Source: Unknown
Another baby expert in Australia is making headlines talking about his method of helping over 10,000 families over 30 years reach a full night’s sleep (or as it was reported). That method? Get your baby ready for bed, put them in their crib in their own room by 7pm, shut the door, then don’t open it until 7am. Walk away and ignore the crying, even if the child is crying for hours (unless baby is sick). If your child is older and trying to get out of the room, hold that door shut and don’t let them out. I don’t know this doctor as I’m not in Australia and there seem to be conflicting views on how much he in particular promotes this (some say they have been to him and been told this very advice, others not; update: I have now had personal email conversations with him and this is definitely a good representation of what he suggests as the “ideal” method, though he offers more moderate ones for families who don’t want to do this). This isn’t about him though.
This method isn’t new. This has been promoted by various sleep trainers or baby experts for years. Not everyone is as blunt about it, but let’s face it – whether you do it all night or just at the start of the night, crying-it-out is all about ignoring your baby. Many say they would never support ignoring a baby in distress, but then preach that crying doesn’t mean a baby is in distress.
I feel like sleep trainers are like a mythical monster where every time you cut off one head with science and reason, two more take their place that are even more dangerous than before. In the last few months alone, the media has highlighted this method of locking your child in a room for 12 hours a day under the guise of “helping” your child and a method of sleep training newborns by not feeding them at night.
I have written on the science around sleep training here, the fact that most of it doesn’t actually work as planned at home here, the myth of how not crying means a child is okay here, and how science doesn’t support the notion of teaching a child to self-soothe here. I have covered it. In detail. Over and over and over.
Clearly these people don’t care. Nor does the media that only shares these magical solutions at the expense of children.
I don’t know what happened in their lives that have led them to promote such cold, inconsiderate practices. To hold such little value for the lives they supposedly care for. To call babies who are behaving normally “nightmares”. To suggest parents must neglect their children in order to “help” them.
It must have been horrible.
Unfortunately I don’t believe much of anything will change their mind because they are too invested in this cold world they’re creating. They make too much money for one, but also for every family they convince to do as they say, they reinforce the notion that parents are to pit themselves against their children, and once a parent heads down that path it is ever-so-hard to come back. The more it is reinforced, the more they are justified in spreading these hateful methods. Methods that would be clearly seen as abuse for older children, our partners, the elderly… pretty much anyone that can speak up for themselves.
So instead I speak to you parents.
I understand you’ve come to a fork in your path. You have been struggling along and fearing you aren’t doing what you should be doing to help your child sleep. You hear over and over that it is the most important thing you can do, that any child that is waking regularly is bad, and that this is a reflection of your failure as a parent. It doesn’t help that you’re tired and expect that you shouldn’t be. So you face two roads and must choose: The easy one or that other one?
Your friends, the media, even doctors are telling you that you just need to take the easy path. That it’s best for you and it won’t harm your child, despite having no evidence to support any of these claims. They tell you that you’ll walk along it and before you know it, you’ll be at the end with a child that sleeps hours on end. What they don’t tell you is that as you head down that path you’ll pick up seeds of insecurity, fear, and abandonment. For your child will feel lost, scared, and left alone when you shut the door and walk away. Your child who has always felt that you will support and love her suddenly finds herself in that strange, dark world, only this time she’s all alone.
Your child will scream for you and you will ignore it because you have been told it doesn’t matter, and in ignoring it you will not be teaching your child essential life skills. If the fields of epigenetics and neuroscience tell us anything, it is that you will be changing the way your child views this world and may even change the very basic building blocks of their life
You’ve started setting the stage in which you pit yourself against your child, making it easier to view them as the “bad guy” later on. No one is saying that your child will be forever damaged or turn into a rotten, unhappy child, but rather that you are changing the dynamic of your relationship, and so much of how your child responds will be dependent upon factors out of your control. You can argue that you turned out “fine”, but as we know more about why people respond in the easy way, we see it’s not because they turned out “fine” but because, even in some small way, they didn’t[4][5]. You can argue that your sleep allows you to be warmer to your child during the rest of the day, but we know that unfortunately warmth doesn’t actually replace responsiveness nor does it negate the risks when we are unresponsive.
The degree to which that seed of separation grows will depend on so much more, but once you take the easy path one time, it becomes much harder to stand up for what is right over what is easy later on. The question you should ask is: Is it worth it?
Copyright: Kirill Federspiel
If you choose the other path, know now that it will likely be harder and longer. (Though the degree to which it’s harder actually is debatable as research doesn’t actually support how “easy” the “easy” path is[6].) You will embark on this path with your child by your side and you will have to first forget everything you think you know about infant sleep. You will have to realize how our culture has set expectations and judgements about sleep that have nothing to do with your child’s biology or even human biology[7]. You will also have to accept that the individual differences between babies are so vast that they will each develop on their own timeline, and that’s okay.
