Cry it out - abuse?

[CeCe2023]

I’ve recently been on Reddit and have stumbled across a sleep training page, I find the whole thing fascinating and perhaps something we might look into in future if needed (baby wakes often and currently co-sleep/bassinet mix) but would want to avoid any form of crying it out at all! And I don’t think you can ‘train’ a baby, but support better habits perhaps.

What I can’t believe is the amount of posts from parents who are doing full cry it out and what they call ‘extinction’ methods where the withdraw all support which was previously there. Juts a couple I have read tonight 1 one where baby cried for 3.5 hours until sick and parents intervened and one where baby is only 5 months (so likely going through a regression) and as they’ve been waking every 45 minutes the parents have gone to full cry it out and left them alone in a room all night.

Comments from other posters are all ‘well done you’ and ‘sorry you’re dealing with this’ - what about the baby?!

I understand sleep deprivation, I currently get around 3-4 hours interrupted sleep a night and I respect others parenting choices but how is this not bordering on child abuse?

They celebrate when the baby falls asleep alone, but I would to if it was the middle of the night and I’d cried myself to sleep 🥹

Found the whole thing really upsetting to read.

We did a 'gentle sleep training' programme, DD(2) still wakes up once in the night, but we did it to try to reduce the frequency of night waking and move her into her own room because sleep deprivation was part of the reason I ended up in a Mother and Baby Unit with quite severe PPD.

We didn't ever leave DD to cry on her own though, we went to her every time she woke (every 45 mins for about 2 weeks at one point), but we moved her into her own room and then slowly reduced the input she had from being held, to patted, to having a hand resting on her tummy, to sitting next to the cot, sitting in her room, sitting outside her room and now we can put her down, say goodnight and close the door and there isn't a peep until she wakes up at maybe 4am for a drink.

I wish we could get rid of the final nighttime wake with our second DD on the way imminently, but she obviously still needs us so we'll just keep going until she's ready to sleep all night.

I couldn't ever just leave her, it breaks my heart to hear her crying. I did it once when DH was working nights and I was exhausted and just wanted to cry myself but ended up going in after about 3 minutes because the sound of her sobbing just made me feel so guilty! I don't know how people do it, I really don't.

It's not abuse and saying it is does a disservice to child who actually experience abuse. but that doesn't mean it's OK.

YANBU it’s just a new idea or rehash of an old one.

DD had colic /reflux and hospital consultant said just hold her, get ear plugs/listen to music what have you. Screamed from 5-11pm. Was awful for her and us. I can’t imagine just dumping her and leaving her to get on with it.

You don’t have to pounce on them if they let out a squeak but 3.5 hrs of continuous crying is seriously ok? Some neighbours cannot be ok with that!

I had a toddler then twins. I would set up dd1 with food, breast feed baby 1, wind, swaddle and put her down then repeat with baby 2. If baby 1 cried, I’d be in the same room but priority was for baby 2 to be fed or they’d be out of sync. Through this I learned to distinguish between the twins’ different cries and understand the tired cry that didn’t need soothing and the hungry or uncomfortable cries.

i do think leaving a baby to self settle in a controlled way works and doesn’t harm them. I couldn’t do it with dd1 because I felt so awful guilty and now I have dd1 (anxious child) dtds (totally chilled). People will have different perspectives and that’s okay but I don’t think leaving a baby to cry when they are known to be safe is damaging. I still remember dtds screaming on the play mat and dd1 vomiting everywhere. Dtds were safe but crying, dd1 needed me - to get her showered, dried, into pjs, cuddles for comfort and room needed cleaning. I did it all as fast as I could but it probably took an hour. Dtds fell asleep. No obvious damage. But I do agree it’s hard to hear crying when you’re not busy with something else.

I don’t think anyone would think it’s a good idea to not console a baby at all. Creating good habits is not the same thing, although some crying can be involved.

