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.

mb...my point...but it gets to me when people claim they have the answer that clearly works for all....lol...as there is no such thing...
I sometimes tink, that some people just beeen lucky....but sleep is often such an emotioal issue, as it apparently refdlect "how good your BAby is"...what tosh....I mean, the amount of times I had been asked with any of my 3....is your Baby good, does he sleep....well...he is brill, but doesn't sleep through, but that is normal and fine and all that....but it can get to a new mum at times, sigh!

And mb know where you are coming from with teh title, it was misleading and could have been put more dilomatic....but obviously we all know that contraversial titles are the secret to a long thread ;)

They are, btw, the same people who tell you when you basically have moved everything out of site of your ratehr "touchy" Baby that they never had to do that, and that you must just be strict and tell your Baby no, over and over again....hehe...and then they decide to have another Baby or fall accidently and they realise that their smugness is punished and they are blessed with one of those Kids that no amount of saying no works to stop
(Can you tell I had a few friends like that...and btw...ha...after having 2 touchers I was rewarded with a non toucher...and didn't really need to say no, at all...funny that....my parenting skills changed so much, or maybe he is jsut different.....which I can cvouch for...he is...)

Thats cool 3easterbunnies, I agree with you. And referring to a comment earlier on this thread from another mnetter - In my opinion (no shouting at me) controlled crying is a form of teaching. Thats what parents are supposed to do - teach them! You teach you child to ride a bike, you expect them to fall off a couple of times, maybe graze their knee or something but your there to help them so is that a form of abuse or something?
Saying contolled crying isnt for you is one thing but to say that its a form of abandanment is ridiculous! Laughable in fact!

I think that luck is one of the biggest factors.

When I had dd she became a wonderful eater. She is now 10 and is still a wonderful eater. There is really nothing that she doesn't like. She is adverturous and eats smelly cheese, olives, prawns and shellfish (in the shell!) and will fight me for the last sprout! I was convinced that this was all down to the wonderful way I had weaned her.

What a silly arrogant mummy of one I was!

Then I had ds. Weaned him the same way, smugly convinced that I had all this stuff sorted. I knew what to do, all those other mummies should just do it my way. How horrid I was!

And I ended up with Captain Picky. They boy who would only eat chocolate biscuits if they were the right shape* FFS! The boy who looked at orange juice as if it were poison. they boy who eventually started eating pizza and I was so happy I started a thread about it.

He is now 7 and is a fair bit better, but still picky compared to dd.

The tendency when you only have the one child is to think that what has worked for them, will also work for all children. And as any mother of two or more will tell you, 'It aint neccessarily so'. And it isn't even the case that what works with them at 6 months will still work with them at 12 months .

parents are supposed to teach children. but was it necessary to teach them to teeth, walk, sit up or hold on to a carrot stick? sleeping for longer and longer periods of time is another developmental milestone.

cc probably works in the same way as the dogs salivated in the Pavlov's dogs experiments. it is conditioning - not teaching.

kiskidee...it isn't always about teaching a child to sleep through though, is it....the not sleeping through as such never bothered me, as well....I coped fine wiht waking about every 1 1/2-2 hours in the ngiht....but when they then don't go back to sleep that might be a problem....iyswim...

iswym. how did you try to get your baby back to sleep 3bunnies? genuine question and why do you think it was difficult to do so?

conditioning / teaching. same thing. but either way it is helping your baby to cope with sleeping on their own when the time comes for them to move into their own room. But different mummys have different methods. each to their own

well, with ms, the son that I had the issues wiht, it all started because of stupid HV bullying me into believing that I should not bf anymore in the night and offere the bottle..until then we hadn't a problem, he would feed and drop off...well..stupid me (hindsight brilliant thing) I tried cooled boiled water and that was it, after that I lost his trust...he wouldn't even go down the next night at all...screaming his head off...I tried shushing, PUPD, cuddlign to sleep, co-sleeping and god knows what else..honest, I tried sooo many things...by the time he was 10 moth I was exhaustet, as it was a constant battle by then, so, I tried CC, the longest between going in was every 3 minutes....and I wold sooth him, even pick him up and talk calmly, then put him down and evilly leave the room, even though, by then he was screaming his head off...and then go in again...
I started off every 1/2 minute and going up to a maximum of 3 minutes between visits...the first night it took a few hours until he had exhausted himself and then he slept till about 4am (when I fed him and fell asleep in mmy arm and then go down fine-which he hadn't done in ages)...the next night it took probably around 1/2h of every 3 minutes (something like that....it's been a few years, lol)....and the next night he was fed, I sang to him and put him down and that was that....till 4am the next morning...!
I did write about this earlier, but honestly, by the time we tried CC ( I was very much anti it, believe me) my son looked poorly and was sleep deprived and not his happy self...once he got the sleep he needed he was a changed child....so, sorry, I don't care if I conditioned him or taught him...it worked with him...but, like I have also mentioned previously, I never considered it with ys....he is so differnet in his personality and also did blue breatholding, so, imo it would have endangered his life...
but then, with him, I never had those issues...yes...it took him a good 1 1/2 - 2 years to finally sleep thorugh, and he won't go donw in his bed, he goes to sleep downstairs , usually cuddling me or falling asleep watching TV if I am busy otherwise, and then I carry him up....if he wakes in teh ngiht he just comes into our bedrooms, climbs in bed with me/us and sleeps till the morning...which is all fine by me, no problem....but horses for courses....every child is unique therefore you have to parent them depending on their needs...and try to do your best at them, iykwim...

