Whatever your baby connects with falling asleep (like being rocked, fed, or sucking their thumb, for example) is called a sleep-onset association. When they wake up, they will need that thing to be able to fall back to sleep.

If you want your child to go back to sleep on their own when they wake up at night, then you should encourage sleep-onset associations that do not involve you, the parents.

How do you do this? When you put your child to bed, you can rock or feed your child to make them sleepy, but stop before they actually go to sleep. Put your child to bed when they are still awake, so they learn to go to sleep without you there.

Children who have a more difficult temperament may have more trouble with sleep-onset associations.