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.

It's very much against the natural instinct of most parents for good reasons but what I did find over having 5 children was the ability by the time I got to the later children to distinguish types of cry. Sometimes they are tired and I was feeding and that was frustrating. Also I found I could get them to learn to get to sleep without feeding and to wake up and get to sleep again on their own.

I had never heard of any books about this kind of thing and my own parents were attachment parenting kind of parents but obvious things like feeding, putting off the light, leaving them to cry, having my 7pm shower (when I had the twins) was in effect controlled crying and eventually they would indeed be asleep by teh time I'd had the shower. The shower worked because I couldn't hear them and the time they were left crying wasn't (in my view) damaging. Also little attention at night, lights off, night very very dull. Day fun. I'm not sure that's really controlled crying but do think routines and bath, feed etc at same time every day makes life easier. I have never had a child sleep through the night until at least a year and that felt normal and natural to me and I was okay with it but I could not have my sister's contiuum concept parenting when even now her children of 6 repeatedly disturb her every single night. That's unbearable.

omg Aloha

I had to search for that comment, couldn't quite believe it!

truly shocking .........

By sophable on Sun 06-May-07 00:29:04
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?

nope. those are the angst of typical British couples. which makes co-sleeping a fight instead of another part of life and childcare. not me and my dh's.

Yes, that was a pretty nasty thing I said in order to get my point across, wasn't it? My friend (yes friend, you daft thing)has just read through these posts and laughed her socks off. No doubt we'll be arguing about it well into the next decade.

However that's besides the point, as is whether or not I am a nice or nasty person. If the best you can do, given the subject matter, is to attack me on a personal level then I'm disappointed in you, angry lady.

when i entered this thread god knows whenever, i came merely to point out that sleep training is 'conditioning' not 'teaching' a child anything. that and possibly when dejags later on asked me a direct question on what would i do with a baby (maybe 8 mo. old baby) who was waking every two hrs. I answered truthfully that i would take her to bed with me. knowing nothing (much) else about my previous life as a mother, aloha got all jumped up with 'don't be so patronising' type phrases and telling me i have read nothing about sleep research . she insisted that i had not seen research that she had seen and refused to look where i told her to look where i had already had a long discussion (with daddyj) about one specific paper which she was highlighting. she never came back and addressed my and other poster's discussions on that piece of research - a scandanavian one if i remember rightly.

that she has had a go at danceswithbaby for reasons best known to her, well, that takes the cake.

i have posted over 2 yrs on mn. i know that aloha has been here longer. i know she gives much appreciated advice to many, many people and lots of posters mourned her departure when she flounced over a muslim bunfight.

for her to take a blinded position with danceswithbaby who seems to speak with much sincerity makes me shake my head, maybe in sadness.

i have always respected aloha in the past and i still respect her today. but it is just a bit diminished when i see a mother and a journalist who has written for well known newspapers throw reason to the wind and make unfair assumptions about another mother.

about my coarse statements last night. i have lived many lives in the past, among many varied people. i enjoyed stating them. i do go to church and the next time i do i will say a small prayer for the heathen in me. and if they offended you, let me know so i can ask for forgiveness.

this thread is nearly over for me.

i have got what i wanted.

statements from daddyj that he didn't know much about cc when he did it to his 2 month old and again before his dd was 4 months old.

and that though he now knows, thanks to me i can add here, that he now knows a lot more about cc. he fails to state what he means by 'controlled crying' he stated that he has never (and doesn't ever) have to read ferber so i guess that he is willing to use the term which,i believe, ferber coined but not his definition. some cheek.

maybe he won't read ferber since stating in the newest edition of his book that ferber now no longer recommends CC for under 1 yr olds.

the book dedicates a chapter to co-sleeping and maybe that ought to make informative reading too.

it doesn't matter to me what daddyj's definition of cc really is because i get the impression that he is making up his definition as he goes along.

you know some of these posts on here are enough to send anyone to sleep

ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

(ps can't see any personal attack against you danceswithbaby, where?

btw personally I think using a statement like that 'to get your point across' is a bit much, your friend should be treasured for taking it with such humour)

I didn't attack 'you'. I attacked what you said, which I think is unforgivable.

And nobody has published any evidence whatsoever that shows any ill effects of controlled crying. But that doesn't stop them making disgusting comments about parents who have found it works brilliantly for their families - including their children. I find some of the comments on here frankly stalkerish.

I haven't read all the posts but danceswithbaby - that was a wicked and vile thing to say about your friend and her baby . Makes my blood run cold that you could even type the words

and nobody has published evidence to say that it is safe. effective for getting children to sleep through the night but safe? did you look at the methodologies of how those studies were conducted? read any peer reviews of them?

have you seen any research where salivary cortisol readings were taken from children or babies who were undergoing cc? or any other stress factor readings? or any such salivary swabs for children whose parents stick to regimes where they don't respond to their children at night when they cry for less than 10 mins so taht they can 'self soothe'. If you have, can you share them with us

whether or not you are willing to admit it aloha, the jury is still out on the safety of cc. as danceswithbaby seems to know from experience.

i didnt' say you attacked me. i said you attacked danceswithbaby. sorry if you read that the wrong way.

ps. stalkerish (or is it just schoolgirlish) is rushing from one thread to another to tell daddyj what i just said somewhere else and then coming on here to screech at me at how vile and disgusting i am. or are there different rules for you than there are for others on mn.

bye!
enjoy the rest of the weekend

well I have 3 x 30-odd year olds that I used cc on and if you're prepared to take anecdotal evidence (as you do with dances) mine seem spectacularly normal (apart of course from being beautiful and talented )

People get their knickers in a twist over this topic and it upsets a lot of people. My sister seems to have found her attachment parenting/continuum concept co-sleeping very hard indeed to live with but would probably still say it was right for her. I probably had a mid way compromise.

