Can I please have your honest opinions on CC? HV is recomending I am not sure.

[eenybeeny]

My HV is recomending CC for my 6 month old.

Our problems with his sleep are these:

1. He only naps in his pram. He screams and screams when I try to get him to nap in his cot during the day.

1. He wakes up to 6 times a night for one thing or another.

1. He wakes anywhere from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. and is ready for the day.

Please give me any advice you have and let me know... is CC cruel? I really dont know. Normally, the thing is, when he cries I want to rush to him to help him. I dont know if I can leave him to cry. Please help!

zippi, i am glad to see taht you ar still following. i thought everyone else had dropped away already.

I find it fascinating

my hv referred me and dd1 to a sleep clinic in 1984 which was participating in a pilot scheme as an outreach from great ormond street and which was part of a research project

Kiskidee, que tal.
You are still upset with me

Look, we don't have to do this.
I really like your posts and I don't want to take the scientific debate any further than we need to.

zippitippitoes, it is not the dread before, it is the borderline depressive state after a sleepless night that is the problem.

Can you tell us more about the sleep clinic experience?

I promise to keep the cheeky comments to a necessary minimum

i don't do 'cross' on a messageboard. i'm too old for that. i do, do, blunt, though.

Well, I don't want to make you blunter than you already are.

Message withdrawn

"When I said you hadn't referred to any scientific studies, I mean that you gave us no details which would allow us to assess (a) whether it existed; (b) who did it; (c) how it was done; (d) whether it had any relevance to the question in hand. "

My only answer is: I take it then, that you have not read any of the links I posted?

You do seem very reasonable, indeed, but one thing I know is that even on massively important matters reasonable minds may differ. Reasonable people are often very, very wrong. So I think it is unreasonable to expect me to base any or all of my parenting decisions on the fact that kiskidee - who seems a very nice person and is never rude, although I know nothing beyond that - said so. I'm faintly surprised that you would suggest such a thing! And yet you say that as a matter of respect I should just accept what you say... This is one of the most bizarre exchanges I've ever had, actually. Especially the bit where you say something without providing justification (other than that you're a nice person) but it's now up to me to disprove it!! I'm actually LOL now because it's soooo ridiculous!!

shakes head as i can only assume you are dismissing and deriding me for not being able to respond to saying where you have found evidence that anything you have said is also reasonable for me to accept. eventhough you are also a reasonable person.

"If you cannot actually name the evidence you relied upon in it all its glorious detail, there is simply no point having any discussion at all. "

touché, bloss, touché,

Night all! (Will have a little sob beforehand, I promise... )

it may also be au revoir, since it seems that you will not pick up the guantlet.

I hate good-byes but I au revoir sounds good.

Oh, kiskidee...lo siento. I really don't want to do this.

I tell you what, though, if morningpaper or harpsichordcarrier or anyone else in your camp still think that there is a scientific debate to be had, by all means.

It?s a glorious day out there, I?ll check again tonight.

i was saying 'possible' au revoir to bloss.

also, i gave my opinion on the Swedish paper of which you seemed exceptionally proud. did you read it?

Message withdrawn

some evidence to back up what how you came to your childcare decisions. you have some evidence of mine. surely.

Message withdrawn

I have a question - I'm anti CC instinctivly. However, my son cries less when we're not holding him etc. and we leave him to get on with it. If we leave him he cries for 5-10 mins. If we hold him, ctroke him or even stay in the room its more like 45 mins. In this case is CC better?

MassiveBoobs, if it were me, I would say that doing what your son prefers is better for him. You need to judge for yourself how much of your company he needs to settle himself and if your presence is not helping then withdraw a bit, likewise if he likes to be put down but still have you around do that, but if you have found that he is happiest being left to sort himself out then of course that's best! As I think a lot of posters here have said, following your instinct is the best way forward wherever that leads you. For me, my son preferred being held and would always calm down as soon as I picked him up. It was a no-brainer for us to decide that the best way for him to sleep was being cuddled, but your ds sounds as though he likes his own space.
Trust your instincts on it, you know your baby best. If he's happy with it then it's OK!

MassiveBoobs, I asked a similar question many posts back and nobody who claims that cc is always harmful has given me their opinion on this matter yet.

I suspect the answer most parents would sensibly give is that old cliché 'what works for one child doesn't always work for another'.

My children are individuals and asserting that any form of cc in any circumstances is always harmful, for me, dismisses their individuality.
I don't parent by principle, ideal or by what I feel best expresses my personality, but by what my children show me works.

Interestingly Beachcomber, the way you say you parent is actually how most "attachment parents" would describe themselves. It just so happens that most AP parents happen to cosleep, don't do cc, use a sling etc, but actually they are really doing what suits their children and family best and it happens, for them, to be those things. The whole point of this "style" is to adapt whatever tools and techniques you can to make your children and family as happy as possible. I guess some kids are more independent than others, like MassiveBoobs', and for them, her way works best.

Just an interesting aside thought to go along with the main thoughts in this thread!

oops meant also to say, that I reckon most parents would also say they are adapting what they know to fit their circumstances, so I guess that makes us all attachment parents

"You have discussed what your views are and encouraged people not to do CC on the basis that it is unsafe."

bloss, is this what you want me to provide evidence for?