Once you’ve forgotten and relearned, you’ll have to decide if your child’s sleep is truly problematic. If it is outside the realm of “normal”, you’ll embark on a journey to discover why, having to accept that sleep problems are almost never sleep problems, but rather serve the role of canary in the coalmine, warning us that something else is wrong. As a parent on this path, you’ll start to slowly figure things out, trying different things to determine what is wrong, getting frustrated and at times feeling helpless, but it will be worth it. Just as you, as an adult, hope for doctors who will treat your problem instead of only a symptom and sending you on your way, it is up to us parents to do the same for our children, even when they can’t speak up for themselves. It can take time, but if you discover what is wrong (you can look here for ideas as to where to start), you will be able to look back at having truly helped your child through something hard and painful, and know you have reinforced the idea that you are always there for him.
What if you can’t? What if it seems there is no reason for the hourly wakings? Then at least you can know that by comforting your child in times of distress you are helping them not only in the short-term by preventing cortisol from flooding their developing brain[8], but to help them long-term with respect to empathy, social skills, emotion regulation, and relationships[9]. Not only that, but if you have a child that is the one that seems to be more “difficult” or “reactive”, these are the children for whom responsiveness is essential for their growth and well-being[10][11].
At this stage, you are likely questioning how much of a martyr you have to be and looking longingly at that easy path. How much do you, a parent, have to sacrifice when others seem to have it so easy? This last part is what is often forgotten when telling parents about this path: There are gentler ways to help guide your child’s sleep. It doesn’t involve shutting the door and walking away and it won’t give you 12 hours, uninterrupted alone. Why? Because that’s not biologically normal, but you can get enough sleep to feel good and function. You will continue down this path, hand in hand with your child, until one day, maybe at 12 months, maybe 18 months, maybe not until 3 years, but one day you go to sleep and wake up eight hours later to discover you’re there, and you made it there together without seeing the other as the enemy.
***
For those of you that took that easy path and wish you could turn back, you can. All is not lost and as parents we will all make choices we regret, but so long as we work to change things, our children and our relationship with our children will be stronger than ever. For those of you who took the easy path and have no regrets, I wish you well. I know better than to not expect a barrage of people claiming that this fuels mommy wars and that I’m only trying to make people feel bad. I’m not, but I can see how speaking up for children can make it seem that way in our parent-centric world.
There will always be the devils sitting on our shoulder trying to get us to choose the easy way. We just have to be stronger and listen to our hearts until there are no shoulders left for them to sit on.
_____________________________
[1] Holliday R. Epigenetics: a historical overview. Epigenetics 2006; 1: 76-80. (Also see: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes) [2] Gunnar MR. Social regulation of stress in early childhood. In K. McCartney & D. Phillips (Eds.),Blackwell Handbook of Early Childhood Development (pp. 106-125). Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. [3] Middlemiss W, Granger DA, Goldberg WA, Nathans L. Asynchrony of mother-infant hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity following extinction of infant crying responses induced during the transition to sleep. Early Human Development 2012; 88: 227-32. [4] Leerkes EM, et al. Antecedents of maternal sensitivity during distressing tasks: integrating attachment, social information processing, and psychobiological perspectives. Child Development 2014; in press. [5] Siegel DJ, Hartzell M. Parenting From the Inside Out. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2004. [6] Loutzenhiser L, Hoffman J, Beatch J. Parental perceptions of the effectiveness of graduated extinction in reducing infant night-wakings. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology 2014; http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02646838.2014.910864. [7] Cassels T, Ockwell-Smith S, Middlemiss W, Kendall-Tackett K, Stevens H, Narvaez D. Is your baby’s sleep a problem? Or is it just normal? In W Middlemiss & K Kendall-Tackett (Eds.) The Science of Mother-Baby Sleep (pp.171-192). Amarillo, TX: Praeclarus Press, 2014. [8] Gunnar MR, Brodersen L, Krueger K, Rigatuso J. Dampening of adrenocortical responses during infancy: normative changes and individual differences. Child Development 1996; 67: 877-89. [9] Grusec JE. Socialization processes in the family: social and emotional development. Annual Reviews in Psychology 2011; 62: 243-69. [10] Kochanska G, Aksan N, Joy ME. Children’s fearfulness as a moderator of parenting in early socialization: two longitudinal studies. Developmental Psychology 2007; 43: 222-237. [11] Belsky J, Pluess M. Beyond diathesis stress: differential susceptibility to environmental influences. Psychological Bulletin 2009; 135: 885-908.
