What is the Ferber method and why is it so controversial?
A new study from Australia has investigated whether it causes stress in young children when they go to sleep using the Ferber method. We explain what this method is and what came out in the study.
Where does the Ferbern come from?
The name of the method goes back to the American pediatrician and neurologist Richard Ferber. He is a professor at Harvard University and directs the Sleep Disorders Center at the Boston Children's Hospital.
In 1985 his book was published "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" (in German under the title "Sleep, Infant, Sleep Sleep Problems in Children"), which became known worldwide. Many other authors and sleep programs have followed his method. Also the German bestseller "Every child can learn to sleep" by Annette Kast Zahn and Hartmut Morgenroth is based on the Ferber method.
How should the Ferber method work?
The method is based on the assumption that children can be trained to get upset when they lie in bed alone, and then learn to calm themselves, even if they wake up at night.
For this purpose, the parents should first prepare the child for sleep with a loving sleep-in ritual - for example, reading aloud, singing, cuddling. Then the child should be awake to bed and the parents should leave the room. If the child starts to cry, they should go into the room for a moment, calm it down with words and leave the room again. They should repeat that, so long, at fixed intervals of minutes, until the child fell asleep at some point. Parents can caress the child, but Ferber says they should not pick it up and out of bed.
Parents should also NOT let the child scream permanently without going into the room. Regularly showing that you are there is important.
According to Ferber's guide, the child should calm down more quickly after three days, but at the latest after two weeks, and become accustomed to sleeping alone. But he also admits that it does not work for all children.
What do the critics say?
The problem with the Ferber method is obvious: leave a child crying pitifully alone in his room? That is not how it works! This instinctive reaction is what most parents have - and in fact, during training, they have to resist their natural urge to rush to help the child and comfort him.
Critics believe that the Ferber method is so bad for the child - often with long-term consequences. The trust in the parents is disturbed, the baby must often endure dread, because it can not yet estimate whether the mother really comes back. In addition, the method would interfere with the gut feeling of the parents and ignore the screaming as the only means of communication that have babies.
Also paediatricians such as Dr. med. Herbert Renz upholstery warn against letting babies cry for a long time. They have an innate need for protection dating back to the time of our ancestors, when it was life-threatening for babies to be alone without their parents.
It is also criticized that Ferber says that you should run the program even if the child vomits out of sheer excitement. The professor is of the opinion that this does not lastingly harm a child. Of course, many people would object to that.
Fierce quarrel
The debate is sometimes very emotional - which is no wonder in the topic. When the publishers Gräfer and Unzer released a new edition of "Every child can learn to sleep" in August 2013, a mother even started a petition. She challenged the publisher to take "Every child can learn to sleep" from the market. The sleep learning program has "demonstrably bad consequences for the child's soul". More than 5,000 people have signed the petition. But the book is still on the market.
The blog Nestling.org has presented the points of criticism to Ferbern in a video vividly:
According to Ferber, it is an emergency program
What is often ignored when discussing the book: Ferber has developed the method as an emergency program. So for children who have big problems to calm down. And also for parents who reach their limits because their child hardly sleeps and cries a lot. This point is important, says midwife Jana Friedrich from the midwife blog. So she rejects Ferbern basically, but she has already experienced parents who were so nervous with the constant crying of the child that they were in danger of doing something to the child. She also recommended to these parents to go out in such a moment and let the child scream. "Ferbern rather than shake," says the Berliner.
Is it proven that Ferbern harms the children?
No, so far there are no reliable study results. A new study from May 2016 even concludes that it has no negative effects on the child when it cries to sleep.The Australian researchers observed two different groups of babies. Some of them were put to sleep using the Ferber method, others using a different technique that moves bedtime back and forth. There was a control group that did not use a special method.
Next, they tested the level of stress hormones in the babies' blood. The result: none of the babies could be found to have increased stress over a longer period of time. And indeed, the babies who got used to falling asleep by one of the methods slept a little easier than the others.
And now?
In the end, parents need to listen to their own feelings and beliefs. Almost everyone knows parents who have had good experiences with the Ferber method - or those for whom the sleep program was the sheer horror (as for our MOM colleague Stefanie Hentschel, who here talks about her experience with "Every child can learn to sleep " wrote).
But the fact is: If you try such sleep programs, you should always make sure that you treat the child all the time lovingly, but still gives him security and watching it attentively. To make a baby cry for hours without comforting it is a no-go.
And if it all feels fundamentally wrong - break off in any case! It is of course also possible to modify the method and introduce his own sleep routine.
