To think controlled crying is cruel

[KazMa]

DH would like to try controlled crying/sleep training but I am totally against any sort of crying/leaving DS on his own upset. Any advice?

Here is current scenario:

DS just turned 7 months old and we have been co sleeping since the dreaded 4 month sleep regression, he also breastfeeds to sleep - will go to sleep without it but needs a lot of patting, rocking and walking around so it’s easier just to BF.

For a month now I am able to BF to sleep and then leave him in his cot in his own room for nap times and he will sleep 45mins to an hour per nap (3x per day).

At night however he will wake up and only go back to sleep if he is laying & feeding next to me in my bed. (Eg, bedtime at 8pm but he’ll wake at 8:45 and won’t go back to sleep.

Cry it out, the baby is left isolated. Whether that's in intervals or not, they aren't supported when they want/need it.

No one on this thread is advocating leaving a baby to cry endlessly.

People are talking about allowing some crying in a controlled manner while you transition a child to falling asleep in their own cot. With a loving parent there.

Don't you think the 'rise' in mental health is more likely due to

1. our 'better' understanding of mental health 2)carrot over stick (up until the 70s if a kid refused to go to school, they likely got a hiding...whereas now we realise it's more likely down to anxiety)
2. lack of belief systems; interesting correlation between having a faith and less mental health challenges.
3. mental health has always had a stigma attached to it, therefore it was very much a taboo subject (we still have a massively long way to go) but it's much more widely spoken about, so of course the prevalence will be higher ...not much different to a higher portion of kids getting diagnosed with Autism. I personally don't think more children are being born with autism, we're just much more understanding/ accepting / recognising the condition, dh realised he was autistic when DD was undergoing assessment. It was a real lightbulb moment for DH, dh didn't suddenly become autistic though, but because he was quiet at school, it went undetected, despite causing difficulties in many areas of his life.
4. I was born in the 70s, I remember quietly spoken conversations about 'so & so's nerves' or mr x having 'an attack of the nerves' or Miss J suffering with mental exhaustion/ nervous breakdown etc. it was seen a very poor form to have an attack of the nerves, no backbone you see...as for children or teenagers suffering from 'the nerves' don't be daft they just need to 'toughen-up'. Not to mention the young men who where shot for cowardice in the 1914-18 war. just awful, awful lack of understanding about mental health, so thank goodness we now do recognise that mental health is real, and does need support/ treatment. Poor mental health has been in human societies for as long as cancer or any other illnesses, we still don't fully understand the reasons why someone might suffer from mental health, just as we still don't fully understand what causes a cell mutation which causes cancer (as we get further into research we are improving our understanding, but trying to pin mental health on teens due to leaving a baby to cry is just about the biggest load of bollocks I've read for quite sometime) Some teens will develop mental illness no matter how well loved and cherished they are, some teens won't develop mental illness despite growing up in an abusive household. Again much we don't know, sure stats. suggest a greater chance of mental illness if neglected, but it's not a foregone conclusion.

Op you do what feels right for you. If you don't feel control crying is right for you and your baby then don't do it. As with so many things with child rearing there are no black and white answers. Both my dc need totally different parenting techniques, I don't remember leaving them to cry it out probably whythey both liketo co-sleepwith me despite being nearly teens (or at least would if I let them)
Basically op now you are a parent you are damned if you do and damned if you don't everyone will judge you no matter what you do! It's the first rule of being a parent, the second is just muddle through the best you can!

I think unfortunately we don't really know the long term impact of sleep training. People like to say it's been around for years, but it's really only a couple of generations. Before that, and all over the world still babies aren't left to cry. It's only recent history in the developed world that babies have been expected to sleep independently.
My personal opinion is that it must surely affect stress levels and attachment to some degree. And it must also be difficult to study, because how do you measure that?
I wouldn't do it personally.

Also, I currently have a 7 month old who thinks sleep is for losers. It's a phase and will get better.

Leaving a baby to cry can only benefit the adult

Said with the absolute certainty of a person that either had only one child or a decent space between them. I had twins - and you know, unfortunately even when tiny I would sometimes have to let one cry while I dealt with the other.