This truly, truly breaks my heart. We are raising a generation that will be very cold, maybe won’t even have children, and will have emotional and relationship connection issues. Mark my words. The people telling these tired parents that this is “not normal” for babies to wake every hour, two, three, four……have no idea the damage they are causing. It kills me inside. How on earth do people come to the belief that ignoring your every natural instinct is better for your baby? Stop spreading this crap. That babies will never learn to sleep on their own if we do not force them. That babies can only be awake for thirty min to n hour before you must lay them down again and let them cry themselves to sleep. That you should never change a baby in the middle of the night…just slather on ointment before bed. Clean their puke up when they are sleeping, never tend to their cries. When you have babies..expect to be tired, it happens. Our job, as parents, is to help these little beings to understand the world, to help them when they cannot help themselves (and even after) and to nurture them. We need to put them first, they are not able to do so. Just because yu put a baby first does not mean they will grow up with some construed idea of entitlement. Why are people believing this? I am in shock reading half of these books. Love your babies, cuddle them and they will grow to be more independent and self assured than you ever thought possible.
Wow what an insightful article, We have had a very difficult road when it comes to sleeping , especially with my oldest (now almost 6) who would wake numerous times during the night up to the age of about 4. Because of the frequent nightly waking , my instinct was to simply follow an attachment parent style approach, having him sleep next to us and later when my second was born moved an extra bed for him into our room, even though he was sleeping better he would have many nightmares and was absolutely terrified of the dark and being alone even with us sleeping so close .When he went to preschool we also noticed him having fine motor and focus problems even though I have always found him to be Very very bright. So we got him evaluated at an ocupational therapist .The therapist picked up that he had sensory processing issues and some unintegrated primary reflexes and so we started an intensive OT programe both at home and after school 2 x a week. Well it has been 3 months, and the improvements are almost miraculous , my son who just a mere 12 weeks ago would not walk down a dimly lit corridor with me holding his hand out of fear of the dark , announced to us a week ago that he would like to sleep in his own room ( with his 2 year old brother as company). He sleeps through the night with the light off and falls asleep by himself and in his words keeps his baby brother safe too! After reading your article I am so so glad that I decided agains all the sleep training advice of doctors and friends, I can just imagine the damage I would have done to my kind sensitive caring boy had I not listened to my heart! Yes the sleepless nights were torture ,but now I understand that there were other issues causing his behavior that were beyond our insight, and that it had nothing to do with spoiling your baby! To other parents with sleep issues: please know there is light (or a nice dark room with a full nights rest) at the end of the tunnel even if it takes long to get there! There are more complex reasons for your child not sleeping please please please get to the bottom of them rather than shutting out your precious child, all we can really give our children is love an care !
This is an amazing article. I too was frustrated working in the field and watching the persistence in unscientific advice to parents that could physically and emotionally harm a child. So I wrote and published what i knew to be true. I wrote it in a language that parents who had less education could understand as often people who did not finish high school are intimidated by teach speak and references. It has been very well recieved.
Hassle Free Bedtime on Amazon today!
Well Lori, you’re right. Since information can only come from “experts” now, it’s no wonder people are afraid to go with their instincts and be the parent they WANT to be, not the people some “expert” tells them to be. We have never turned our backs on our child and locked her in a dark room, just so we could sleep “good”. Because I tell you, no decent parent can sleep good when their little one is crying in solitude. The heck the the “experts”. I don’t buy into anything that doesn’t make sense to me, or anything I don’t feel is right, just because someone did a “study” and then wrote a ‘paper’. Spanking kids=WRONG. It is assault, and violence will not be tolerated in my house. Locking your 6 month old in a dark room all night crying=WRONG. Be a decent parent and have a tall glass of ‘man up’ and deal with the little sleep you may get, it’s called being an adult and taking care of your responsibilities. Weak parents listen to these “experts” because they are fatigued and feel the needs of their children are less than their own, and yes, a screaming child in a dark room NEEDS you to be there, it’s basic nature and survival the child is reverting too. Strong parents put there child’s needs above their own. Be a strong parent and live without some sleep. You can sleep when you die.
I was very lucky to stumble across GP when my baby was just a few days old and am lucky to have family support. I’m not sure I could have stuck to this style of parenting if it wasn’t for the support of my husband, my in-laws, and various websites I have stumbled across (Evolutionaryparenting.com, ahaparenting.com, etc.)! Before having my daughter, when I knew everything, I thought there was nothing wrong with CIO and if your baby cried at night – then you just needed to be tougher and leave them longer and eventually they would stop. Anyway, now I have a beautiful 14-month-old daughter and have never left her to cry and no, it has not been easy, especially going against society’s ideas of how/where a baby should sleep (we co-sleep).