'conditioning / teaching. same thing'

uh, uh.

Sorry - but how do you know it is "conditioning" and not "teaching" and anyway, isn't a certain amount of conditioning part of becoming a socialised human being ? (ie. doesn't necessarily turn us all into drones)

sorry, do you know the difintions of conditioning and teaching?

then read how cc is achieved then compare it to a conditioning experiment like the one i already mentioned.

that will answer your question.

Kiskidee - what would/did you do with a baby/toddler who is waking 12 times a night. Just put up with it?

What about the baby - would you not agree that this sort of broken sleep is not beneficial for the child?

& for you 3 bunnies. some hv's need shooting.

stories like yours is why i say babies don't have sleep problems, adults do. adults get hung up over the fact that babies almost always fall asleep while bf. that you have to 'teach' them not to. they create a fight with an evolutionary characteristic of babies. of course then some babies go on to develop a 'sleep problem' when we try to fix something where a problem never existed.

my dd used to fall asleep bf everynight, now she does some nights and there will come the time when she won't at all. i could gently 'solve' this problem for her, but why? i enjoy the quiet time, just me and her. it will all be over so soon.

i would take my baby to bed and sleep with her. (and i had to learn how to do that too - i didn't do it like i was born to do it) that is what 'solved' my dd's sleep 'issues' she was crying to be close to me. i was back at work full time when she was 4 months old so i needed my sleep too.

for those who can't bedshare, i would recommend rooming in. if you can respond to them before they are fully awake, you get them back to sleep faster so you don't wake up all the way either. and then they don't wake up 12x a night.

there are also gentler ways of getting a baby to wake up less often but they take longer to work but work it does.

but what's the problem with a baby falling asleep at the breast.

what a lovely way to fall asleep - nothing beats the look on a tiny baby's face after a feed. All drunk and tired. Fabulous.

I do think that when it gets to the point that the baby will only fall asleep on the boob then it could be a problem. What if the mother has gone out and left a bottle or cup of expressed milk.

We had the other problem Kiskidee. My DS's did sleep with us when they were tiny but became very light sleepers when they got a bit bigger (four months up).

They slept far, far better in their own cot and then in their own room.

As you say - each to their own.

but conditioning lies at the base of much of what we do. Rewarding behaviours we want to encourage, for example. The reason that inconsistant parenting allows innapropriate or unwanted ehaviours to contine would be another example. For that matter, our responce to a baby crying is another conitioned response.

Just because pavolov did it with dog, doesn't mean it doesn't happen in humans

they all become light sleepers at 4 months, it is a developmental phase. that is why 'sleep problems' appear at this age. it is the lack of knowledge on how infants sleep that make us panic and hv's give rubbish advice. by then we have conditioned an infant to only fall asleep in a car or by rocking etc.

once upon a time, 'sleep problems' weren't there because parent(s) always slept with their children so we didn't need 'educating' on how babies sleep. they just did it because they were in the evolutionary environment in which babies always slept.

breastmilk for a baby is like knock out drops. dd got it at nursery till she was 18 months old.

well I disagree with your statement that they all become light sleepers at this stage. That's a sweeping generalisation.

Although mine were light sleepers, as soon as they had the peace and quiet they needed to settle they did.

Well DS2 didn't until he was 8 months old - but his was more of a middle of the night waking in pain type of sleep problem. Going to bed has never been an issue in our house.

I have never been cruel or "conditioned" my children in an animal study sort of way.

agree mb. i wasn't implying teaching = good, conditioning = bad. i was stating that CC is conditioning, not teaching, as most well almost all people say when they refer to the 'benefits' of CC. the word teaching seems to have a higher moral value on it than conditioning does so it give added weight that CC is a positive thing.

you are free to disagree dejags. may i suggest more reading on how the infant brain develops between say 12 wks and 16 wks?

must do some gardening.

"they all become light sleepers at 4 months, it is a developmental phase. that is why 'sleep problems' appear at this age."

Haha you're having a laugh aren't you? DS1 didn't develop sleep problems at 4 months old - he had them from birth.

"once upon a time, 'sleep problems' weren't there because parent(s) always slept with their children so we didn't need 'educating' on how babies sleep. they just did it because they were in the evolutionary environment in which babies always slept."

DS1 co-slept from birth - it was the only way we could get any sleep at all - and even then it was a minimum of 8 or 9 wakings a night........FROM BIRTH.