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Why newborn babies don’t need sleep training
Are you a new parent worrying about whether your baby is sleeping enough or how long they should nap for? A new book by our world-leading baby sleep expert, Professor Helen Ball, could be just what you need.
The book, called How Babies Sleep, gives practical advice to parents to help them understand and navigate the first 365 nights with a new baby, based on scientific evidence.
Parents’ expectations
One key message from it is that newborn babies do not need to be trained to sleep. Helen believes it is not baby sleep that needs fixing but parents’ expectation of it.
Helen has seen that in a lot of Western societies, the pressure to control babies’ sleep patterns to fit in with parents’ lives is getting worse. The influx of baby sleep coaches, sleep monitors and apps is adding to this. Helen argues that this mismatch is incorrectly described as ‘baby sleep problems’ with parents trying to find ways to fix them.
Young babies rarely have sleep problems, but parents will often think they do if they are not ‘sleeping through the night’ soon enough or their baby’s sleep doesn’t match their ideal schedule.
Baby’s sleep
Helen, who is Director of the Durham Infancy & Sleep Centre and a Professor of Anthropology, has carried out sleep research with more than 5,000 parents and babies over the last 30 years.
In the book, Helen teaches parents how to harmonise their needs with those of their baby and give them the confidence to reject approaches that feel uncomfortable.
Tips in the book include letting your baby snooze in a light room during the day rather than close the curtains. This avoids babies having mini night-time sleeps during the day which can disrupt their sleep at night.
Common questions
The book shines a light on common questions from parents such as “If I pick up my baby too often, will I spoil them?”, “Someone online said that the way I’m using a dummy for my baby is not good. Are they right?” and “Should I leave my baby to cry it out at night?”.
Helen advises against sleep training where parents let babies cry when they wake up at night to encourage them to self-soothe. She argues that this stems from previous generations’ advice that parents had to show babies they were in charge and get them into a routine of sleeping.
Find out more
- How Babies Sleep - A Factful Guide to the First 365 Days and Nights, by Professor Helen Ball, is published by Penguin Cornerstone Press.
- Take a look at Baby Sleep Info Source (Basis) which provides research-based evidence about biologically normal infant sleep for parents and health practitioners.
- Find out more about Professor Helen Ball who is also a fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing.
- Our Department of Anthropology is ranked 29th in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025. Visit our Anthropology webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.