controlled crying...don't we all do it in the end?

[mamacherry]

Who does it? Is it ok? Will it cause lasting damage? Don't all parents inevitably do it in the end at some point or other, whether they admit it or not? Considering it with my 4 months old dd2 as she started sleeping though the night 8pm to 6am at 8 weeks but is now waking regularly and I am sure she doesn't need milk - she's massive!

Sorry to add a note of dischord - but, Eddieizzardismyhero, can I please point out that i did say people seemed touchy and defensive but i did not actually ever comment on people who do CC, and indeed specifically said that I don't judge people who do it, so perhaps your ire and face is a bit misdirected.

It wasn't directed at you fanjo .

ok, phew, wires crossed!

I do understand how awful sleep deprivation is, having only had a few nights sleep in the last 4 years.

, no worries - can see how my paragraph could have been misread but it was another poster who mentioned "comfort and convenience" so that was why I got defensive. Not with you.

Sorry about the sleep deprivation. Sucks doesn't it? .

Yes..I am sleep deprived today in fact, can hardly keep eyes open!

DS1 had a very difficult night last night - teeth .

DS2 would have slept through but dh woke him up at 3.30am staggering in from a night out with the lads .

I'm having a lie in tomorrow !

You deserve one!

my DD has a habit at the moment of waking for 1-2 hours in the night to play.

And I was out with work last night so not feeling the best today!

"It seems to me people make the mistake of thinking of their children as little people too much.
Babies do not think and feel the same way that adults or even small children do, they are entirely selfish and have no comprehension of time."

So if not little people, what on earth are they?

And what nuisances they are to selfishly expect to have their needs met at inconvenient times....

I have never done CC for any of my DCs (5 in all, 11 years from the birth of DC1 to the birth of DC5) and all are exceptional sleepers. They all slept really badly for the first year or so; one didn't sleep through until she was at least 2.5. I always expected sleep deprivation to be part of the picture with babies and trained myself not to be so attached to the tv or my own amusement while they were younger.

I have as much proof of the non-CC route being a part of their present niceness and good sleeping habits as anyone here who has done CC and had similar results does. It's all just a wild stab in the dark, with 'it works' offered as the justification. Hardly scientific.

Here's an article on sleep cycles of infants. An alternative to CC or co-sleeping if it's not for you may be swaddling, which has some benefits sleepwise.

Flight, I agree with you about the order of how needs are met -- older and presumably more mature and patient people can be expected to wait, and do some of the attending to their needs themselves. Mum is not there to cater to all of the people all of the time. As far as I'm concerned, a baby has a bigger claim to my attention than anything else for as long as it takes.

FlightAttendant - re your post of this morning:

To recap, kalo claimed that CC works in three nights because "that is how long it takes to break trust" and said that there is "vast amount of research" to back this up.

I have asked what research she is talking about, and we are still waiting for enlightenment. It seem like she is unable to produce a shred of evidence that CC babies don't trust their parents from that point forward.

In particular, this "vast amount of research" should include experiments, for only through extensive testing and general acceptance that a hypothesis becomes a theory. Someone who has studied psychology should know this. Others who have not but have a minimum understanding of science should, as well.

kalo seems to say that it is not possible to experiment on psychological hypotheses and you seem to concur but that is demonstrably false. Particularly on trust, there are myriad experiments, some concerning children. Here, for example. Here is another.

It is clear by now to all regulars on these CC threads that there is not a shred of evidence that supports kalo's assertion that CC breaks a baby's trust to his parents. Whatever you say, your head between your hands or not, that is not changing unless you find some studies that conclude the contrary.

In the rest of your post from this morning, you are saying the following:

-- I should not ask kalo for evidence that supports her claim but should now go and research it myself.

Sorry, but that is not how debate works, in RL or on MN. You make a claim, you back it up.

-- How do I know my DC are not "damaged"?

The same way you do - they look, talk, act, feel completely normal. They love and trust us, they call whenever they need anything or hurt themselves so obviously they haven't somehow thought that "Parents won't come when I cry so sod them"

-- I don't have evidence that CC does not harm.

Because nobody tests a negative and you can't expect anyone to prove a negative. Again, you should know this.

-- "Some minutes" could mean hours

No it couldn't, not in English anyway.

-- Holding a child down for vaccination is not comparable

I think it is. If anything will break trust, the fact that his mummy willingly took him somewhere, lied that it wouldn't hurt, then physically restrained him while someone hurt him a lot should break trust (i.e. child shouldn't believe his mum anymore) but it doesn't.

-- Nobody is saying it [loving, trusting relationship between mother and baby] is reduced to nothing

kalo is when she talks about "it breaks trust". Break. Not damage.

-- Mine and many, many others sleep perfectly well without it - without being 'taught' to sleep at all.

Sure, but when did they start to sleep through the night? When they were 2 years old? 3? Sorry but I would have gone crazy by then and DH & I would have long divorced.

I think bolting on CC to attachment theory has muddied the waters somewhat.

