What is the "Ferber" or "Rapid Extinction" method of sleep training?
The quote-unquote "Ferber Method" is a behavior modification program which involves extinction, but it's very aggressive, okay? In other words, when you try to change a child's behavior, you will put the child, say, in the bed or crib and you will withhold whatever they were used to and let them cry it out; that's essentially what it is. Then, it requires repeated visits back to the child's room, in a very careful way, to A) make sure that they are safe that they haven't got their arms twisted in the bars of the crib or something terrible has happened to them. But not in any way to give the child a false hope or expectation that you are going to come back and do what you did before, so that you can help them fall asleep. So, it's a very aggressive thing and what one does is you will leave the child for a period of time – and again, there are no fixed rules. So, in what we call the rapid-fire extinction method, you'll leave the child in the bed or crib and go out for, say, three minutes – and they will cry and scream and fuss and do whatever they can do to try and get you to come back and do what you did to them before to help them fall asleep. You'll go in briefly – and the key is briefly – and make sure they are safe and to show them that you still exist. It's a good idea not to talk to them, not to interact, not to touch them, not to hold them, just “Time to go to sleep” –that's it, and out you go. And, then you wait, maybe four minutes and then you go back in briefly, for seconds only, then you wait, say, five or six minutes. Basically, every time you go out, you increase the amount of time that you stay out of the room before you go in. And, as you increase the time – you just do that until the child falls asleep. So the child, essentially, in a harsh kind of way, is learning to go to sleep on their own. That's really what you're doing and that's essentially, if you want to call it, what the Ferber technique is.
