Controlled Crying - stress levels stay high even when babies have learned to settle themselves.

[Codandchops]

OMG!!!

Even worse is that I could not bear to leave my DS as a baby so used to sit in the room and re-settle him every 5 mins. How shit is that? He could see me for 5 mins at a time not comforting him (even though after every 5 mins I did comfort him).

Have always felt an irrational guilt about DS's autism and wonder if I made things worse .

Need to read the research and look at numbers involved.

btw this is not connected with the supernany jo frost , its just a sleep 'expert' that goes under the pseudonim super nanny as welll.

I think it's far easier to do cc with babies than toddlers or pre-schoolers.By the age of 4 you're stuffed. I think you're far more likely to have a child not willing to settle,not in a cot,able to roam,less likely to have a full belly etc.

I've always thought it unkind not to get into a proper sleep routine quite early on as you're more likely to have longer periods of crying with older children and children trying to fight sleep.A baby is going to tire more easily as they're smaller,can't roam round the room playing with toys and are more likely to feel sleepy from food.

Most toddlers have really busy days,they're learning continuously,they're growing,they need sleep and it should be sorted before they're of an age where it takes screaming for hours to get them to have the sleep they need.At the end of the day you're going to have to ensure sleep at some stage unless you want 4/5 year olds starting school with huge bags under their eyes.

F you leave your baby to grizzle for a few minutes before it falls asleep, that is not controlled crying.

all my children have slept through the night by toddlerhood and moved into their own rooms by 2ish, some earlier some later, not crying involved and all get a good nights sleep before pre-school, school etc you dont have to sleep train to get that.

and its little babies that will scream that long as well, they ahve a forum and there are several posters discussing sleep training and they have cried and cried, even babies as young as 6mths the minimum recomended age.

we always had a bedtime routine as well, you dont need to do cc to have one.

and we never used a cot after ds1 as it proved to be such a disaster, they co slept and we have a toddler bed in our room they would sleep in, if they got up (dd has had a phase of doing this recenlty) we just did a quick return to bed, night night sleepy time, being consistent and boring works with toddlers that like to get out of bed i have found with my 5 :)

Also parents consulting a sleep clinic for sleep problems are the extreme end of the spectrum.1000s of parents do cc without hours of screaming.

exactly seeker and not doing cc doesnt mean no bedtime routine or children not getting the sleep they need, mine all slept fine i just never left htem to cry in order for them to go to sleep :) they all sleep fine :)

Why is that not controlled crying Seeker?

well you said yourself they didnt cry, they 'grizzled' the clue is in the name cc.

Thank you Seeker for being so succinct. You said it in a nutshell.

To be honest, this thread is getting very tedious. The OP posts that CC might cause damage to babies. CC advocates come and said because it didn't happen to their child it can't be true and anyway if you do it properly they only grizzle and go to sleep easily. Others point out that this is not the case for every baby. That some babies cry and cry a lot (as is expected) and some babies don't just don't get it and it never works. CC advocates repeat ad infinitum that it worked for their babies therefore the OP is rubbish, ignoring the experience of anybody who disagrees.

Will you not accept that not all babies are the same and that since some babies don't respond well to CC there is a chance, as yet unquantified, that it is flawed and could therefore cause damage? Actually, don't answer that. You've already repeated that because it worked for you, it can't be wrong. The usual nonsense of a sample of 1 being convincing evidence. A bit like 'I weaned my baby at 2 mths and and it didn't do them any harm' or 'I smoked all the way through my pregnancy and my baby was fine'. It means nothing.

In that case then, could someone please tell me what I could have done with my dd?

I have yet to see any scientific evidence directly linking and proving cc to cause damage.As we've tirelessly pointed out children can barely remember before 3 let alone 3 days out of babyhood in a loving family so the reason for the lack of hard scientific evidence causing long term damage is obvious. The impact of lack of sleep on health and education by contrast is well documented.

You haven't tried it so can't comment.Cc works for many,many families and the benefits are immense.Just because you don't like the sound of it and haven't tried it you can't accuse it of being damaging.

Parents choose to parent in different ways.If parents choose to have over exhausted,fractious babies that cry the minute they're put down and mum is out of the room all power to them but I personally would rather eat my own hair.I'll not quote the word damaged to describe your style of parenting so please don't use it to describe mine.

Also my grizzling might be your crying.

well, if you don't accept anecdote, and you don't accept there is an absence of good evidence..what do you accept?

i see alot of people talking from a gut feeling that they just don't like it.

my gut feeling says different. (it's quite a big gut!)

where does that leave us? in the nomansland of most parenting choices, not really wrong or right, but about what suits you....

equally bigbertha there is a chance that not adopting some sleep training strategy could be harmful.

any evidence? NO! but the chance remains...

the precautionary principle is so very crap.

actually we did try cc for ds1, at about 8mths as everyone told us to, we did exactly what they said and went in and settled him every 2 mins etc, after about 30-40mins of crying he vomited, at which point we realised it was crap.

it doesnt matter that babies cant remember most of their brain and nervous sytem development takes place under age 1 and prolonged crying doesnt help that.