Yes there is substantial research into the way infants attach to their primary caregiver and how that affects personality characteristics later in life.

But
First you have to establish that CC causes poor attachment to primary caregiver. Remember Bowlby's research was on children which had experienced 'inadequate' or 'non existent' mothering.

If - and I do not accept this for a minute - you accept that CC causes poor attachment then you have to look at the effect. Longitudinal studies show children are affected by poor attachment to primary caregiver but that life events such as poor health in parent, bereavement, divorce have greater effects on personality and attachment styles in adulthood.

Even this can and is overcome in adulthood so that adults who have experienced such things can achieve healthy loving relationships.

Be careful of attachment theory - you could use the same argument against putting babies in nursery!

Actually, if there's a complete lack of any academic experimentation to back up the idea that CC is just fine, those who do it are participating in something of an experiment themselves, with no way of knowing what the effects might be, not just in 5 years time, but even further down the road, whereas those who are muddling through and soothing their babies and toddlers back t sleep when they cry at night have thousands and thousands of years of human development behind them.

There is no evidence (yet) of harm done by CC, in the form of studies, but that is not the same at all as evidence of no harm (as I said on another thread about CC).

Cote and Co, it seems parents have very unrealistic expectations of how life will be when babies arrive, and this gives rise to much of the misery experienced by the sleepless. It doesn't necessarily drive you nuts or cause divorce, though it is no fun.

I think controlled crying goes on more than you think. Particularly in large families. They just don't get as much attention, especially if mother has alot of physical work to do.

The problem is that effect is so hard to measure. Critics of attachment theory would say that Bowlby's measure of what a well adjusted infant is - its desirable characteristics- are full of cultural assumptions about what is desirable in a well adjusted adult.

I can only go on my own children and see that DD1 is happy, loving and confident and well bonded to DP and I. Same for other two.

Semicolon - I hate the idea of putting babies in nursery.

semicolon - that's a very interesting post.

What's a large family though? I managed to not do it with 5, and the physical work they all generated.

I believe that nowadays those scientists and academics who are concerned with child mental health and development are more preoccupied with patterns of experience and parental behaviour over long periods, and less with one-off events.

The mantra is 'responsive parenting' and although I would never dream of doing CC with my kids, I don't think a single episode of CC is necessarily inconsistent with being a responsive parent.

The problem I have with the advocates of CC is their view that baby crying at night is meaningless and can be ignored. This actively encourages parents to ignore their instincts and to be less responsive to their babies' attempts to communicate. It's actually training the parents more than the baby and I think this attitude can be dangerous if it becomes ingrained.

We have to parent our children for many years, surely starting off with the attitude that it's ok not to listen is setting ourselves up for trouble later??

I am rather against putting actual babies in nurseries, too, to be honest. I'm talking under a year or two old here, depending on the child, not older toddlers/preschoolers who may actually enjoy it.

Haven't read whole thread but we have dd 3.5 and ds 13 months, didn't do controlled crying with either, although during dd's really rough early days our gp mentioned it as an option for much later, horrible idea.

We used cc, it was the only thing that got my son to sleep through-but he was a lot older, about 11mnths when we did it. Also he was never 'left to pass out' we would leave him for 5mins, then 10mins then 20mins....never longer than this, but by the time we got to 20mins he was usually asleep.

I would second the comment that bigger babies need to feed more-my son was over 10lbs at birth and was bf until over a year old. He didnt have a single night without a feeding at least once until he was 9mnths.

Goodluck whichever approach you decide on

right, so who here who advocates CC would leave their babies for more than about 3 minutes to cry?

How many people actually think that 'a baby crying at night is meaningless' ?

Me

See, the fact that other people managed not to do CC doesn't mean that other people should be able to manage it. Not all children/babies who 'don't sleep through' have the same level of sleep problems.

I ended up having to do CC with DS, after trying every gentle method in the book - including co-sleeping, rocking, shhing and patting, gradual withdraweral etc. We're not talking about just getting up to settle a child once or twice in this case, he used to wake every 15 minutes or so OR be awake for around 4 hours in the middle of the night. This was for the first year of his life. It simply wasn't sustainable, I defy anyone to put up with that on a very long term basis. Our presence, whether cuddling, or breastfeeding would stop him crying but never, ever helped him go back off to sleep. I even remember DH walking him round the streets in the pram at 4am...I got in the cot with him once too!! Controlled crying was, literrally the only strategy left to us. And after almost collapsing with exhaustion (this isn't hyperbole, I ended up sat on our driveway with my head between my legs to stop myself fainting) a couple of times while in charge of my DS and his older sister I decided we had to do it. It didn't take long, he didn't get excessively distressed and he is 3 years old now and seems perfectly ok. Of course I could have damaged him psychologically but I was in danger of doing that anyway if I tried to carry on not sleeping - on the verge of collapse, getting depressed and arguing (for the only time in my 10 year relationship) with my husband wouldn't have made for a healthy home life I reckon.