Any child psychologists out there? What do you think (professionally) about controlled crying?

[Neenztwinz]

I have used CC, I think it is a very quick and effective way of dealing with sleep problems, but I was wondering if there was any research done into its long-term effects. My SIL is a child psychologist and she is dead against CC, so I wonder whether it is because of research she may have seen. I don't want to ask her about it because our babies are only 7 weeks different in age and discussions such as these are just not worth the hassle IYKWIM.

Hi again DaddyJ. Yes he's cranky... and yes he wakes every 45 mins for his dummy. And yes again, I do plan to do something, just not yet (because he's only 4 months old, and I don't see any other way apart from cutting the dummy cold turkey... which for now we're not doing, & I've outlined my reasons previously)... I do agree some routine is good. It certainly has helped our boy. For example, he has a bedtime routine, followed from day 1. He also has a nap time routine & goes down very easily for both naps & bedtime (but then the waking starts)... In any case, I see your point, & I do agree that gradually, after a certain age, routine can be beneficial. But I insist that for breastfed babies (in particular) and for all newborns it's not always the first thing that I would choose to do. Oh and by the way, how would a routine help with my boy's dummy addiction ?

by the way, the good news is that DS has slept stretches of 3 and 4 hours in the last days, so we're very happy & feeling a bit more human again

Attachment is important, Umlellala, but sleep is even more important.

If your belief in the Continuum Concept means that the child
needs to be with you always, then I presume you take a dim view of
nurseries for the under-3s?

By the way, I would hope we're all attached to our babies, routine-parents / attachment parents or what have you. As for the continuum concept, I'm sorry but I do find it a bit mad- it goes against all common sense that I understand, and how can it be good for a baby to be with their mothers ALWAYS... don't they also need some space to themselves? (with all respect to those who have found useful ideas in this model... it's just not my cup of tea at all).

Oh and by the way, Daddy J, I would definitely disagree that sleep is more important than being attached to your child (in the broad sense of the term). Imagine a situation where children sleep well but have completely unavailable, cold parents.

Good!

A routine on its own would not help with your son's dummy addiction, true.
If it did, the No Cry Sleep Solution would work as it
advocates a very soft form of routine.

Sorry, I gave the impression that I am Mr Ford
and here to defend routines.

No, we read her book, had a good laugh and then put it aside.
We, too, followed the path of the hippie and it worked
to a great extent.
She did find her own rhythm - but we also had to sleeptrain her.

We actually started at 4 months, Maria..
because different children need different approaches at different ages.
Agree?

Imagine the opposite, Maria:
The child is chronically sleep-deprived
but her parents - scared of 'breaking the bond' -
refuse to give her any guidance towards better sleep habits.

I don't agreewith everything in theContinuum Conceptat all. Dd seems v happy at playgroup at2.5 (though if she wasn't,i'd probnot keep her there,true)

I'll pick attachment and sleepplease but then I havenot had wanting-to-be-wide-awake-babies (so far)just waking-up-and-needing-help-to-get-backto-sleep-babies...find ithard to believe that children would become sleep-deprivedif not given 'guidance'?! Won'tthey just fallasleepon theirmum/dad?

Agree, you do different things atdifferent ages. And Idon't think that teaching newskills (eg learninghow toget to sleep alone/without milk) is anti-AP. Just disagreewith doing it before the childis old enough tolearn properly.

Yes, daddy j, agree with what you say. I would find it equally mad if a child is chronically sleep-deprived & nothing is done(although that's sometimes in the eye of the beholder too, people have different views of what sleep deprived means). I generally have problems with the no-guidance-school-of-thought, I prefer the hippy route with quite a bit of guiding Sounds confusing, but there it is.

By the way, what sleep training did you do? CC? And did it work well & easily? If so, could you share?

maria - i have a routine for breastfeeding - with decent amounts of time each side for variation and always feeding on cue if a growth spurt is going on - I have had to do this because my dd didnt ask for food at all - sometimes as daddyj says a routine can be the right thing...

oh and it really helps when it comes to weaning...

That's the trouble, Umlellala, some babies don't just fall asleep
and stay asleep for as long as they really need to.

They need boob/rocking/dummy etc to go to sleep, boob/rocking/dummy etc again to resettle and then wake up early,
still not well-rested but no longer tired enough to resettle.

Our dd was one of them.

The difference in her mood and energy levels was remarkable
once she was sleeptrained to sleep through at 7 months.

I believe you that you find it hard to believe.
According to the Continuum Concept and AP literature our dd does not exist!

That's what I like about this thread and MN in general,
it allows us to find out about other 'parenting experiences'
that we just cannot imagine exist - as long as we keep an open mind.

