The Chair Method

You put her down awake, sit on a chair beside the cot until she falls asleep, and every few nights move the chair further away — middle of the room, then the doorway, then the landing, then out of sight. Most versions take two to three weeks. It is one method among several, it is the option for a household that cannot do a closed door, and the honest account of its evidence is that it belongs to a tested family without having a trial of its own.

That last sentence is the part other pages leave out, so this one starts with what the method is and then says exactly how much stands behind it. If you want the whole shelf side by side, the methods compared page lays out all six without choosing between them.

The fortnight, position by position

The shape is always the same: fewer inches of you, in steps small enough that each one is barely a change.

• Nights one to three or four. Chair beside the cot, within arm's reach. She goes down awake; you stay until she is asleep, offering as little as will do the job.
• Next three or four. Chair halfway across the room. Still visible, still audible, no longer within reach.
• Next three or four. Chair by the door, inside the room.
• Next three or four. Chair in the doorway or on the landing, where she can hear you but only just see you.
• Then out. You come back on the same terms if she needs you — sit, say the short thing, and go.

Two rules make the difference between a fortnight and a month. Hold each position for at least three nights, because one bad night at a new position tells you about the night rather than the position. And never move the chair the day after a hard one; move it after a night that went well, so the step is taken from strength.

None of that timetable is published. The intervals circulating online — three nights here, four there — are conventions rather than findings, and nobody has measured whether three nights beats five. What follows from that is permission: if your baby needs a week at the doorway, take a week.

Fade the help before you move the chair

This is the mistake that turns two weeks into six, and it is easy to make because it looks like progress.

If she only falls asleep while you pat her, moving the chair changes nothing except how far you lean. The patting is the help she is using; the chair is just where you keep it. So fade the help first, in its own steps: patting, then a hand resting still on her back, then a hand on the mattress beside her, then no contact at all but you still beside the cot. Three or four nights each, same as the chair.

Only when she can fall asleep with you present and doing nothing does moving the chair mean anything. After that the withdrawal is genuinely about distance, and it usually goes faster than the first half did.

Keep your own contribution boring and identical. One short phrase, the same one, said in the same flat voice; no conversation, no picking her up unless something is wrong, no starting a game at eleven at night. The predictability is the active part — which is also why the bedtime routine in front of it matters more here than in any other method.

What the evidence actually covers

Here is the honest version, and it is shorter than the pages selling this method suggest.

The nearest trial is not a trial of the chair. It enrolled 156 mothers of infants aged 6 to 12 months with severe sleep problems by parental report and taught controlled crying over three consultations — a different technique, in the same behavioural family, delivered the same way a health visitor would deliver this one. It resolved more sleep problems than written information about normal sleep at two months, 53 of 76 against 36 of 76, and that difference had gone by four months. Depression scores fell further in the intervention group, and for mothers scoring 10 or more on the Edinburgh postnatal depression scale the difference held at four months. Read it as what a supported behavioural method looks like when it is measured, rather than as a result about chairs.

So the pair was tested, not the chair. Alongside it sits the American Academy of Sleep Medicine task force that went through 52 treatment studies and reported 94% finding the behavioural interventions efficacious and over 80% of treated children improving in a way that lasted 3 to 6 months. Camping out belongs to the family of behavioural treatments that review examined — but the categories it names one by one are unmodified extinction, preventive parent education, graduated extinction, bedtime fading with positive routines and scheduled awakenings, and a chair on its own is not among them.

What nobody has published is a trial of the chair against anything else. No success rate, no average duration, no comparison with intervals or with fading. Anyone quoting you a figure for this method is quoting a number nobody measured. That is not an argument against it — untested is not the same as disproved — but it is a real difference from the two methods that do have trials, and you should know which one you are being handed.

Who it suits, and who it does not

It suits the household that cannot leave the room. That is a legitimate reason on its own and needs no further justification: a method you can actually run for a fortnight beats one you abandon on night two.

It suits separation anxiety particularly well. The AAP describes that beginning in the second half of a child's first year, causing many nights of disrupted sleep, lasting several months, with a child waking several times and crying anxiously for a parent — a normal stage in emotional development that usually fades somewhere around the second birthday. A baby asking whether you still exist gets an answer every time she looks up, and the answer stays the same as the chair travels. The eight-month page covers the stretch where that question arrives with a motor skill attached.

It suits toddlers, who can see a chair, understand where it will be tomorrow and be told about it in daylight.

It suits least the baby whom a visible, unhelpful parent enrages. Some babies escalate at the sight of you sitting there not picking them up, and no amount of consistency fixes that, because the problem is the presence rather than the protocol. If she is plainly more upset with you in the chair than she is when you leave, this is the wrong method rather than a method you are doing badly. It also suits least the parent who cannot sit still in a dark room for forty minutes without engaging — half a method, delivered inconsistently, teaches nothing.

The two ways it stalls

The first is moving the chair on a schedule rather than on progress. A calendar does not know how the previous night went. Move the chair to the door on night seven because a page said night seven, and you usually spend the next week putting it back.

The second is the day underneath the night. If the last awake stretch is far too long, she arrives at bedtime past the point of settling and the chair has nothing to do with it — the wake windows by age guide covers those bands, and a week of notes on a printed night sheet will show you whether the bad nights follow a short nap or a long afternoon before it shows you anything about the chair.

A fortnight of no progress at all is a fair point to stop and try something else rather than to try harder. If the something else is intervals, the check-in chart is a place to write yours down; it ships its numbers as editable defaults, because no publisher this site is allowed to cite reprints them.

Whatever the arrangement in the room, the sleep itself does not change. Babies go down on their back for every sleep, day and night, on a firm flat mattress, in a cot clear of blankets, pillows, bumpers and soft toys, in your room for at least the first six months. Nothing weighted goes on or over a sleeping baby, and the chair is a chair rather than a bed — the safe sleep basics page has the full version.

When this is not a settling problem

A baby who cannot be settled at all, who is unusually sleepy, feeding poorly, not gaining weight, or whose cry does not sound like her usual one is not a chair question. Nor is a fortnight of nights that got worse rather than better after an illness, and nor is a worry that will not leave you alone. Those are conversations with your pediatrician or health visitor. This page is general information, not medical advice, and it cannot see your baby.