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

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