@KazMa you're of course entitled to do whatever you feel is best for your child - but no, controlled crying isn’t cruel. It isn’t leaving the baby to cry, for a start. I can’t actually remember what we did with the twins but I know my third I did CC at 14 months as I was exhausted working full time and also doing night wakings as was breast feeding. At 11 to the twins’ 13 they are all just as secure in their relationships with me, we’re very close and they’re close to their dad too. And while DS3 doesn’t remember the 3 or 4 nights where I did CC, I do, and I remember the relief of having my body and bed and a full night’s sleep.

I think there are a lot of assumptions, falsehoods and pressure around sleep training (CIO/CC) on BOTH sides of the argument.

I haven't and don't intend to sleep train. Up until recently my 9mo, who feeds to sleep and co-sleeps after the first wake, was waking up at least every two hours. For the past two weeks though he has woken up just once overnight. I've changed nothing, other than moving bedtime slightly later. He's also showing signs of self-settling, but I am happy to move at his pace.

I appreciate that I am in a position to do this. I am on maternity leave, have a supportive partner and he is our only child. Not everyone is in that position and sleep training may be, on balance, the best option for their family.

Well for a start you clearly don’t know what controlled crying is because it’s not just leaving your baby to cry.

The only studies I know of are from severe neglect, prolonged bouts of crying. Not from babies being put down and not attended to within seconds. Which is essentially what you’re saying as like I say,
controlled crying isn’t just leaving your baby to cry alone.

There needs to be a rule on sleep training threads that anytime someone says 'studies show that...' they need to add a link to the study. Because at the moment it's just shorthand for 'this is what I believe and there's probably a study out there which backs me up'.

Yeah, like I said, how do you study it?
Maybe it works for you, but without research showing it doesn't harm babies I won't be doing.

We did cry it out (Ferber method basically) and it worked miracles within 2 nights. Best thing we ever did. However you do have to both be onboard and fully happy with the plan as it is heartbreaking. In my opinion a couple of horrible nights is worth it for a well rested baby and parents in the long run.

Well here's a 5 year follow up study to see longer term impact of sleep training. Shows no evidence that it causes harm www.researchgate.net/publication/230830539_Five-Year_Follow-up_of_Harms_and_Benefits_of_Behavioral_Infant_Sleep_Intervention_Randomized_Trial

You'll never get that study. How many years would you have to wait for the participant to grow up before deciding they're fine? How would you account for the hundreds of other variables in their life that account for how they are?

Raise your children how you want, but don't be incredulous when people can't prove a negative.

DD woke every 45 mins for 6 months. Some nights we were lucky to get two 45 min stints in the cot from her, the rest of the time she had to be held or would wake immediately. I had severe PND and was suicidal. DH was a wreck with working full time while trying to do most of the nights with DD because he was terrified for me. I was under the perinatal mental health team but wasn't getting better. It got to the point where I figured that any negatives of sleep training would be nowhere near as bad as growing up without a mother - sounds dramatic but I was that unwell. And it wouldn't just have been DD2, my older daughter was obviously being affected by my mental health as well. We sleep trained and it hasn't taught her that crying doesn't get a response - she's 7 months and wakes every 3 hours-ish and will cry or shout and I'll feed her. We can see on the video monitor that she's not awake all evening and lying there silently, she is asleep. She is just able to actually get some solid blocks of sleep in her cot. We don't even put her down awake in the night, I feed her to sleep and then she stays asleep when put down but we needed to sleep train to even get to that point. Getting more sleep helped me more than any of the treatment I got from the perinatal team. I'm still unwell but I can now function and am no longer suicidal
(I'm not saying PND is "just" sleep deprivation, but for me, the extreme lack of sleep severely hampered any recovery.)

Well exactly. So I choose to not take the risk.
You can choose otherwise. That's up to you.

That study is neither large enough or long enough to convince me personally.

@NewmummyJ Anyone talking about Romanian orphanages where there was horrific neglect at the same time as talking about loving parents in a stable country has zero understanding of the research around children's development.
People like you make me angry. It is the epitome of the saying a little knowledge is dangerous.

OP do what works best for you. Same advice I would give to any mum.
If you are loving towards your baby and child and generally responsive, whether you leave them to cry or not to cry for a bit really makes no long term difference.

@Kabalagala There is zero evidence of long term damage.
Sleep for children and adults matters. There is plenty of research evidence showing that.