Oh no,my dd and ds do that pattern(dd's naps were always27mins-even when walking roundpark ).But they have been happy souls,so I kind of see it as normal and fine. Idon't really mindbf ds back to sleep at moment (ff dd back to sleep, did a kind of gradual thing at 8mths then justoffered water at about 13mths or so)

I read CConcept when dd was 6mths or so and a few other books (went mad in the library!). That's kind of what I meant by what is an Attachment Parent?I had no great plans for parenting (never heard of co-sleeping til I did it with dd and it felt right,then googled 'sleepin withbaby on chest'or something and found mumsnet!!)

Think we are all just muddling through,just think it's sadif people aregoing against instinct because they feel their baby'should' be sleeping without milk or whatever.

i had the same thing, giantsanta - my dd never demanded so lost too much weight and i had to start a 3 hourly feed routine. i also read GF, tried it early - thought it sounded like a miserable life - went back to it when things were going a bit pear.
I would say I have a "flexible routine" - in that I don't stress if things go haywire or if my LO doesn't nap at the right times etc but its there as a kind of basic structure to the day.

Once I had that in place and ditched the dummy (at 4 months), DD started to sleep through and I really think she got smilier and happier.
To be honest, I felt like her dummy addiction was horrible for her too. And I had got her hooked in the first place. I think helping your kid sleep well without the need for crutches is a gift for everyone but particularly them (god i do sound a bit evangelical .

its funny isnt it tinseljuice - as daddyj said I think that everyone is all about the 'do whatevers best for the baby by following their cues' unless it contravenes their parenting doctrine in which case then those cues were never present in the first place? I find this sometimes on the weaning thread as well - the most fashionable and newest idea for anything is always the one people are evangelical about - why cant we just have some common sense about everything?

I would say we had a flexible routine as well - once you've got more than one the second has to fit in around school runs and the like anyway as so they will be getting up at 7 and having a bf etc and then the whole day follows a pattern anyway.

Maria, are you against CC because you just couldn't cope with hearing your LO cry that much? Or do you think it is harmful? I think after reading all this thread I am happy that it doesn't do long-term damage. But I also accept that there is no actual evidence either way.

I only ask cos if you use CC your LO will probably have forgotten about the dummy in three days. It would not be pleasant but for me the ends would justify the means. Not for you though?

Re GF, I used the book and did all the things she said from the beginning eg waking from naps to feed at least every three hours, putting down in the cot awake and leaving to settle themselves etc and after 7 weeks the DTs settled into a lovely routine and were only waking once in the night (before that they used to be awake all night - they were on one constant growth spurt!). The never followed the routine to the letter but it is true that when they do have their feeds/naps at the right time they are very contented little babies.

Hi Umlellala !

There seems to be two issues here:
Firstly there are the women who are 'driven' to do some kind of sleep training to save their sanity. My DD was a ridiculously terrible sleeper (woke every hour in the night) so I can understand why women end up being driven to the end of their tether. I didn't do any CC or CIO, but luckily my DH took my baby out and paced around outside for hours in the evening (Also, luckily I live in a country with a warm climate, not a country where it rains every other day) We don'T have the traditional village culture anymore where there would always be someone at hand to soothe the baby and I remember thinking 'my GOd, this is not a one or two-person job. But I still couldn't do CC. Hearing her cry pained me to my heart, but then I have deep childhood issues that made me acutely feel as though I was abandoning her if I left her to cry at all (this may be misplaced guilt, not because I am "better" then women who do leave their child.)
Point being, there are women who know sleep training is not ideal but need to do something to keep themselves from losing it.

THEN there are the people who think that letting a baby cry to settle himself is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in itself. I totally disagree with this. I live in a country where kids have no bedtimes. If you go to a shopping centre or a restaurant area at 9 or 10 at night the place is full of kids. This is fantastic for a lonely mother who just needs to get out of the house. And it also means that hearing about babies "needing" bedtimes (at 7 or 8 or whatever) sounds faintly ridiculous. Then to hear that babies have to be left to cry to go to sleep at the particular bedtime the mother has designated sounds more than a little bit strange. It really does sound like the baby is a little commodity that the mother is trying to organise because to "fit" in to her lifestyle.