I don’t understand how anyone can just be sleep deprived for years. Personally I felt very down when I had a baby that didn’t sleep well, I’d often questioned pnd but after a full night of rest, I’d be back to myself.

it seems as though there’s a prize for surviving through a baby waking up to breastfeed every 45 minutes for a couple of years, followed by a couple more years of sitting by their bed whilst they fall asleep and then get into your bed.

for our family, it was beneficial to get the kids into good sleep habits from very early on. Letting them learn to fall asleep on their own is part of that.

Millions of us have to work on ridiculously disturbed sleep. Let's not pretend that babies suddenly sleep when we return to with whether they be at 6w or a year. It's not that unusual for a baby to sleep worse at a year than a few weeks old.

Thankfully I WFH, but yeah I managed to work with hourly wake ups (my child did this from 6-18m). She's 4 now and still has sleep issues so today I'm trying to work on 4hrs sleep, with period pain and a cold. Being an adult sucks.

The idea of only being able to work on a full night sleep is a luxurious idea when children are young and doesn't reflect the reality of how lots of us live.

Wasn't there a study (I want to say it was Russian? May be way off) where babies that were left to cry went on to develop some sort of emotionally stunted syndrome? Where they stopped crying all together? Said syndrome has a name I think... I've just been trying to google but I'm not sure what exactly to type in. I know I'd read it somewhere a while back.

I'm not getting involved in the thread, I'm not bothered what other parents do as long as their babies are fed, clean and warm - just want to re read the study if anyone has the foggiest what I'm on about!

I think it might have been a Romanian orphanage, not comparable to a caring home .

agreed! It’s awful🥲 so upsetting to think about even.
my nephew was sleep trained like this and is now the most anxious nearly 3 year old I’ve ever met. He been in his own room 7-7 pretty much alone from 3 months. The sad thing is he’s now started to try to get into his parents bed now because he is so anxious about sleeping and being alone and they aren’t having any of it.

my partner works in primary schools with so so many children overly anxious about sleep/going to bed/ being alone. There seems to be a pattern.

I think parents have to be cautious about the possibility that short term ‘benefits’ can come out as bigger problems later down the line

My partner and I tried the cry it out method, I lasted less than 3 minutes because the sound of my baby being upset was too much to bear, and so we VERY quickly left that idea behind, and comforted him. Even now, when he is nearing 4 (developmentally delayed though so still wakes crying - very rarely though), I am straight into his room to comfort him, because that's all he needs usually, a cuddle and reassurance that we're still there. It breaks my heart to know there are babies out there who just need a cuddle and are being left alone to comfort themselves.

I'm literally just suggesting that maybe this kind of sleep training is more common in the US because of going back to work earlier. It's very rude to put words in people's mouths like some of you have.

I’m at work at the moment. I will double check later. But I’m sure I read studies that showed changes in behaviour and evidence of trauma but things may well have been updated since then. I’ll admit it if wrong 🤷🏻‍♀️
That was my recollection from the research I did when I was looking to do sleep training with DD (who is now 10). I’m in no way critical of sleep training, I just remember reading that Cry it out was believed to be harmful. We did opt for controlled crying (where you keep returning at intervals, but her Dad did it) and it did work for us..but personally I found even that was difficulty and I wouldn’t have been able to leave DD to cry herself to sleep.

In an otherwise loving home where emotional and physical needs are met, the chances of long term harm is low. That said, I cannot imagine letting a baby cry for 3.5 hours let alone openly admitting it! Cry for a few mins and then going in to shush and Pat and waiting outside is a different ballgame. I admit I found that hard too. I couldn’t cope with my babies crying. I am in no way pro CIO but if the child is otherwise having their needs met, it’s unlikely to be highly long term traumatic. Of course there’s every chance some of those babies aren’t having their needs met in other areas which may compound it.

I honestly don’t know anyone these days who endorses cry it out in a small child. I’ve known people do controlled crying with a 3 year old sort of age. Perhaps it is a culture thing.

I'm wondering if you have to be a bit more all or nothing with sleep training for tiny babies compared to one year olds. I know of more older babies that slept through on their own than newborns so maybe this age is more receptive to the gentle methods. Newborns are supposed to feed every few hours all the time and it's much rarer for them to start sleeping through.