Some babies enjoy nothing more than to be latched on a nipple 24/7 and most mothers don't actually want that. Some will be prepared to tolerate it because of what they believe in right and others won't. Most people think leaving babies to learn that crying does not get their needs met is a bad thing - no controlled crying parent would like their child treated like an ignored baby in an Eastern bloc orphanage but I don't think that's what controlled crying it.

However I thkn we all have a duty as humans to stand up and say something is wrong if we think it is. I think smacking children is wrong. I think female genital mutilation is wrong. I'm not that keen on bottle feeding either and I think everyone should always say if they believe something is wrong. It's the toleration of wrong things in society which is almost as bad as perpetrating them.

...anecdotal evidence may not really be what we need, though. I have so far three stunning examples of univesrity students I've produced whose mother was back at full time work full time when they were 2 weeks old. Also it may depend on the child. Some even amongst my 5 liked routine. Others were needed the contact all the time. Even just now the 8 year old twins just like when tiny babies one is constantly wanting to chat, interact and the other is kicking a ball for ages on his own.

I don't think you can compare female genital mutilation with bottle feeding.

Who decides what the 'wrong thing' is? You can see from this thread that everybody believes they are doing the right thing.

oh I know anecdotal evidence is frowned upon on this site but when a study is undertaken they take people at random and they all will be offering anecdotal evidence as part of a study.

'those are the angst of typical British couples'

what a wish to have sex, intimacy and conversation in bed with your husband. is 'angst' and 'typically british'?

when and where do you have sex? I'm assuming that you are not going for the full continuum concept model and having it in bed with your children?

do you feel that a sexual relationship with your husband takes second place whilst your children are young and co-sleeping with you?

imo and ime children need a sense of the bedrock and importance of their parents' (nota bene spelling pedants, think i got that one right) relationship with each other, parts of which (and this is a crucial bit) are not open to them. that is important.

This thread is dangerous! I'm skulking off now to leave you all to it

Who decides what a wrong thing is? There are two parts to that. Our UK legislators decide some thing. If you brand your child with an iron that is a crime. If you beat it with a cane so is that. If you mess around with its penis because you're Jewish/Muslim that's fine. If you pierce the ears of a baby girl, that's fine.

The second category are things that some believe are right and others not - like controlled crying. So leaving a baby to cry for 8 hours every night for months (which is not controlle crying) could lead to the NSPCC being called in in my view and rightly so but doing controlled crying isn't illegal but some people might think it wrong.

Similarly some people would think it wrong I left my babies to return to work at 2 weeks and others think it wrong parents share a bed with achild. Some will think adult nudity in front of children is disgusting and others think giving children hang ups about their body is ridiculous etc

I think you should get over my comment about my friend's baby choking on vomit. If she isn't bothered about it, why on earth should you be? She is able to read my post in good humour because she is at ease with her parenting choice, but isn't afraid to accept that there might be downfalls. Just as I am not afraid to accept that there may be downfalls with my choice of parenting.

The point however, of the dangers of teaching a baby not to cry at night is a valid one. As my friend's experience proves.

Is anyone likely to answer my query about what cc advocates recommend when cc isn't working? Or is this thread now given over to people trying to out-piss each other with how much research/reading they've done and silly bickering which skirts around the subject but refuses to address it?

oh Lord, it's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way ....

I thought I was talking to adults here. Obviously not.

I'll leave you to out-piss each other and bicker in peace.

I've just removed the 'watch' on the thread, so you don't need to bother to come up with a clever reply. Unless of course it makes you feel better, in which case I'm sure the rest of your audience will enjoy it.

Have fun.

Aloha, SoapOnARope, sophable, unfortunately I am now primarily concerned with kiskidee?s mental health
but if you want to carry on discussing CC with her, I can email the studies to you.
Just set up a temporary email address and I?ll send them.
I typed out the main parts from one of them (from New Zealand) here .

Kiskidee, didn?t know these studies existed so she'll make up anything to discredit them. Enjoy the debate!

Please feel free to repeat anything bloss, me or all the other people already posted, kiskidee struggles with details so she won?t realise the repetition.

One last thing: Go easy on her, all she really wants is some recognition, some love.

Danceswithbaby, sorry I only got back to MN now but to answer your query (if you ever check this thread again),
if CC had not worked we would have probably tried one of the other watered down versions of CC.
If still no success we would have joined your NCSS thread

Kiskidee, last night was a step in the right direction. I am glad you opened up a bit and clearly today you are feeling better, non?
I am desperately sorry I can?t be there for you tonight but I am not abandoning you, I will check tomorrow. Promise!

I havnt read whole thead but I am for cc within reason (as kiskide knows, we have 'debated' before) Anyway, I used cc with my dd when she was 8mths old. It took 3 nights and she has slept through the night since. When we did this I checked on her all night long. We had a camera monitor which we could plug on into the tv. We had our bedroon tv screen on all night for about 4 months. We went in her room all the time too. She wasnt sick through crying (she didnt cry that much tbh) but if she was we would have been right there for her. CC is hard but in some, not all, cases it can work, providing it is done the right way.
We are now very confident with our dd sleeping, who is now 2.4 but we still check on her a couple of times during the night and if she cries we do go straight to her because it will be for a specific reason, wanting milk or wet nappie etc. Once we have sorted the problem she says 'night night' and happily goes back to sleep.