I just read your post and it made me so sad that there are “experts” who advocate putting your baby in the crib at 7pm, leaving, closing the door and not opening it again until 7am no matter how long they cry. The idea of someone doing this to a helpless baby makes me sick – if we did this to an elderly person it would be considered abuse, but somehow it’s ‘accceptable’ to do it to a baby? There is a little part of me that wonders if I would have resorted to sleep-training if I had not had such a supportive husband and family?
I wonder how many other families are out there going against their instincts, and leaving their baby to cry because they don’t have a support system or because they don’t know any differently. How can we reach these families in a supportive manner and let them know there is an alternative to CIO? Any ideas I come up with sound judgmental because I am essentially saying that leaving your baby to cry is “wrong”. But in order to actually reach these people, I can’t first alienate them by telling them they are doing something wrong. It would be helpful to even just have a non-judgmental response to, “Why don’t you just let her cry?” when it comes up in conversation that my 14 month old still doesn’t sleep through the night.
It’s a very tricky question and one I don’t have an answer to. I have written on the issue in other pieces, but I don’t know that I have an answer except to start earlier and focus on those that haven’t tried anything and make sure they know the gentle options that are available!
The best way to get the message across is to do it publicly… Like this post, rather than in a 1:1 personal way. Also, I feel, to give information rather than advice. What I mean by this is to explain WHY allowing cortisol to flood a baby’s system is bad, WHAT happens to the bodily processes and HOW it can impact development further on.
I admit that my children were left to cry themselves to sleep at times because that was the advice given back then. I was absolutely horrified to realise that, actually, I was torturing them! Not everyone knows the biological process and neuroscience behind the reasoning.
Thank you for continuing to be a voice of reason in this relentless battle of parent vs child. We have got this picture so wrong, we are unbalanced in our approach. The numerous heartless ‘enforcement’ methods are damaging delicate and necessary parent-child bonds in an irreversible way and I am sad for the children who have no choice in the matter. They are forced from an early age to ignore their instincts which grates harshly against everything they were evolved to feel and do. It breaks me knowing that I did this to my first baby, at the advice of ‘the experts’ and I will spend the rest of my life working on rebuilding that strong bond and trust that I had with her.
Thank you for weathering the inevitable backlash for the small chance that you may get through to just one more parent in time to change their mind.
The thought of so many babies being left to cry alone just tears me up. I am afraid of what this next generation will be like. I have a 3 year old son who was a “bad” sleeper until he was about 14 months, and even after that he went through many many phases of not sleeping through the night. Thank goodness I followed my instincts and went to him when he cried. He now sleeps so well that it freaks me out sometimes lol. 12 hour nights straight through and 2 hour naps.
What a lovely piece ensuring parents will feel guilt and have less of a relationship withttheir child because they got their kids to sleep this way.
I know that I was so tired after 7 months of attachment parenting it wasn’t safe for me to drive a car and I was barely functioning……
I used this method, got some sleep and therefore was a better mum (my next baby was an amazingly sleeper and was a totally different experience and I have no fear about rebuilding my relationship with my 13 year old son who prior to 2 nights of crying would cry all night long and they couldn’t find anything wrong with him we have a great relationship thanks)
How about letting people choose how to raise their own babies and stop trying to make them feel bad because they don’t think the same way as you!
You should feel upset. You should feel upset that the resources to help you and your baby were not available. You should feel upset that the science is being distorted and misleadingly parroted across various channels, setting parents up to fail. You should feel upset that because of these factors, you felt that leaving your baby to cry it out was the only option available to you.
Why dont we just let everyone do what they want all the time? Yay no one should have a moral.compasd and express it!!
There is nothing wrong with judgement as long as it is rational. And if you feel bad being ‘judged’ then its kinda upto you to deal with why you feel bad. This post doesnt force you to do anything. You dont have to react to guilt or negative feelings. But you can explore why you have them. Are they a rational or irrational response? I will continue to judge people as and when i please within rationality and they can juge me in the same way. Im not going to die from some guilt i may feel. If you are choosing to sleep train then live with the guilt it entails. Because there are alternatives and there is evidence showing you a diffrtent way. So i have no sympathy for you. I have empathy. But not sympathy.
Brilliant as always – moving house soon and all very excited about a new family bed. Can’t imagine how anyone could possibly feel it’s okay to leave their baba to cry, but I know it happens. My sister was telling me about a friend of hers who thinks it’s completely acceptable to leave her baby girl to cry – alone in the conservatory as this is the only place she won’t be able to hear the crying from. Heartbreaking 🙁 … sleep deprivation and random disjointed comments ..