"A policy statement on controlled crying issued by the Australian Association of Infant Mental Health (AAIMHI) advises, "Controlled crying is not consistent with what infants need for their optimal emotional and psychological health, and may have unintended negative consequences."

"There is compelling evidence that increased levels of stress hormones may cause permanent changes in the stress responses of the infant's developing brain. These changes then affect memory, attention, and emotion, and can trigger an elevated response to stress throughout life, including a predisposition to later anxiety and depressive disorders. "

"when a baby is upset, the hypothalamus produces cortisol. In normal amounts cortisol is fine, but if a baby is exposed for too long or too often to stressful situations (such as being left to cry) its brain becomes flooded with cortisol and it will then either over- or under-produce cortisol whenever the child is exposed to stress. Too much cortisol is linked to depression and fearfulness; too little to emotional detachment and aggression."

this is from an australian website, anyway if your babies only 'grizzled'for a few minutes then obviously they would be fine, we are debating babies that are left to cry for long periods and on a regular basis which is what cc encourages, and it does happen to lots, i have numerous friends who tried it and parenting forums are full of people who do it and discuss how long their babies cried for, if as you say your babies didnt really cry, they only grizzled for 3 mins for a few nights fine, i am talking about cc where babies are left to cry for long periods of time, up to an hour etc and it doesnt always work in 3-4 days and even then its reported that when baby is teething or has a developmental spurt it stops and needs to be done again (or not as the parent decided)

"One of the arguments for using controlled crying is that it "works", but perhaps the definition of success needs to be examined more closely. A recent Australian baby magazine survey revealed that although 57 per cent of mothers who responded to the survey had tried controlled crying, 27 per cent reported no success, 27 per cent found it worked for one or two nights, and only 8 per cent found that controlled crying worked for longer than a week. To me, this suggests that even if harsher regimes work initially, babies are likely to start waking again as they reach new developmental stages or conversely, they may become more settled and sleep (without any intervention) as they reach appropriate developmental levels."

you dont think it harmed your children and given they barely cried at all and you are i assume anotherwise loving parent i would say you are right, but for some babies the point is it may be harmful and as aparent i would want to know that before embarking on trying it so i could then decide if it was worth trying, we did think it was worth trying, but decided after one evening of 40misn that actually NO it wasnt worth the obvious distress to our baby, had he merely grizzled and gone to sleep within 5 mins i may think differently.

Just seem this thread after aborting sleep training tonight.

dd2 sreamed for an hour, and got so worked up she was sick twice, it wasn't controlled crying as DP sat with her in the room as we attempted to have her sleep in her cot for the first time. I feel shit and now we don't know what to do, but I can't do that again, every instinct in my body screams no. We did gradual retreat at 9 months for dd2, it worked. Dd2 is a different baby, 6 months old and fed to sleep but wakes in the night a lot so it's me who needs to sleep too for this family to function properly again.

No idea where to go next. What did you do fivemadthngs ?

Just heard of a book called kiss me by Gonzalez. Very good apparantly

It's not called 'controlled screaming' either, is it?

FGS just accept that there is a spectrum. I know scores of parents who did CC and honestly can't recall one person who said it involved anything like 'hours' of crying. It's popular because it works. It's popular because actually to the majority who do it, it doesn't contravene any normal parenting instinct.

cerealqueen we gave up and went back to feeding him, comforting him, we have a futon and by it a toddler bed, which is the same height so could let him sleep in that but he was right by us, we didnt find a 'quick fix' it was something all 5 of them grew out of with a bit of encouragement, we would pat and shushh etc.

where does she sleep? what can you do to make the waking easier? also the pantley pull of method is good at breaking the feed/sleep association, but again its not a quick fix.

did you read the bit above "One of the arguments for using controlled crying is that it "works", but perhaps the definition of success needs to be examined more closely. A recent Australian baby magazine survey revealed that although 57 per cent of mothers who responded to the survey had tried controlled crying, 27 per cent reported no success, 27 per cent found it worked for one or two nights, and only 8 per cent found that controlled crying worked for longer than a week" ladymuckbeth for many it doesnt work, yes for some it does but not all and not even the majority in that study.

5madthings she sleeps in our bed, and that is where she is now. She was so exhausted I lay her on the bed and stroked her stomach and she fell asleep. That is the first time she has falled asleep not through feeding, but the way it was achieved is not a way I'd recommend .

