and the method is only one of them:

• your child's age
• inconsistency in your own approach
• your child's temperament

That second point is in your own hands, and it weighs more than the choice between two methods. On the third: temperament and sleep coaching.

Before you choose

Every method only works on a foundation that's in place: a fitting rhythm, a fixed routine, and a dark room. Without that, you're asking your child for something the circumstances don't allow.

And check whether the timing is right: when your child is ready.