Often when I write about crying-it-out or controlled crying, I get comments from people who have done it asking what else they should have done in their sleep deprived state. The question concerns me because it highlights not only how mainstream the idea of leaving a child to cry has become, but also about how ignorant society is as a whole about the alternatives to sleep training.
The recent piece on sleep training sparked what I believe to be misguided outrage in many people. I want to address some of the issues that were brought up and speak generally about the importance of what we promote to families.
You know how everyone keeps saying it's up to us to prove the risk of harm from sleep training? Well, we have the beginnings of this with a new review piece looking at outcomes for sleep training of infants under six months of age.
The argument is that if you have a warmer relationship at other times, the failure to be responsiveness or to even be hurtful is not a problem. The problem is that science doesn't back that up at all...
Alright, I caved. At first I wanted nothing to do with the recent article on co-sleeping killing babies, but let’s take it apart, shall we?
Many of you know the very viral piece "Why African Babies Don't Cry: An African Perspective". Well, here I present a guest article by the same author, the very talented JC Niala, on sleeping from her very unique, personal history as an African-British woman. I am so thrilled she has decided to share this with us and hope you enjoy it!
It saddens me that this needs to be written but it does. Too many media outlets and "baby experts" are out there telling parents to ignore their instincts and their babies.
The entire tagline reads “A journal jumps on the Dr. Sears bandwagon to say sleep training is dangerous. Science says otherwise.” Let’s first get something clear – journals publish special issues all the time and journals publish research and opinion pieces and reviews from researchers who work in the relevant fields.
We were luckily able to view a copy of the article in advance and the group of researchers I have worked with on other posts and I wrote a response. This is it. It has been shared as a press release generally and given specifically to the BBC (the study is a UK one). We shall see how the media responds in the days to come, but it's nice to know that at least we're not one step behind this time!
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?
