Controlled crying - moving from attachment parenting to abandonment parenting?

[tinkerbellhadpiles]

I know this is going to get a few people annoyed so I've put my special teflon knickers and fireproof boots on first. This is a genuine question:
I don't get controlled crying. I've spent a long time thinking about this (mostly at 2am when my DD wakes up hungry). If you put yourself in the place of the child, is this not a movement from attachment parenting to abandonment parenting
You spend all day lavishing attention on your child, when the little one cries you comfort him or her, sacrificing your time to do anything else in favour of looking after her.
Then seven a clock rolls round and you suddenly start ignoring her, until she learns that you just abandon her at nights and gives up and goes to sleep through exaustion or frustration.
To my mind controlled crying is an oxymoron, a child cries because they are out of control, frustrated, hungry or frightened. And if you are sitting there on the stairs sobbing because you can hear her (as a lot of my friends do) then you aren't in control either. Is it just a battle of wills or is there a genuine bit of science in here?
Seriously, will someone PLEASE explain how this actually works?
Incidentally, I don't have a much better solution, my DD (five months) sleeps 7-2:30, has a feed and sleeps till about 6ish. We just deal with it now and honestly I don't mind now I'm used to it. She did wake up every hour for a month when she got to three and a half months and I was fairly psychotic after a week of it and did pick up, put down and that worked to get to the above situation.

sorry for offending your sensibilities vvv.

i can't take a stranger on a message board very seriously myself. it is banter to me.

put one man's poison, blah, blah.

This is not just a message board or a chat room, it's a community.
I am not sure all this has done this community much of a favour, kiskidee.
Well, at least it was good for you.

how does the rest of humanity smell from where you sit dj?

wtf is going on

I have been holding my nose since you started posting so no sense of smell at the mo

Well, thats as maybe. Not everyone reads a forum in the same way as you.

Your 'banter' is lacking in any indicators of humour to most others I think. Its important to be self aware, as well as understanding the impact of your comments that are there for many others to read.

Its a bit like Jade Goody thinking that imitating Shilpa Shetty was funny because as far as she was concerned, she was having a private conversation.....

kiskidee is having issues but it's ok: it's all controlled

Ok, maybe it is time to go to bed.

kiskidee does your lo sleep ?

jade goody comparison....very good vvv....

point made vvv.

yes, she sleeps. in bed with us.

jolly good.my lo didnt sleep .do you know how that feels?i have 3 children,couldnt catch up on sleep.but we're on night 4 of cc and its going very well.we we do ap as far as possible but not so far it affects my sanity or my childrens.they need me awake and ok ,not crying because im tired.we coslept until ds grew out of it,he decided he had enough before i did.

so.....and i'm not attacking you, and i'm not trying to get a rise out of you...but could where you are coming from be, that you are feeling in some way resentful of people whose children sleep all night every night in their own beds? allowing them a sex life for example? an uninterrupted cuddle or conversation with their partners?

and having said that i will admit that those two lunchtime naps made me feel terrible. there is a tiny niggle that i have damaged ds (despite all the evidence, in terms of how he is, and in terms of the huge amounts of research I trawl through in my training as a psychotherapist about child development to the contrary). so when I get....strident. that is where I"m coming from. can you be big enough to admit that your bitterness and vitriol might be about some kind of unresolved stuff of your own.

I still feel awful for leaving DS crying for short periods when he was 6+ weeks even though he cried persistently from 6pm to 11pm every single night for 2 months. It made no difference whether i cuddled him, b/fed him, bottlefed him, laid with him or left him. I still feel crap about all of it though. He seems a pretty confident happy very independent two year old to me. Loves his cuddles and kisses but happy doing his own thing too.

i m with tinker - i dont get contolled crying. But its purely a personal thing, and I am pretty much live and let live. if it works and every one is ultimatley happier then it cant be bad.

is it "controlled" when you walk away and let them cry before you jump out of the window?

btw i think both the main protagonists of the later argument are equally to blame.

Aloha was elequant in her meanness whereas kiskidee was very coarse.

my view is - if itworksfor you thenwho really gives a shit? why judge someone else forparetning differently? are you better than they?

"oh no" i would never say i was better FFF.

With all due respect, FiveFingeredFiend, there is only culprit in this sorry saga.
There is only one person here who goes around accusing others of ?damaging? their children on the basis of the voices in her head.

If you flip this thread you will find that Aloha and many others tried to reason with this person but to no avail.

My wife just worked her way through this thread and advised me to clarify the ?Brit victory? statement ? she didn?t understand the joke either and she is English!

The big self-deprecating joke in England is that the Australians beat them at everything, Cricket, Ruggers etc.
I was playing on that by suggesting that on this occasion the Australian Association for Infant Mental Health had been trumped by their English counterparts from the AIMH .

Right, logging off to enjoy a gorgeous Bank Holiday Sunday with my girls. Sure to be back later.

Before I exit this fascinating thread, just out of curiosity what do cc advocates recommend when cc isn't working?

As for damage, there a varying degrees in anything and my own case was extreme. Imho, the very least one can expect from cc, is that the mother will become de-sensitised to the child's cry and the child will learn eventually that crying after bedtime is futile. Whether or not this meets your definition of damage, is up to you.

I'd like to tell you about my friend who used cc successfully on her daughter, fairly early on. They were thrilled. Subsequently, if they hear her at night they don't bother going in to her, she never cries for long. She is about 16 months old now and will sleep through anything apparently, colds, teething, whatever.

One morning last week my friend went into her daughter's room, to get her up. She found her daughter and the cot covered in vomit. The child had obviously been violently sick all night and hadn't made a sound. I can't help thinking that if she had choked to death on the vomit, my friend would be better able to cope with it. She does after all, get a good nights sleep every night.

That's utter crap. Clearly your child has never been sick in her sleep. Other children are.

only read OP

well in my case I used cc once I was sure dcs were clean, fed and watered - obviously (?)

As I've said on another thread I, at least, recognised my own dcs cries from whinge fest to genuine distress.

I don't get attachment parenting so I guess we'll never agree

It is not 'crap' Aloha. The child had been sick several times and my friend admits that her daughter must have woken between episodes. Her daughter was wide awake and silent when she went to her in the morning.

Surely there is no need to be so offensive when someone offers a point of view which differs from your own?

Personally, I would never consider cc and I have good reasons for that. Having a baby who does not sleep well at night, I can well understand why some people do decide to take that route.

I will exit this thread immediately. It's a shame that different ideas cannot be discussed rationally, without becoming personal and offensive. Your way and your ideas are not everyones cup of tea. Get over it and learn some tolerance.

And this is a lovely comment isn't it?
"I can't help thinking that if she had choked to death on the vomit, my friend would be better able to cope with it."

And you call yourself her friend! A really vile comment.