. 🙂
I couldn’t disagree more. I pandered to my first child’s every cry. She was a most unhappy child. Slept little and I wasn’t just a tired mum, I was distraut and sick. if you look at the science of sleep, people have natural sleep cycles. No-one callously just shuts a door on a baby. Babies naturally resettle when waking between sleep cycles. Random comments of ‘just walk away’ have no foundation. Read the book or go and see the sleep doctor in person. He says it straight because he knows it works. But there’s more to it than that. I wrapped up my second two children and laid them down to sleep independently from birth. That’s was after, feeds, nappy changes, cuddles and singing. But, when the the sleep cue came, which starts as a little whimper or fractious grizzle I knew from the science that my infants were ready for sleep. Following their cue, I settled them into bed and walked away. They happily lay their in there familiar surroundings and contentedly fell asleep. Distraut parents of unhappy babies who cry all the time visit the sleep dr or read his book and yes have work to do. Their infants are used to parents returning to there recurrent cries and have developed a habit. These babies are not happy because the poor lambs never get enough sleep. They’re not happy, neither are their poor parents. So they go to the sleep dr in desperation and he teaches what he knows works; how to help your baby have good, long, solid periods of heavenly sleep the are so desperately lacking. The method may seem confronting, but brings beautiful results of a happy, well rested and healthy baby and equally so are the parents. Time with baby is no longer fractious and spent resentfully, but enjoyable. Parents are still tired and baby’s are still babies, but this continuous attendance of a baby who never settles habitually day in and day out, night in and night out is eleminated. I spent time settling my first child and introducing the sleep doctors practices at a pace I felt comfortable with and in time her happiness was evident in a baby who whilst she learned to settle independently, gained a far more restful sleeping pattern not relying on being constantly disturbed by her own anxieties.. As a result we were all less anxious. The experience I’ve had of poor mothers constantly attending a baby who doesn’t sleep well is that they and the child are both stressed and anxious.
http://www.thebabysleepdoctor.com.au/
Visit the website and see for yourself
Where we differ is in the approach. I would never suggest a parent live with such fractured sleep, but there are REASONS for this type of sleep deprivation and reasons to work on together. It’s a path that shouldn’t involve putting your child’s NEED for love and security aside. The notion of self-soothing and all that is really not supported in research – not crying is NOT self-soothing. This is an important distinction and I think it’s laudable for anyone to work with families, but I find it wrong to suggest leaving babies to cry as the means to do this. I recommend looking into the work of Dr. Pamela Douglas (also Australian) as she too does research and works with families but has a very different approach.
Also – this wasn’t about this particular doctor, it just was prompted by it as this method, as stated, as been around for years.
It is not a habit for a baby to want closeness with her mother while sleeping; babies are born this way. Not all babies will contently go to sleep when left alone even if they are showing sleep cues. Mine certainly doesn’t, but what she does do is sleep well when she is close to me. Actually, we both sleep well.
My daughter also had difficulty sleeping at first. For the first six weeks of her life, she rarely slept for more than half an hour if I had put her down and wasn’t holding her. However, bearing in mind that she had only recently left my womb -where she was constantly warm and comfortable, able to hear my heartbeat- I personally found the CIO method to be cruel. Instead, I picked her up everytime she cried, and eventually I made the decision to co sleep. From then onwards she’s always slept through the night and, knowing I’ll be there to cuddle her at night time when she needs me, she puts herself down for a nap now (8 months and 4 days). I can proudly say I am always there for her when she’s distressed in any way, and she’s getting so much more independent now, happy to crawl around and walk around playing and coming to me for a cuddle if she needs me because she knows I would never leave her. As someone else said, we wouldn’t leave the elderly to cry for hours on end hoping they’ll fall asleep because that would be considered abuse, so why do it to our babies who we are supposed to love and care for?
I couldn’t disagree more. I went to comfort my child every time he needed me, every night, until he was 14 months old. It was hard for me. But the results are there: he has always been a happy, joyful, confident boy and I have always been happy and proud to help him when he needed me, despite being tired. Also, he now requests me to leave the room (“mom away”) for his naps and at night: he wants to go to sleep on hiw own, when I have always stayed in his bedroom with him, cuddling and rocking him to sleep:!!! Also when he sees that I’m sad or fake cry (if I hurt myself), he comes to comfort me and kiss me!!
This is only my experience, but it shows that you can have a happy child without forcing them to selfsoothe before they have the ability to do so.
Thanks so much for responding to this Tracy. I made some brief comments, but it’s not my area of strength. You, on the other hand, have responded superbly as I hoped you would.
Thank you. I’m sharing this post with my followers because they were astonished that someone could get that much media with something so appalling.
