Cortisol levels and development

[megcleary]

For the first time we let dd 19 mo cry to sleep she would not settle for her nap and was exhausted. Took 10 min and I am now worried that this will harm her as I read some where about crying and high cortisol levels this generates effecting emotional development. Any information / advice wise ones?

One burst of crying would prob not make much difference.If crying raised levels to angerous there would be a lot of sick kids walking around.Don't worry!

This is really REALLY not an issue. This research you're mentioning is more an urban legend than real research. Something like this can never ever be proven. Nor is there any logic to the argument that a baby who is left to cry would cry any differently than a baby who just cries naturally (e.g. a colicky baby). Obviously we're not talking here about letting babies crying on & on all the time... but a short burst of crying will make absolutely no difference; in fact, your post makes me a bit sad because it's very interesting how nowadays we parents guilt-trip ourselves so much about the smallest things...

thank you for the replies and Maria Dh thinks I have a degree in guilt

she may just be attempting to exert her indpendance and not nap but she is waliking into furniture she is so tired and if this refusing to nap is to be regular and therefore the crying regular i was jsut checking i'm not on the route to breaking her is all

Megcleary, LOL about the degree in guilt! I'm the same... so I do understand.
I think a small amount of crying is really NORMAL and even if you try you cannot avoid it. Believe me, I've tried & tried to avoid crying (my DS is 8 months) & it's simply not possible. Yes, she may be attempting to just not nap or she may not be in a particularly good mood, or whatever. There's also this thing called 'crying down'. My own DS doesn't do it, but I've heard lots of babies cry a little bit before sleeping, I think it's their way of putting themselves to sleep.
I really think we mothers need to stop feeling so guilty all the time... (I say this so that I can hear it too ;))

thats the thing Riven she rarely cries completely out of character for her....maybe it is her new character......

Parents emotional development hmm I must say I don't cope well when she chages her routine sometimes so we shallif the naps are going and perhaps not worry too much about the cortisol stuff

Definitely don't worry about the cortisol stuff because there IS no cortisol stuff. Just my thoughts about this research: Cortisol levels may go up with stress; but stress is part of life, its normal for babies to have moments when they feel distressed (for various reasons). That's human nature! It's ridiculous to think that babies should / could avoid distress at all cost, some degree of distress is part of life. When i say 'some degree' I obviously don't mean crying it out for hours or abandoning babies for hours on their own or anything like that. I'm talking about normal, everyday whingeing / crying / unhappiness. It's kind of absurd to think that 10 mins of crying (or even 1-2 nights of controlled crying) would affect a baby's personality / brain development for life. You have to look at the whole family context, not just one incident of crying!

Anyway, sorry for going on about this, but I get a bit annoyed by this cortisol research which btw is much more ideology & less research (disclaimer: I'm a psychologist myself, hence my interest in the topic).

I have a friend who is a child psychologist and I asked her about cortisol level and sat happily on the fence on about it.

As an update at bedtime she started crying and screaming again which really threw me as she has always been a dream to put to bed (smug emoticon!!)

This (easy to bed baby) may have passed and I am beginnng to come round to the fact she may be old enough to be chancing her arm at the "not going to bed exerting the old attempt at independance routine."

So i firmly chanted lie down please from the doorway after 10 mins of wailing and conned her into lying down to check her nappy gave her all her teddies and said goodnight and that seemed to work.

Thank you Maria and others for you wise words