Transitioning from co-sleeping to independent sleep is one of the harder shifts in early parenting, but most children adjust within three nights to a few weeks depending on the method you choose. Gentler approaches take longer; more direct methods work faster but involve more crying. The key is picking a method that fits your comfort level and sticking with it consistently.
Choose a Method That Matches Your Comfort Level
There’s no single “best” sleep training method. Research on the topic includes about a dozen high-quality studies, each testing a slightly different approach, and none directly comparing methods against each other. What matters most isn’t which method you pick but whether you can follow through on it consistently, night after night. Here are the approaches that work well for former co-sleepers, roughly ordered from gentlest to most direct.
The Camping Out (Chair) Method
This is often the easiest starting point for co-sleeping families because it removes bed-sharing while keeping you physically close. After your bedtime routine, place a mattress, sleeping bag, or chair right next to your child’s crib or bed. Lie or sit beside them and pat or stroke them until they fall asleep. Once they’re comfortable with this (usually about three nights), stop the patting and just stay nearby. After another three or so nights, move your chair or mattress about a foot farther away. Keep gradually moving toward the doorway and eventually out of the room over the course of one to three weeks.
If your child wakes overnight, return to wherever your chair currently is in the progression. Don’t go back to an earlier step. If they’re very upset, pick them up for a brief cuddle, then settle them back down. The goal is to provide less physical comfort each night while your child builds the ability to fall asleep without your body right next to theirs.
The Fading Method
Fading works similarly but focuses on reducing your involvement in smaller increments. You might start by lying next to the crib with a hand on your child’s chest, then move to just a hand on the mattress, then sitting nearby without touching, then sitting across the room. The principle is the same: minimal comfort, gradually increasing distance. This method typically takes two to three weeks.
The Ferber (Check-In) Method
With this approach, you put your child down drowsy but awake, leave the room, and return at set intervals to briefly reassure them without picking them up. The intervals between check-ins gradually increase. Despite the specific timing schedules you’ll find online (check at 3 minutes, then 5, then 10), there’s no scientific evidence that any particular interval works better than another. Checking every 30 seconds works just as well as checking every 10 minutes. Pick intervals you can actually stick with.
Pick Up, Put Down
When your child cries, you pick them up and comfort them until they’re calm, then put them back down. You repeat this as many times as needed. It’s labor-intensive and can take longer, but some parents of former co-sleepers find it bridges the gap between constant contact and full independence.
Set Up the Sleep Space First
Before you start any method, get the physical environment ready. If your child doesn’t have their own sleep space yet, set one up in your room or a separate room. Your child doesn’t need their own bedroom to sleep train, but you do need a clear separation between where they sleep and where you sleep. If you’re room-sharing, consider a visual barrier like a curtain or room divider so your child can’t see you from their crib.
For babies under 12 months, keep the crib bare: a firm mattress with a fitted sheet and nothing else. Older children (around 8 to 12 months and up) often choose a comfort object on their own, like a small blanket or stuffed animal. If your toddler latches onto a large blanket, cut it in half so you have a backup. Having something that smells familiar can ease the transition. Some parents sleep with the lovey or crib sheet for a night before introducing it so it carries their scent.
Keep the room dark, use white noise if your child is used to hearing you breathe at night, and make sure the temperature is comfortable. These small environmental cues replace the sensory experience of sleeping next to you.
Build a Predictable Bedtime Routine
Co-sleeping children often don’t have a formal bedtime routine because the routine was simply “come to bed with me.” Before you start sleep training, spend a few days establishing a consistent sequence: bath, pajamas, book, song, bed. The routine itself signals to your child’s brain that sleep is coming, and it becomes especially important once you remove the cue they’re used to (your body).
Put your child down when they’re drowsy but still awake. This is the single most important shift. Co-sleeping children are used to falling asleep already in contact with a parent. Learning to go from drowsy to fully asleep without that contact is the core skill you’re building.
Handle Night Wakings the Same Way
Whatever method you use at bedtime, use the same approach for middle-of-the-night wakings. If you’re doing the chair method and your chair is currently three feet from the crib, that’s where you go at 2 a.m. too. The most common reason sleep training fails is inconsistency between bedtime and overnight responses. If you sleep-train at bedtime but bring your child back to your bed at 3 a.m. when you’re exhausted, you’re teaching them that extended crying at 3 a.m. gets the result they want.
This is genuinely hard. Have a plan for how you’ll handle it before you start. Some parents take shifts. Others move the child’s crib into a room where one parent sleeps on the camping-out mattress while the other parent sleeps undisturbed elsewhere. Whatever logistics keep you consistent are the right logistics.
Decide What to Do About Night Feeds
Night feedings and sleep training are separate issues, and it helps to address them one at a time. For breastfed babies, night weaning before 12 months can reduce your milk supply, so most experts recommend keeping night feeds until at least that age. Formula-fed babies over 6 months are unlikely to wake from genuine hunger, and you can begin phasing out those feeds earlier.
If your child still needs night feeds, you can absolutely sleep train while continuing to feed overnight. The difference is that you feed on a schedule you choose (for example, no feeds before midnight, then one feed, then back to the crib) rather than feeding every time your child wakes. This way you’re separating “I need nutrition” from “I need you next to me to fall back asleep.”
Expect the Extinction Burst
Most parents see initial improvement in the first two or three nights, then a sharp regression around nights three through five. This is called an extinction burst: a temporary spike in the exact behavior you’re trying to change. Your child may cry harder, longer, or more intensely than they did on night one. This is normal and actually a sign that the process is working. Your child is testing whether the old pattern (crying leads to being brought into your bed) still applies.
The burst typically lasts a few days but can stretch past a week. How you respond during this window matters enormously. If you give in and return to co-sleeping during the burst, you’ve taught your child that escalated crying works, which makes the next attempt harder. This doesn’t mean you ignore a child who’s genuinely distressed or sick. It means you comfort them using whatever method you’ve chosen (check-ins, patting from the chair, pick up and put down) rather than abandoning the plan entirely.
Realistic Timelines by Method
More direct methods like Ferber or full extinction typically show results within three to seven nights. The camping out and fading methods usually take two to four weeks because you’re making smaller changes. Former co-sleepers sometimes take slightly longer than children who were already sleeping in a crib, simply because the gap between “sleeping pressed against a parent” and “sleeping alone” is larger.
If you’ve been consistent for two full weeks with a direct method (or four weeks with a gentle method) and you’re seeing no improvement at all, something else may be going on. Pain from teething, an ear infection, or a developmental leap can derail sleep training. It’s worth pausing and restarting once the disruption passes rather than pushing through when your child is genuinely uncomfortable.
Age-Specific Considerations
For babies 6 to 12 months, the camping out or Ferber methods tend to work well. Babies this age don’t yet have the verbal skills to negotiate, and they adapt to new routines relatively quickly. Keep night feeds as needed and focus purely on where and how they fall asleep.
Toddlers (1 to 3 years) are a different challenge. They can climb out of cribs, open doors, and loudly protest. They also understand more, which means you can talk to them about the change during the day. Use simple language: “Tonight you’re sleeping in your big bed. I’ll be right next door.” A toddler clock that changes color at wake-up time gives them a visual cue. Expect more testing of boundaries and be prepared to calmly, repeatedly walk them back to bed.
For children over 3 who’ve been co-sleeping for years, a sticker chart or small reward for staying in their own bed can be effective. At this age, the issue is less about self-soothing ability and more about habit and preference. Many families find that starting with a mattress on the floor of the parent’s room, then moving it to the child’s room, creates a bridge that feels less abrupt than going straight to a separate bedroom.