Thank you Justin! I saw your comments in another article and was so pleased another doctor spoke up. Hopefully more will continue. It’s just heartbreaking that we’ve hit a stage where parents feel this is the ONLY option when there are so many gentler methods around to help everyone!
[…] https://gku.flm.mybluehost.me/evolutionaryparenting.com/shut-the-door-and-walk-away/ […]
I was just reflecting on this last night. I was thinking as I nursed my 2.5 year old daughter down to sleep how I used to wake up in paralyzing fear that Something was standing over my bed watching me. This was a totally normal fear of the darkness and being alone that every kid feels. I was reflecting that my daughter, who gets up and comes into bed with us every night, doesn’t have to feel this fear because getting out of bed is normal for her and sleeping with me she is not alone. That made me happy and proud.
You seem to have failed to draw a distinction between CIO and extinction, which is a massive red flag that you may not have properly researched what it is you’re complaining about. You mention early on in this tirade newborns being left for hours and unfed? That’s absurd. Sleep training is not for newborns. Nor does anyone advocate for failing to feed a baby that young.
I don’t even like extinction methods of sleep training, but you don’t seem to have a proper handle on the subject matter. You seem to be spreading a lot of misinformation here.
this is what our pediatrician said to do. And why we promptly switched pediatricians. Pretty terrible.
Can I ask whether you agree with any level of crying in a cot to allow the child to learn to self-settle?? I’ve read a bit about “control comforting”… where you leave the child, going into the room again if they get distressed, but seeing first if they can self-settle after a few minutes. Advocates assure me it isn’t “controlled crying” but I’m unsure. Can I ask your thoughts?
I’m so sorry Meredith – this was written, I see now, when my father-in-law passed away and I was gone for 3 weeks and only looking over comments today do I see it.
I don’t agree with controlled crying because it’s still a separation – you are still walking away. I think waiting a moment is definitely okay because you never know what your child will do, but don’t set a timer, just see what happens and be ready to go right back in. To add to that, if we focus only on the effects of cortisol, being with your baby and talking to him/her, holding their hand, while they cry does seem to negate the effects of cortisol on the brain based on limited studies. This, of course, IF you have a secure attachment already (if attachment isn’t really in place yet – it’s not immediate) or there’s insecure attachment, you will get cortisol spikes with vocalized distress (and non-vocalized distress). This is why being with your child and holding them or talking them through a hard spell of change can be helpful for them, but this doesn’t involve leaving the room and it doesn’t involve a still face as you sit there (the still face paradigm has shown us that it’s very traumatic for a child).
The one thing research doesn’t tell us (with kids) is how the *parent-initiated* separation holds in this case. In studies, children and babies are often distressed by others and their parent, from a distance, is able to respond enough to result in no cortisol rise. The issue, as pointed out by some neuroscientists, is that WHO causes the distress changes the effects in the brain altogether so we don’t know if it’s the same. I personally think it would still hold as I struggle to believe that babies would fully understand the causal nature of these other studies (and why wouldn’t they be pissed mom isn’t stopping it?). I hope that helps!
I remember when I was a teen a woman fired me as her baby sitter when she caught me comforting her crying baby at night instead of leaving her to scream as instructed. The baby was very upset, I think she was about 12 months at the time, and I called my mom for advice. My mom said hold the baby, it isn’t safe to leave her to cry. So I held her. Her mother came home and fired me on the spot. She implied that I had been abusing the baby. I have never been so glad to lose a client, I thought that woman was demented and I felt terrible for her child.
I am only one mother, but I am committed to my kids’ every need. I spoil with love and patience and hopefully they’ll spread that to others, and me when I get older 😉 .
Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation out there, most parents are led to believe that without the CIO method babies won’t be sleeping through the night for months if not years. We used gentle techniques to encourage longer sleeps at night (more day feeds, rocking for a minute or two to see if the baby would settle back to sleep before offering a feed, white noise at night, waiting half a minute or so to see if baby was awake or just making sleep noise. Etc) and by six weeks our daughter was sleeping eight hour stretches at night. It’s not about choosing between sleepless nights and crying it out, there are so many other options to try before using such harsh methods.
WOW…what a judgmental, obviously biased opinion!!!
I TOTALLY disagree based on loving experience! I “sleep trained” my son and he is the sweetest, most caring, loving child I know! We have a amazingly connected relationship and everyone compliments his wonderful temperament, which I give a great deal of credit to his happy, healthy sleep habits!
I did not read any mention above on the importance of consolidated sleep!?? It is just as important as food for growth a development!!!!! Would you let your child eat a whole bag of chocolate because he cried of you didn’t!?