My instinct is not to repeat tonight and I have to listen to that instinct. My gut said she would not be as easy as DD1 who did respond well to gradual retreat We were kind of getting desperate as I have not had a good nights sleep since well before DD2 was born and I'm miserable from it.

I should read Pantley again, thanks for that reminder, I have that and many other sleep books!

Sorry for slight thread hijack.

On grizzling - DD2 will grizzle in the buggy when I rock her to sleep for a daytime nap , I know its just grizzling and it doesn't last. Tonight was not grizzling.

well maybe she likes having her tummy stroked, that may be at technique to try i efeed her till sleepy, then take her off and stroke her tummy see if it works? mine liked to be patted firmly on their bum so feed, detach and then pat, i could tell quickly if it was going to work or not.

i did find as they got older, they would latch and feed wihtout me noticing in the night, so long as they have easy access. pantley is good but not a quick fix at all.

re getting sleep, when desperate dp would take them out on a wkend morning so i could catch up or int he afternoon he would watch the elder ones so i could sleep with the baby and many nights i did go to bed the same time as the baby so i could get sleep. we tried a variety of things, they gradually worked but it was def a case of muddling through, its really hard but it doesnt sound like cc will work for her, like you say she grizzles in the pushchair, that may be worth trying would she settle in the pushchair for the evening, just so you get a few hours peace? you could feed her and your dh could take her for a walk if necessary? not every night but it could be worth trying so you can get a break?

ladymuckbeth Just because babies don't scream for hours/they stop screaming doesn't mean CC is an effective method. I haven't read the entire thread, so I apologise if I'm repeating anything someone's already said but - if you had an elderly/ill relative who was unable to communicate what was wrong with them verbally, but was clearly in a great deal of distress, would you just leave them to get over it? A baby stops crying because they give up on anyone coming - I don't see that as an achievement. My daughter didn't sleep through the night until she was 3 and a half but I didn't leave her to cry one single time. Just over a year on and she sleeps 12 hours each night, settles herself and there are never any tears at bedtime. A child knowing you're there if they need you is the best thing you can teach them about sleep.

I do find it interesting that advocates of controlled crying always get so angry! I have been "shouted" at more on threads about controlled crying and early weaning than anything else- and I've been shouted at on a lot of threads!

Rockpool "Just because you don't like the sound of it and haven't tried it you can't accuse it of being damaging." Actually, yes I can. I haven't tried beating my kids, but I'm pretty sure it's damaging. In my experience, my daughter is infinitely better adjusted and more independent than the children I know whose parents used CC and sleeps far better too.

5 sorry 1 Australian website does not reliable hard fast evidence make.

So any elevated stress level in a baby is going to make them depressed later in adult life sorry but pmsl .

Errrr every baby will have had elevated stress levels at several points during their lives and probably more severely than during 3 days of controlled crying.

Just being in a nursery will cause some stress,being pushed in a pram along a noisy road,being left with somebody other than mum,having colic,having constipation,being poorly,crying whilst mum is on the loo,answering the door,hearing arguing,having a stressed and exhausted mother trying to run a household and care for several children on zero sleep.......

Stress is everywhere and no baby will reach childhood without an awful lot of it throughout the baby and toddler years,it's practically impossible to stop it and even attempting to would cause far more stress than any attempt at cc.

Just been telling my partner about this debate, I won't tell u exactly what he said but he can't believe that some people actually think doing cc correctly can damage ur baby.....doing it properly at 6months or above not any younger.
Seems most people on here are thinking short term but long term it helps the child and sorry to say (and no doubt I'll be one of those mums who ur all talking about) but it does help the baby in the long run.....how does cuddling them to sleep help them? I agree with what Rock pool said earlier we spent the whole day and evening playing, cuddling singing etc with our baby and an hour at night we would do cc for about 3 days if I remember correctly....she did cry, I did feel bad at the time cos I knew I could bf her to sleep quicker but also knew she had a good feed before bed , and she would wake an hour later for a comfort feed which had become a habit....not cos she was hungry. But we didn't do cc till she was 7months old.
I don't see how sleeping with ur baby till they are 1, 2 or what ever helps them? In the long run ur baby has to go to school, maybe pre school nursery...they need to know ull come back and they need to feel secure but if ur never going to leave them then how is this helping them? Kinda different things I'm going on about but all I'm saying is yes it worked for us, and I was feeding and cuddling my baby from birth till 7 months from 7pm till up to 12 at night....then decided she needed a routine, we have an older daughter too who is 9 so it was important for us all.
If people don't agree with cc then that's cool, but don't accuse people that do do cc of damaging their children.
Think some people really don't know what their talking about.