28 | SEPTEMBER 26 • 2024 
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ere is a question I answered 
in my new book, Questions 
and Answers with Rabbi Leib 
Keleman.
My 3-year-old daughter wakes up 
at night several times a week crying 
hysterically, only wanting Mommy or 
Daddy. One of us goes 
into hug her, sometimes 
stays or gives her a drink 
and then leaves. The sit-
uation is not getting any 
better. How can we teach 
the child to self-soothe?
The world can be a 
frightening place, espe-
cially for young children 
who can exercise so little real control 
over their environment. One of a 
parent’s responsibilities is to make the 
world less frightening and help children 
feel secure. Even if there were some 
way for me to get my child to lie quietly 
in bed without my needing to attend to 
them, that wouldn’t necessarily accom-
plish the real goal, which is to help 
children move from feeling fundamen-
tally insecure to feeling fundamentally 
secure. 
Often, when we talk about teaching 

children to self-soothe, what we really 
want is to get our children to be less 
bothersome and demanding and leave 
us alone.
Self-soothing is a hard concept to 
understand. If a child in the night is 
frightened or in pain, how realistic is 
it that they will conquer their fear or 
learn how to manage pain all alone, 
without our presence, affection and 
emotional support? Adults have a hard 
time learning how to manage fears and 
pain without support from others. Do 
we really expect this of a 3-year-old? 
 
Empathizing With My Young Child 
Imagine the following scenario: You 
are injured and in pain, a lot of pain. 
You have been prepped for surgery, 
and you are lying on a gurney awaiting 
your turn to enter the surgical theater. 
Would you be anxious — perhaps even 
frightened — at that moment? 
Wouldn’t it be easier for you to man-
age your pain and fear with a loved one 
standing by you, holding your hand 
and saying soothing things? Would you 
feel as calm if you were all alone and 
trying to self-soothe?
If a child has a bad diaper rash or a 

new tooth coming in, that 
can be painful. If there are 
noises in the dark or the 
child has a nightmare, that 
can be frightening. Why 
would we assume the child 
doesn’t want and legitimate-
ly need the same sort of 
support we would want and 
need if we were in pain or 
frightened? 
If we were lying on the gurney await-
ing surgery and a loved one told us 
that he was going to leave us alone now 
so we could learn to self-soothe, how 
would we feel about that? It’s hard to 
get out of ourselves and into the child’s 
experience, but these sorts of thoughts 
can help.
I’ll share what my wife did with our 
babies when they would cry at night. If 
the child just whimpered and wouldn’t 
stop, she would pat him and rub his 
back. If the baby became hysterical, 
she would take him out of the crib and 
hold him until the sobbing stopped. 
Then, she would either rock him, walk 
around with him or lie down in her bed 
with him until he fell asleep. She would 
give him the same sort of comforting 

presence that she would want if she 
were terrified.
What about self-soothing? If I con-
tinue to soothe my children, how will 
they ever learn to self-soothe? People 
do learn to self-soothe. How does it 
work? I’ll use a metaphor.
The grooves cut into a vinyl record 
replay the same song every time you 
spin that record. Similarly, the emo-
tional experiences we have as children, 
whether we are being tortured or 
comforted, cut deep grooves into the 
human psyche, and those songs play 
back over and over again throughout 
the adult’s life.
If a child was always comforted when 
he was frightened or in pain, if some-
one came to him, held him and did 
everything she could to try to relieve 

Empathize with your young child 
and let them know all will be OK.

Training a Child 
 to Self-Soothe

continued on page 30

Rabbi Leib 
Keleman
Special to the 
Jewish News

OUR COMMUNITY
PARENTING