Children need structure, routines, boundaries and to be taught healthy sleep habits. It is unfair to let children be in control of their sleep…of course they do not know what is best for them…that is our job as parents!
To each their own, but do not blanket judge other loving mothers!
BTW…I never once refused to feed my son during the night when he was hungry. I also breast fed him until he was over 2 years old…”easy route”…I think not!
ONE LOVING MOMMA HERE!!!!!!
[…] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog…aining-reports https://gku.flm.mybluehost.me/evolutionaryparenting.com/shu…and-walk-away/ If anything Jo frost's method is slightly more gentle than the known American method but […]
I feel sorry for all of you sleep deprived households who deal with months and years of night crying that you lord over families who do CIO. I much preferred teaching my sons to self-soothe early on than dragging out crying and tantrums, months of bad naps in strollers or car seats instead of solid sleep in beds. This post is so judgmental and so are the comments. My kids slept 12 hours a night (7-7) from five months of age on with great naps bc I taught them to fall asleep. As they got older, they needed me to hold their hand or rub their back a little and I always did what they needed until they just tried to get me to keep coming back as many times as they could control by getting out of bed. Then we did the hold the door thing for three nights of about 15 mins a night and after they realized they couldn’t be in charge and manipulate me into a game of com in back to their room every time they got up for “water” or another story or whatever reason they thought might get me to sit with them again, they learned quickly to accept it’s bedtime and after our loving rituals, they fall asleep. Highly recommend both methods. Posts like this shame parents and make others who are desperate for sleep feel too guilty to try a quick, efficient and disciplined way of teaching your beloved kids to fall asleep easily and peacefully in a very short amount of time. As an adult I dated several men who couldn’t fall asleep without excessive rituals of reading books, listening to sports radio and couldn’t get to sleep before 2AM. Their parents didn’t teach them to self-soothe. I refuse to raise kids who have such trouble getting rest. My younger son co-sleeps with us sometimes, especially when he’s in pain like with teething, but when he’s not, he goes down in his bed. Just because you use self-soothing methods does not equate with heartlessness or unloving homes. To say so is ignorant and hostile. If you actually had any experience seeing how these methods work, maybe you wouldn’t be so quick to demonize other hardworking, adoring parents. The idea that one has to give their entire self to their children and cater to their every whim, the notion that making boundaries or saying no to a child is anything but good parenting and life lessons is absurd and causing a generation of kids to think they can be mediocre and achieve the same dreams as children who work hard and foster talent. What you’re advocating teaches kids an over-inflated sense of entitlement, not love and encourages moms to suck their life-force dry and give away their sense of self to their children. This is a huge disservice to women who bear the brunt of the exhaustion of raising kids.
I just got back from the park, took my child and his sippy cup out of the stroller, put him in the pack n play, kissed him and said “nap time” and shut the door. Before I was halfway through this article, he was done crying and asleep. Showing the kid that sleep means sleep and I’m not coming back until after sleep has really paid off. It took 4-5 nights of cry it out when he was 8 months…which were hard, but I have had now a year of peaceful sleep patterns. And…he is fine, when compared to his peers. In every way, physically, emotionally, developmentally. So….to each his own.
Honestly, you guys are nuts! Im sorry but your negative perception of a method of leaving a child to sleep through the night and get into a good sleep routine is crazy. Im a Special Needs Coordinator at a Primary school and do you know how many families i work with who have children up to the age of 10 that still do not sleep properly due to co sleeping? Alot! What is the big picture here? Surely fundamentally we all just want to ensure we give the best to our children and that they get a good nights sleep?! Is them sleeping with us or not being consistent with rules and routines at bedtime a positive thing? To me no offense but having raised 2 children this way i would most definately no call it the ‘easy’ method. Its hard and heartbreaking! And may i say there is a difference between a child crying out of want and need. If the baby is fed, clean and warm (i used to have a routine of putting them down at 7pm and then waking them at 12pm and putting them down to then let them sleep through) then their needs are met. They may cry but they are crying out of their ‘want’ for you, not their need. Babies and children just like with sweets need to know that just because they want something doesnt mean they get it. Its called boundaries and kids feel most secure when they have these. Dont even get me.started on the long term impact of lack of routine and boundaries on a child bht trust me it can be ugly.
I wonder how much you understand attachment theory and the impact of poor attachments in early development on both children and adults in later relationships? Fundamentally you are reinforcing children to have anxiois attachments and be so over nurtured that they dont learn to or realise they can be successful and find peace on their own. I could rant on forever but couldnt help put.my opinion in here, just be careful as there are alot of mums out there looking for support and your advice will be part of the shape of the generarions of tomorrow.
