.png?trim=34,0,86,0&auto=webp&quality=75&width=1200 "My London: Trinny Woodall shares her secrets with cabbies, shops at Liberty and stays at Claridge’s")
When my son was nine months old, I forgot how to drive.
I couldn’t remember how to start the Ford Focus I’d owned for three years (clutch down, press the ignition button) and had a complete mind blank about which pedal did what.
It took googling ‘which is the brake and which is the accelerator?’ for me to come to my senses, cancel plans and retreat to the sofa.
Sleep deprivation can do wild things to your brain and body, with studies showing the impacts range from brain fog and mood swings to heart disease and increased risk of stroke.
Every new parent expects some sleepless nights, but nine months of being woken up every 45 minutes had completely decimated my memory, not to mention my sense of self.
Ask Metro
Use AI to go deeper into the stories you care about – powered by Metro and trusted publications.
It was around this time I visited the health visitor and breathlessly listed everything we’d tried to get our son to sleep, before bursting into tears.
‘Have you tried Ferber?’ she asked.
Developed by Dr Richard Ferber, the Ferber Method is a form of sleep training that allows for ‘controlled crying’, where parents respond to their baby with increasing intervals (usually two minutes, then four, then six, with a maximum of around eight or 10 – depending on which version you follow).
The aim is to teach your child to settle themselves, so they eventually learn to transition through sleep cycles throughout the night without habits like being breastfed by Mum or rocked by Dad.
Within a week, my son went from waking hourly or more to sleeping from 7pm until 7am.
Let’s be clear, I didn’t ‘ignore’ his cries once. I fixated on the monitor and practically leapt into his room at any hint a grizzle was turning into genuine distress.
But ‘Supernanny’ Jo Frost is adamant this technique – recommended to me by a trained health professional – is not ‘healthy’ for infants.
In a recent episode of the Need to Talk podcast, host Paul C. Brunson begins asking Jo about the ‘Cry It Out’ method, when she interjects: ‘It was called the Ferber Technique.’
‘The Ferber technique, I don’t feel, is healthy for infants,’ she says. ‘It leaves them in a situation where there is no sporadic comfort. No sort of intervening from the parent.’
Jo Frost is clearly a bit confused about what the Ferber technique is. She goes on to question how it impacts a parents’ ‘attachment’ with their child, then recommends her own ‘controlled crying’ method, suggesting parents offer comfort in short intervals. Essentially, the very concept she’s just criticised.
Now, we all make mistakes, but it matters when someone with the profile of Supernanny gets terms like ‘Cry It Out’ (also referred to as the ‘extinction’ method) and the ‘Ferber Method’ mixed up. The short podcast clip has gained 25,000 likes, with some commenters suggesting ‘ferberizing your baby is cruel’ and ‘sleep training is abuse’.
The key difference in a nutshell
- Cry It Out/Extinction Method: Parents leave child to cry with no soothing until they fall asleep.
- Ferber Method: Parents respond to child’s crying in increasing intervals (e.g. entering the room every 2 mins, 4 mins, 6 mins) until they fall asleep.
Other comments are from parents who, like me, turned to Ferber when they’d hit rock bottom.
‘I had to sleep train this way for my sanity,’ says one mum. ‘Before you judge, know that no parent looks forward to sleep training their baby, in my case I needed it to function and be present for my baby during the day.’
Maryanne Taylor, a certified sleep consultant and founder of The Sleep Works, reiterates that parents rarely turn to sleep training lightly.
‘More often, they have reached a point of complete exhaustion after weeks or months of severely disrupted sleep,’ she tells Metro.
‘Many are already questioning themselves and worrying that they are getting something wrong. When someone with a large public platform uses emotive language without accurately explaining a technique, it can add shame and fear to an already difficult situation.’
Lauren Eells, who holds qualifications in paediatric sleep and cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, agrees.
‘I think my real issue with what she did there is that nobody held her to account,’ the founder of Sound Asleep Guru tells Metro.
‘Nobody said “actually Jo I think you’re talking about the extinction method there and we’re talking about the Ferber Method”. What you end up doing is creating a really messy space for mums who are already vulnerable and who are looking for clarity.
‘She’s meant to be a real authority now, because she’s done it for so long. And when she can’t even get it right, who do you trust?’
Lauren personally prefers to recommend consistent crying intervals to families, rather than the increasing intervals of Ferber, because she believes consistency is helpful for small children, plus the staggered approach can be tricky to track when you’re severely sleep deprived.
But neither Maryanne nor Lauren are against Ferber and agree the most successful sleep training is tailored to an individual child and family.
‘It works for loads of families, I’d say most families end up using some kind of Ferber or wave method, like consistent intervals,’ says Lauren.
Ferber enabled my son to be well-rested for the first time in his life. Now two, he’s a happy, thriving toddler, and although we’ve had a few regressions and bedtime battles around the UK heatwaves, sleep has never been as bad as it was in that first year.
Some might think it overly sensitive to call Jo Frost out for one bit of misinformation, but baby sleep is a sensitive topic. Suicide continues to be the leading cause of maternal death between six weeks and 12 months after birth.
As Lauren says: ‘I think all these people casting judgement – which Jo did there, she cast judgement – serve to make vulnerable mothers feel worse.’
MORE: I’m an asexual, non-binary, married mum – none of that is contradictory
MORE: I’m cycling 1,000 miles with my two young kids to prove mums can do anything
MORE: Struggling to sleep during the heatwave? The Oodie has just dropped a cooling nightwear collection
