Most babies around 12 months old will cry for 30 to 60 minutes the first night of cry-it-out sleep training, with crying typically peaking on night one and resolving within a week. There is no single “correct” time limit, but the method you choose determines whether you set one at all.
What “Cry It Out” Actually Means
Cry it out, also called unmodified extinction, means putting your baby down awake at bedtime and not responding to crying until they fall asleep. There’s no timer, no check-ins, no going back in. The idea is straightforward: your child learns that crying no longer results in being picked up, rocked, or fed to sleep, and they develop the ability to settle independently.
This is different from graduated methods like Ferber, where you check in at increasing intervals. With full extinction, the only built-in limit is your baby falling asleep. That said, if the open-ended nature of this approach feels like too much, a variation called bedtime fading with response cost does set a cap. In this method, you let your child cry for 15 minutes. If they haven’t fallen asleep, you pick them up, calm them down, keep them awake for about an hour, and try again. This cycle repeats until they fall asleep at bedtime.
What the First Week Looks Like
A 2018 study tracking real-world sleep training found that crying peaked on the first night and declined steadily from there. Most families see significant improvement by the end of the first week, and crying is usually gone by two weeks. If you’re not seeing any progress after a full week, something else may be going on, and it’s worth pausing to reassess.
The first night is almost always the hardest. Expect anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour of crying, though every child is different. Night two is often shorter. By nights three and four, many babies are settling in under 15 minutes. This is where a lot of parents start to feel cautiously optimistic.
Then, somewhere between nights four and seven, something frustrating often happens: the crying gets worse again. This is called an extinction burst, a temporary spike in protest that occurs precisely because the old strategy (crying to get picked up) is on the verge of being abandoned for good. Think of it as your child’s last big push to see if the old rules still apply. Common signs include longer crying after several improving nights, more night wakings, or suddenly intense protests that feel like you’re back at square one. It typically lasts one to three nights and then fades. The key is not to change your approach mid-burst, because responding inconsistently at this stage resets the process.
Why 1-Year-Olds Are a Special Case
Sleep training a 12-month-old comes with challenges you wouldn’t face with a 6-month-old. At this age, your child is going through a surge of developmental changes: standing, cruising or walking, expanded communication, and heightened cognitive awareness. All of this can make sleep harder even without any training involved. Many 1-year-olds experience what’s often called the 12-month sleep regression, a temporary disruption that usually resolves within a few weeks on its own.
Separation anxiety is the big one. Around 12 months, babies develop a much stronger emotional attachment and a sharper awareness that you exist even when you’re not visible. That makes being alone in a dark room genuinely distressing in a way it might not have been a few months earlier. This doesn’t mean sleep training won’t work. It means the first few nights may involve more intense crying than you’d see with a younger baby, and that’s a normal part of the developmental stage rather than a sign something is wrong.
Then there’s mobility. A 1-year-old who can pull to stand will almost certainly do so in the crib, and many parents find themselves in a loop of laying their baby back down over and over. This tends to backfire, turning into a game or a power struggle. A better approach is to give your child space to work it out. You can remind them every 10 to 15 minutes that it’s time to sleep and gently reposition them, but avoid making it a constant back-and-forth.
If Your Baby Vomits
Some babies cry hard enough to throw up, and it’s one of the most alarming things parents encounter during sleep training. Pediatricians and sleep consultants generally recommend the same approach: go in calmly, clean up your baby and the crib with minimal interaction, and put them back down. Don’t turn it into a prolonged comfort session, because that teaches your child that vomiting ends the process. This can happen once or twice in the early nights and then typically stops as the crying decreases.
Is It Safe for a 1-Year-Old?
The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages parents to let babies learn to fall asleep on their own and advises against rushing in to soothe every cry. Research on the stress hormone cortisol found that babies in sleep training groups actually showed slightly lower cortisol levels than babies who had no sleep training at all. A follow-up study found no difference in emotional health, behavioral outcomes, or parent-child attachment after a year between children who were sleep trained and those who were not.
At 12 months, your child is developmentally ready for independent sleep. The crying is a protest against a change in routine, not a sign of harm. That said, sleep training works best when your child is healthy, not teething or sick, and when you’re confident you can stay consistent for at least a full week.
Making It Work
Consistency matters more than which specific method you pick. If you decide on full extinction, commit to not going in. If you choose timed checks, stick to the intervals. If you go with the 15-minute bedtime fading approach, follow through on the wake periods between attempts. The fastest way to make sleep training take longer is to be inconsistent, because every time you give in partway through, your child learns that enough crying eventually works.
Set yourself up before you start. Have a solid bedtime routine of 15 to 20 minutes (bath, book, song, bed). Make sure the room is dark and the sleep environment is consistent. Pick a start night when you don’t have early morning obligations, because the first two nights will likely cost you some sleep too. If you have a partner, agree on the plan in advance so neither of you breaks ranks at 2 a.m.
For most families, the hardest part is over within three to four nights. The full adjustment, including any extinction burst, wraps up within one to two weeks. If you’re past the two-week mark and still seeing significant nightly crying, it’s worth stepping back to evaluate whether the timing is right or whether something like illness, a schedule issue, or a nap transition is interfering.