Oh god, we aren't heading to the other end of the spectrum here are we? That people who don't do controlled crying are intentionally harming their children by actively preventing them from getting 18 hours of sleep a day or whatever...... 🙄

I wish I had done it with my last. She’s FIVE now. Five. And she can now argue with me. And now I can either wait till she’s old enough to move out or… I don’t know what to do

I agree YANBU but can see why your DH wants to do something to help with the sleep. Presumably you're spending lots of evenings in bed with DS.

I think with any sort of leaving to cry, it depends on the baby and type of cry. DC2 would have a whinge but not really asking for anything and if you picked her up it didn't really help as she wasn't a very cuddly baby. We ended up leaving her just 4 mins at a time (not increasing) and then going to reassure her (hand on tummy or rub tummy) or pick her up and leaving her 4 mins again. It never took long and she wasn't screaming or anything. She's now a great sleeper and happy toddler. DC1 would either be quiet and happy or scream his head off, no in between so I could never have left him to cry like that.

Maybe there's a middle way. You could try the No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. I didn't get much of it to stick for my DC1 but I was absolutely exhausted and basically a single parent at that point so had no help. I also started it a bit older (maybe 10 months or 1 I think) when I think the habits had set in more. So I think 7 months would be a good age to try. I thought the techniques were good, I just need more energy and maybe a bit of tag team help to put them in place.

YANBU to think it's cruel. You can think what you want and make whatever decision you wish to for your own child. Nobody can say you're unreasonable for holding an opinion.

You can consider it cruel if you wish, but there's no evidence sleep training causes any short or long term harm, and there is evidence that it can be very beneficial. It's something I never thought I'd do based on comments from friends before I had kids, then I actually did my own research into the evidence (around other things too such as feeding) and had to update my own thinking based on the science. Sleep trained at 6m using the Ferber method and I'm very thankful we did. Doing nothing would have been far crueller in the long run, the gift of good quality, restful, reliable sleep is something I'm very proud to have been able to teach my son. It's had so many positive benefits. Everyone can decide on their own approach with their child but the notion that it's somehow damaging or cruel just isn't backed up with any evidence.

IMO the people who criticise parents for sleep teaching tend to have been quite lucky with their own babies, and can't understand why someone would want to sleep teach when nights are just about getting up every few hours for fifteen minutes or so. I could have done that forever. Would I couldn't sustain any longer than six months was a baby that only slept forty minutes at a time and took sometimes hours to go back to sleep. It almost destroyed us all, and is the number one reason I'm terrified to ever have any more children. Don't judge until you've been in someone's shoes. There'll always be posters happy to criticise and call parents who teach healthy sleep cruel, just as there'll be people happy to criticise formula feeding, breastfeeding, safe sleep, bedsharing, childcare, stay at home parents, basically every choice you make as a parent. My advice to new parents is to look at the evidence and then make the decision that's best for you in light of that. Not go by myths that are widely shared and inaccurate.

I used bf to get DD back to sleep for as long as it worked. It was the quickest and easiest way and was what she wanted/needed. By 12 months she'd stopped bf and started sleeping through the night.
It was a rough road to get there but you have to trust your instincts and do what works for you.
I am in the camp of not sleep training but I do get the desperation of needing a solution when it's really hard.
I just trusted that my DD called out/cried and that I would comfort her however she needed me to. She now only wakes in the night if she's not feeling well/teething/too hot or cold.
She falls asleep with a cuddle and that's it. She's 16 months now.
Do what you need to get through the hard times, bf was always the magic answer for me so go with it!

It's like magic isn't it?

DS went from an overtired, exhausted baby that couldn't stay asleep longer than 40m and was reliant on being fed or rocked back to sleep (then bolted awake the moment he touched the cot) to such a happy, content, well-rested baby.

Whenever people are on the fence about sleep teaching I share my own experience a little down the line: he's three now, is excited to go to bed, bedtime routine (books, bath, bed) takes twenty minutes, and he's asleep by the time we've closed the bedroom door! Falls asleep by himself, sleeps thirteen hours straight. It's amazing, we are so, so glad we did our own research.

Totally agree. I came on to say the same thing. I didn't use any form of CC with any of my 4 children, as it intuitively felt like the wrong choice for me. However, the amount of hyperbole on this thread, including from so-called professionals, is insane.