Yes, its a PITA having babies and kids running around in the evening, but isn't that what we sign up for when we choose to have a child. You can't compartmentalise children's lives and give them alloted times to do particular things and then "train" them to do those things by letting them cry. Children are everywhere all the time and in your face and thats part of the job IMO.

also, have to add that a very close friend of mine who has six kids did do "Ferberization" (as she calls it) is absolutely astounded at the ease with which my DD (now 2) settles herself to sleep, whether it be for an afternoon nap or down for the night. THis friend told me last week "I have never seen a baby go to sleep so easily" as she saw my DD calmly roll over and drop off without a murmur.
She has had six kids. I do think there is a bit of a connection there between the ways we both dealt with our baby's sleep.
So I do think that long-term there are knock on effects on having let your baby cry himself to sleep and that they may manifest later, even if its something as simple as the classic 'fear of the dark', or simply not wanting to go to bed. At the other end of the spectrum the baby has learnt that you will not come if it cries at night. I don't think this is good for the child.

but isn't that the point of CC - that you do come back???

as i understand it, you come back at intervals to reassure. not abandon the child completely . . thus the child learns that mum/dad will come back, but the dummy won't . . .

sakura - I think we have discussed on here before the cultural norms of one country being different from another - its fine to have your children up with you on holiday for example but I dont agree with it when they have to go to school the next day tired and cranky.

I think people are very conscious of the fact that at some point they will have to put in place a 10-12 hour sleep at some point and worry about leaving it too late.

am not sure its as simple as everyone wanting their evenings to themselves in a selfish way. After all there are plenty of babies on this thread who have slept through from the early evening on their own from an early age.

"the fact that at some point they will have to put in place a 10-12 hour sleep at some point "

While it may be a fact that some people might worry about this, it isn't a fact that a 10-12 hour sleep pattern has to be put in place at some point.

Well I can reassure absolutely everybody that there is no need to bother forcing your child into a 10-12 hour sleep pattern. Your child will adapt of its own accord to the constraints of its lifestyle - when he/she starts all day school, he/she will adopt a different sleep pattern to the one he/she had as a toddler at home all day or at half-day nursery.

Maria2007 on Wed 03-Dec-08 17:36:15

"Personally I also jump at my 4 month's old every cry (a bit of PFB there ) but you know, in previous generations babies' cries WERE NOT seen in the way we see them now. My mum & many other mums in her generation would feel it was perfectly ok- even necessary- to leave their babies to cry because they saw them very differently from how we see children today. The way we see children (how a certain culture sees children) changes all the time. As for the evolutionary purpose behind all this, I personally really really have a problem with psychological theories that use evolutionary arguments, they don't convince me at all, but that's my personal point of view. "

I know it's a bit late, but I just wanted to comment on the earlier-generations bit.

I have seen plenty of evidence from the early 20th century that the leaving-the-baby to cry was not necessarily something the mothers did as a matter of course; for some, it was something that they were told they had to do by health professionals, it was a view peddled by (American gurus). You will find an example of this in the last Anne of Green Gables books, where the girl believes she has to leave her adopted baby to cry because that's what the book says and then in the end she gives in and that's where her maternal feelings really start. In fact, there are such mentions about separate incidents in that book. And I've seen them in other literature from the time, so this clearly was a concern.

I have also heard it myself from Mums of the post-war generations: that they wanted to pick their baby up but that the book said they musn't.

I think it is a mistake to believe that earlier generations dealt with babies according to their natural instincts and were immune to guru pressure. Women have been able to read for a long, long time and there have always been men experts happy to tell them how they ought to feel.

The baby-will-be-spoiled-by-an-overattached-mother is an attitude that you will see in childcare literature at least as far back as the Victorian era; probably further. Yes, it tells us that the experts believed in routine- but it also tells us that some mothers didn't and that there was a certain amount of agonising going on even in the earlier eras. Non?

Oh crikey, of course parents in the past were under huge social pressure to do all kinds of unnatural things with their children. In pre-revolutionary France there was a whole regulated industry farming urban babies out to country women for wetnursing in order to force allow urban women to work alongside their husbands. I wonder how much they all liked that? And the country women who wetnursed regularly lost their own babies, who died semi-starved.

I wasn't firmly in either camp; routines developed slowly.

My one attempt at getting a small baby into a routine nearly ended in disaster as it turned out her crying at night was caused by her being undernourished It was that much-maligned figure, an HV, who spotted what the real problem was. After that I had several months of an absolutely punishing routine, trying to get her weight up again.

But my second child was healthier so slotted more easily into a natural routine. Eventually. But I also took both dcs travelling, and stayed with other families with other routines (or no routines) in the holidays: dcs have always been adaptable.

For me, there wasn't a massive problem that routines had to come with the starting of school. There are so many things that have to change anyway, between being a 2 week old baby and a 4 year old learning the alphabet. Thinking it's going to be too late for ever if you don't get it done in the first 3 months seems a bit OTT.

Otoh I did sometimes have to leave ds to cry as dd was jealous and needed me.