Many people report trying extinction methods of sleep training to "help" their baby sleep better, but what does research tell us in terms of the efficacy of these methods for baby's sleep? Does the reasoning hold up?
When you talk about stress and sleep training, you often get two polarized views: Either the stress is so great it has to cause irreparable harm or it's fine or even beneficial. Yet neither really captures the whole story.
I get a lot of people angry that I speak out against extinction sleep training because it "worked" for them. I thought I'd start a post that allows me to respond publicly to these criticisms so I don't have to repeat myself over and over.
I hear people argue all the time that we don't need to be as responsive to our children because there aren't wild animals anymore. We couldn't be looking at the issue any more wrong if we tried.
This is for those of you who have gone the cry-it-out route and now regret it. The two biggest questions I'm asked on the topic - have I done irreparable harm and can I fix it? - are discussed herein.
Is crying-it-out traumatic for a child? Yes. With this in mind, what does it mean for our promotion of it? Is it short-term pain for long-term gain or should we possibly think a little (okay, a lot) differently?
Shouldn’t we all support each other? Hmmm… well, no. Not that I don’t think we don’t offer support to any parent who asks for advice moving forward, but do we give carte blanche to all actions? Absolutely not. Or at least absolutely not for me.
My interview with Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame and author of the Moral Landscapes blog on Psychology Today.
The system we have adhered to as a society puts the onus of do no harm on those who are acting. If you want to act against what we know to be what infants need and are asking for, namely responsiveness, should it not be you who has to prove no harm?
Independence. In many Westernized societies it is the end goal of our parenting efforts. We want our children to be independent. But what does that mean?
