“I’m listening to Gabor Maté” - my wife said in the past week.

MG - “Ok” (*continues typing*)

Wifey - “You won’t like what he’s saying”

MG - “OK” (*continues typing*)

Wifey - “He’s saying if you Sleep Train your baby that you’re basically traumatising them…”

MG - stops typing … “Who is this wanker?”

The Wisdom of Trauma is a film that was released this month - and within the first 20 min - Dr Gabor Maté puts forth his opinion about sleep training in North America.

Before ‘little old me’ could come up with a way to counter this MMF (massive misinformation fest) - I received an email from my media department.

“Good Media Reach !”

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Sam Knight - a Freelance Journalist living in London and working on a piece for The New Yorker.

“It’s going to be about sleep training and sleep coaches. But centre around this figure - this matron who we employed to help our twin sons sleep”.

Sam was doing his homework, and interviewing a whole host of people on both sides of the fence. It was going to be a comprehensive story - and there was no guarantee that anything I said would be included in the piece.

A couple of weeks after the interview, a Fact Checker from The New Yorker zoomed with me to ensure the credibility of the information he was sent by Sam.

And just this week - the story came out.

It’s a long and comprehensive read. Put another way, you can listen to the story on The New Yorker website. All 33 minutes of it.

So how does the first 33 min of The Wisdom of Trauma compare?

The New Yorker VS Gabor Maté

Perhaps a good way to compare the two stories - that have touched on the same topic - is to compare some of their quotes?

For example, Dr Maté says verbatim:

“There’s a huge school of thought in North America that teaches mother to help their babies sleep by ignoring their crying. Nevermind the mother’s milk. The infant just wants to attach, because the only way the infant can attach is physically. When he’s not being held, he’s not being attached to them. When that’s done night after night after night, that’s traumatic. And we’re still telling mothers to do that.”

And …

“If you actually look at genuine human needs, if you connect the gut and the heart and the soul, then there’s nothing more normal than a child sleeping in the arms of a parent.”

In contrast, The New Yorker states:

“In 2016, Michael Gradisar, an expert in child sleep disorders at Flinders University, in Adelaide, Australia, carried out a study on forty-three infants and found that their cortisol levels went down as their sleep improved.”

Conclusions?

There will be thousands, if not millions of people, who will hear and adopt what Dr Gabor Maté has to say. He’s a doctor. He quotes research at the start of the film.

He’s correct that children experiencing a traumatic event will differ in their brain development. The film gives plenty of examples of this (eg, children in violent home environments).

But like too many others, he incorrectly extrapolates the experience of a “child in a 24/7 violent home”. This will likely mean thousands of parents will refrain from performing a safe sleep technique that works. Conversely, his message of parents sleeping with their baby will likely mean at least one westernised baby will die.

One day, us sleep scientists will need to set the record straight by starring in our own documentary film. Until then, we can only spread the science.

Share this blog. Share The New Yorker story. Choose Science.

• Professor MG

p.s. I cannot find a single scientific publication to Dr Gabor Maté’s name.

p.p.s - If you want the full details of our 2016 study - that includes graphs of the cortisol values, and shows no indication that sleep training led to insecure attachment 12 months later - then go to our Downloads section of our website and click on the Scientific Publications section.