Do you struggle to put your baby in bed? Do they wake up and get mad as soon as they leave your arms? Most parents do, I surely did, will all my 3 kids.

My 8 months old boy Zachary used to wake up almost all the time and now it became easier to transfer him. And we both sleep way better. 🙂

So I assume you’d be interested if I shared my easy technique to make it faster, smoother, and more likely to work…

First let’s understand quickly how our mind works to get how and why this technique makes Baby sleep on their own works.

Our Associative Mind

Our amazing minds work by associations (see Pavlov and classical conditioning) and links experiences (triggers) to outcomes (states). Basically, for our brain, when A happens, then it means B in our psychology and physiology.

For example, when you hear this specific song, you feel good. Or you feel nostalgic when you smell the recipe your mama used to cook when you were a child. You see what I mean.

Based on this, there is an NLP tool called Anchoring, that we use in hypnosis and coaching. It allows us to “anchor” a mood or feeling to a trigger.

So here, the goal is to link the feeling of safety and wellness the baby has in our arms with external stimulus. And then trigger it as we transition from our arms to the bed so that Baby stays in the same mood.

Anchoring

In my case, I use kisses on his head as an anchor. You can go with anything you like and that’s easy to reproduce.

If you put him in a low crib with bars, it won’t work and I suggest going with something like a caress or a touch on the arm or similar.

One easy way is to use a word or sound said in a specific way.

Examples of anchors:

• Series of kisses
• caress or light touch in the same place
• A word like “Dodo” (“Sleep” in French) repeated the same way
• …

Basically, it can be anything baby will experience with their senses and it can also be a combination or sequence of these.

Keep doing the same gesture/sound as you bring baby to sleep, do it now and then, in complement to what you generally do like rocking, singing lullabies…

Bring baby to deep sleep as you keep anchoring.

Transition to bed

Now baby is deep asleep, it’s time to transition from your arms to the bed. And as you do it, use the anchor, after each “big move”.

Do it again a couple of times once Baby is there, make sure they’re deep asleep, keep triggering as needed… Be gentle and take your time, that would be too bad to rush it and ruin it, wouldn’t it?

.And tada! Before you know it, Baby is now sleeping comfortably in their bed. And you can now enjoy the rest of your evening or sleep too. 🙂

Challenges

This technique really works well. Do it for at least a week. Anchors get reinforced every time they’re used. So the more you use the exact same word or gesture, the stronger its association with the positive feelings of being in your arms will be.

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It’s very easy as you can see and it will save a lot of time and stress to some parents so I hope you’ll use it.