Message withdrawn

Thanks Kitbit. I hate threads like this because DS was so colicky when he was younger and would cry no matter what we did. I know I should stay off these threads because it only make me worry about how it affected him. I think that sometimes anti-CC people assume that picking up a child stops them crying. I had DS in a sling for the first three months of his life but he still screamed for most of them. Ho hum. I think he now thinks he has to cry to get to sleep.

Massive Boobs, i hope it makes you feel better to know that somewhere i read that colic crying and crying for other reasons like hunger, pain, being alone, seems to be different from colic crying.

if a colicy baby is held, there seems to be no rise in their stress hormones levels, however when children and babies cry for other needs and those needs go unmet, then they have a change in hormone levels.

if you are interested, i will try to remember where i saw it if you let it knock about the back of my mind.

bloss, do you mind pointing out where i said that "it (CC) is unsafe"?

So we really are not done yet.

Ok, kiskidee, I will respond to your analysis of the Swedish study although I am not sure you are in a position to offer a qualified critique.
For one thing, you have not read the study. You also have a credibility issue because you claimed a study like this does not exist.

The analysis itself reinforces the impression that you are on shaky ground: you don?t know what the word ?empirical? means.
You could have looked it up on the web or, simpler still, had the courtesy to read my previous post properly in which I used it correctly.

You suggest that the study proves nothing as it should have been done in a sleep lab with researchers taking measurements at regular intervals.
Seeing as we are looking for psychological damage which would presumably manifest itself during the day, the sleep lab is surely not enough.
The children would have to be monitored day and night over several months.
Would such an intrusive experiment (with or without CC) not have a detrimental effect on the children and families involved?
Would physiological measurements really be the best way to assess psychological problems?
Why not listen carefully to parents and analyse the raw data of their observation using proven, scientific tools (Visual Analogue Scales, Flint Scale)?
If the parents of 95 Swedish children tell me that their children are doing very well thanks not despite CC
? and their answers have been checked against established scientific guidelines as to what ?well? means ? then that?s pretty reassuring to me.
Certainly more reassuring than any lab measurements.

You quickly dismiss the other source (France, 1991). Unfortunately this is real science and it costs money, hence only the abstract is freely available.
I asked a kind uni friend to provide me with the paper so let me offer some quotes (I am typing this out so I?ll keep it brief):

?Despite negative opinions and concern there have been few empirical investigations of the effects on infants of using extinction with ISD [Infant Sleep Disturbance]. No studies to date have reported negative side effects of treatment.?

?Although extinction can be modified to make it more palatable to parents, with the exception of Scheduled Awakening no viable alternative to the use of extinction have been developed.?

?Some form of extinction, therefore, is usually the only alternative for parents wishing to change their infant?s sleep behaviour.?

?The subjects for the experimental group were 35 infants (6-24 months) who were treated with an extinction program for their sleep disturbance, either on its own (n = 13) or in conjunction with sedative medication (n = 10) or placebo (n =12).?

?Measures: The Flint Infant Security Scale. This scale measures security in infants up to 2 years of age. Its reliability and validity has been established with adopted infants who moved between homes and families. It was modified to be filled out by parents rather than administered as an interview.?

?Measures: Child Behavior Characteristics Scale. This scale, which was completed by the subjects parents, reliably measures a variety of child characteristics which have been shown to have stability over time. Its validity has been established in a variety of ways (Fanshel, 1975; Fanshe & Shinn, 1975).?

?Using an extinction-based behavior management approach with sleep-disturbed infants did not lead to any deterioration in infant security nor in a variety of the infants? behavior characteristics. On the contrary, there were lasting improvements in the infants? security, likeability, and emotionality/tension. The experimental group [who didn?t sleep well] were significantly less agreeable than the pooled controls [good sleepers] at baseline but this difference had disappeared after intervention [i.e. CC]. All of these improvements are in addition to improvements in sleep behaviour.?

Again, if you don?t trust parents you will probably want to dismiss this study, too.

Scientists seem happy to trust parents and CC. More studies where CC is researched by itself or used as part of the treatment:

Treatment of Young Children's Bedtime Refusal and Nighttime Wakings: A Comparison of ?Standard? and Graduated Ignoring Procedures
?Following treatment, only positive side effects were observed. When compared to the wait-list group, mothers in the standard ignoring group reported less verbose discipline and decreased stress in parenting, while mothers in the graduated ignoring group reported improved parent?child relationships. Treatment gains were maintained over a 2-month follow-up period.?
This one is freely available - click on the numbers at the bottom of the page to access the rest of the paper.

Another CC study, this time from Down Under.
Management of infant sleep problems in a residential unit
?There were significant decreases in the number of times the babies woke, the number of night-feeds and the length of time awake at night at 1 month follow-up, with a reduction in depressive symptomatology of the parents and a perceived improvement in their infants' behaviour.?

And another one:
A 2.5-year follow-up of infants treated for severe sleep problems
?A combination of behavioural technique and interdisciplinary family work has positive and long-lasting effects in children with severe and chronic sleep problems.?

This one is based on just one 14 month girl but results are still the same:
Behavioral Treatment of Multiple Childhood Sleep Disorders

One more and then I am off to bed.
The Ferber Method Helps Some Children Sleep Longer
Again no mention of psychological damage but it emphasised that the parents have to be convinced by the method otherwise it is not for them.

I won?t be able to post anything for a while (unfortunately I do have a day job) but will rejoin the debate on Thursday.