Six months is one of the best times to start sleep training. Your baby’s sleep cycles are finally becoming regular, they’re developmentally ready to learn self-soothing, and most formula-fed babies no longer need nighttime calories. The process looks different depending on which method you choose, but the core goal is the same: helping your baby fall asleep independently so they can resettle on their own when they wake between sleep cycles.
Why 6 Months Is the Right Time
Babies don’t develop regular sleep cycles until around 6 months old. Before that point, their sleep architecture is too immature for training to stick reliably. By 6 months, your baby’s brain has matured enough to consolidate sleep into longer stretches and to start learning the skill of falling asleep without being held, rocked, or fed.
There’s a practical factor too. If your baby is formula-fed and over 6 months, nighttime wakings are unlikely to be driven by hunger. Breastfed babies may still benefit from one feeding overnight, but many are also ready to drop night feeds around this age, especially once solid foods are part of their diet. This means you can respond to overnight crying with confidence that your baby isn’t starving, just adjusting.
What’s Happening Developmentally
Six months brings a wave of changes that can both help and complicate sleep training. Your baby is learning to sit up, possibly starting to crawl, and teething is often kicking in. These physical milestones can temporarily disrupt sleep on their own, so don’t be surprised if a baby who was sleeping well suddenly starts waking more.
The bigger shift is cognitive. Around 6 to 9 months, babies develop object permanence: the understanding that you still exist even when you leave the room. This is a major leap, but it also means your baby now knows you’re out there somewhere and may protest being alone more intensely. Some parents mistake this for a sign that sleep training is harmful, but it’s actually a normal developmental stage. Separation anxiety peaks during this window and then gradually fades.
Set Up the Room Before You Start
Before picking a method, get the sleep environment right. Keep the room at a temperature comfortable for you (not overly warm), dress your baby in a sleep sack instead of loose blankets, and skip hats indoors. A dark room with white noise helps signal that it’s time for sleep and masks household sounds that might wake your baby between cycles.
Establish a consistent bedtime routine if you haven’t already. This doesn’t need to be elaborate: a bath, a feeding, a book, a song, then into the crib. The routine itself becomes a cue that sleep is coming, and consistency matters more than the specific steps you choose. Do the same sequence in the same order every night.
Graduated Check-Ins (Ferber Method)
This is the most widely used sleep training approach. You put your baby in the crib drowsy but awake, say goodnight, and leave the room. When they cry, you wait a set amount of time before going back in to briefly comfort them (a pat, a few words) without picking them up. Then you leave again and wait a little longer before the next check-in.
On the first night, you might wait three minutes before your first check, then five minutes, then longer. Each subsequent night, the starting interval increases. Some parents use 10-minute intervals that grow to 20, then 30. The exact numbers matter less than the principle: intervals get progressively longer so your baby has more time to practice settling independently.
This method typically takes 7 to 10 days to show clear results. The first two or three nights are usually the hardest, with crying that can last 30 to 60 minutes. Most families see dramatic improvement by nights four and five.
The Chair Method
If being out of the room while your baby cries feels unsustainable, the chair method lets you stay present. After your bedtime routine, place your baby in the crib drowsy but awake, then sit in a chair right next to the crib. Don’t pick them up or interact much. Just be there, quietly, until they fall asleep. Then leave.
Every few nights, move the chair a little farther from the crib. Eventually it’s by the door, then outside the door, then gone entirely. The idea is to gradually reduce your presence so your baby learns to fall asleep with less and less of you nearby.
The tradeoff is time. More gradual methods like this one can take up to four weeks to fully work. There’s also no clear timeline for when your baby will be comfortable with you completely out of the room. Some babies adjust quickly, others take longer. If you’re patient and consistent, it works, but it requires more nights of broken sleep for the parent.
Pick Up, Put Down
This method gives you the most physical contact. When your baby fusses or cries after being placed in the crib, you pick them up and soothe them. The key rule: put them back down before they fall asleep in your arms. As soon as you see their eyelids getting heavy, back into the crib they go. If they cry again the moment their head touches the mattress, you pick them up again. Repeat until they finally fall asleep in the crib on their own.
The goal is for the transition from awake to asleep to happen when your baby is alone in the crib, not while being held. This teaches the same self-soothing skill as other methods, just with more hands-on support along the way.
This approach can be physically exhausting. On a tough night, you might pick your baby up and put them down dozens of times. It also falls into the “more lenient” category, so expect results closer to the three-to-four-week range rather than the first week.
Full Extinction (Cry It Out)
The most direct approach: put your baby down awake, leave the room, and don’t go back in until morning (or until a scheduled feeding if you’re still doing one). No check-ins, no chair, no picking up. Your baby cries until they fall asleep on their own.
This is the fastest method, often producing results in three to four days. It’s also the hardest emotionally for parents. Many families find the first night involves 45 minutes to over an hour of crying. By night three, crying often drops to under 10 minutes. The speed comes from the clarity of the message: there’s no intermittent reinforcement from check-ins that might restart the cycle of protest.
Choosing the Right Method
No single method is objectively best. The right one is the one you can follow through on consistently. Switching methods mid-training or giving in on night three and starting over teaches your baby that enough crying eventually brings you back, which can make the whole process longer and harder.
If you want fast results and can tolerate significant crying, graduated check-ins or full extinction will get you there in one to two weeks. If you need to be present and can commit to a longer timeline, the chair method or pick up, put down will still work. The common thread across all methods is consistency: same approach, same routine, every night.
When Sleep Training Stalls
If you’re a week in and things aren’t improving, consider what else is going on. Teething pain can sabotage even good sleep training. A baby who is cutting teeth may need pain relief before bed (talk to your pediatrician about appropriate options for their age). New physical skills like sitting up or pulling to stand can also cause setbacks. Babies sometimes practice these skills in the crib at 2 a.m. because the novelty is too exciting to resist. This passes on its own once the skill becomes routine.
Object permanence, which develops right around this age, can intensify separation protests. Your baby now understands you exist even when you’re not visible, which means they may cry harder and longer than a younger baby would. This isn’t a reason to stop. It’s a reason to expect that the first few nights may involve more protest than you anticipated. Stay consistent, and the protests will shorten as your baby learns that sleep time means sleep time.
Illness, travel, and schedule disruptions can also undo progress temporarily. If your baby gets sick, pause training and comfort them as needed. Once they’ve recovered, restart the method from the beginning. Most babies bounce back faster the second time around because the underlying skill is still partially learned.