There is so much I could reply to, but clearly you’re missing a lot of information. With a PhD in Developmental Psychology, I am well aware of attachment theory and have written and been interviewed on it. Over nurturing is not a thing. Certainly not one that leads to anxious attachment. I recommend you do a bit more research yourself. What you are referring to is parenting that overwhelms the child – that’s not nurturing, it’s overbearing. As for the issue on boundaries, your idea of crying for wants for a baby is insane. Babies have needs, not wants. Their cognitive development is not at the stage to differentiate. It also doesn’t mean that providing for their nighttime needs means you give into all wants. That’s a straw man’s argument that holds no water. Your example focuses solely on the physical needs, not the psychological and emotional yet if you look at the basis of needs – Maslow’s hierarchy – you see that both the physical and the emotional are core needs.
You can raise your children how you like, but to suggest that I am missing knowledge on issues of boundaries and attachment is simply wrong.
I left my kids alone in the basement bedroom from 5mnths-10 years old? And never had an issue.
Never lost any sleep, either. You wanna RAISE your child, not do everything for it.
I’ve always chosen the way easy. It’s called breastfeeding, cosleeping, and loving your child.
So do you not care about the risk of shaken baby syndrome? It’s much less risk to the infant if the parent sets them down for 20 minutes to scream instead of possibly yelling at, smacking or shaking the baby.
This article is not about that and elsewhere I have written on the issue of how of course it’s safest to leave a baby to avoid shaken baby syndrome. This was about a specific person who advocates shutting the door for 12 hours. And yes, that’s their actual advice. And many, many families follow it.
Forgot to link this article:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/84838958
Almost no one advocates leaving babies alone for twelve hour stretches. That’s insane! With that said, there is nothing wrong with practicing good sleep hygiene or using graduated extinction.
That depends on the baby. But it also doesn’t seem to actually work to change infant sleep so it’s best to look for other solutions that reflect the needs of everyone.
Tracy your article has broken me down in tears. I am a first time mum and suffered awful postnatal depression with my newborn (she just turned one). She would only ever sleep if held. I am a midwife and so I understand all the attachment and developmental reasons as to why so I pushed myself to my breaking point- and beyond, with sleep deprivation. I would hold her and rock her- while she screamed and screamed. “Colic” they all said. “It won’t last forever”. “She will grow out of it”. I was alone. My husband absent as he also suffered from PND so withdrew completely. I had little to no support and a baby that barely slept, and when she cried she screeeeamed.
I began having hallucinations. I became suicidal. I thought constantly of the most awful, dark things. But I live fairly rurally so I had no local supports. COVID meant I had no mothers group, and we had no local GP. I failed to go to my child health appointment out of fear that they would call Child services and take my baby away and they never followed me up. I was utterly, utterly desperate.
I am sharing this to shed light and provide context for my choices. As a [stubborn] midwife, I flat out refused to let my baby cry herself to sleep. The reality was she did this all the time- albeit in my arms. So when I reached out to a “sleep guru” I was adamant that I would not do this.
Her advice had me put her down and go in every few minutes to comfort her until she fell asleep. So- essentially “cry it out” dressed up in a bow. And I did it. And it nearly killed me. And she learned to “self soothe”. But now- almost 8 months later I worry that I have caused her trauma. She goes to sleep so easily on her own, I pop her in her cor and kiss her goodnight and walk out and she goes to sleep. But then I read articles like this and I think- what have I done?? I still breastfeed her and I am home with her full time- but I feel like I have failed her.
But I am alive. And she is alive. And we made it through. But I read this and I wonder, at what cost?
Katelyn, I’ve sent you a private email. Hugs to you and please don’t fear!
My issue with this article is the bashing. You, being a well educated woman, who in this article seems to consider herself loving and kind… I can’t wrap my head around the amount of bashing here.
It’s one thing to express your opinion and then give evidence to back it up, allowing a person to either agree or disagree. But to say that parents “don’t care”, are “cold and inconsiderate”, “hold little value for the lives they supposedly care for”, “neglect their children” and “pit themselves against their children.” My God!
Being a parent doesn’t come with a handbook. Parents are doing the best they can with the knowledge and experience they have. Based on these comments it’s clear that some parents have had great experiences with co-sleeping, others have had better experience with crying it out. As long as children aren’t hurt in the process neither is right or wrong. That’s the reality. You and millions of other people may have strong feelings about it, but it doesn’t make your opinion law. Nor does it give you the right to bash parents who choose a different route.
The blanket statements here about how a parent and child’s relationship will end up or be affected are extreme and to me, seem unintelligent. The world, people and relationships between them are far to complex to say that because person A did x, y will surely occur. Every single person and household is different. Every single child and parent will react differently. What works for one may not work for the other.
All in all, the parent shaming made this disappointing to read.