Starting Controlled Crying Tonight 6 month old

[ChampooPapi]

So my baby is now 6 months old and I am starting Controlled Crying Tonight. I know some people don't agree with it and I do understand that but I have made my mind up to do this.

Advice needed on techniques, and also do you do the same for when you put them to bed as when they wake in the night?

CC is, frankly, against nature

Eh?

I work(ed) full time in a high pressure job, breastfed at night, had horrific ante and postnatal mental health issues and am a single parent. If I, with my many many many failings and foibles, can do it without resorting to CC, I am certain it’s possible.

Possible but not necessary. Why make life harder than it needs to be? “Natural” or otherwise there’s no telling whose parents were attachment and whose used routines and cc when they’re 5 or 12 or 20. There’s no distinguishable difference. Human babies are by nature extremely adaptable, we have a vast array of cultures with a vast array of practices and our children can neatly slot into any of them.

There is a reason babies cries make people feel anxious. Evolution has designed human babies so that adult humans are compelled to attend to them and meet their needs.

Leaving a small baby to cry is not how human parenthood is biologically “supposed” to go.

And if making my life harder means making a very new life easier... well that’s the gig I signed up for, isn’t it?

And whilst babies are adaptable, they are no inconvenient pieces of luggage that need to be squashed to “slot” wherever and however their parents think is least troublesome.

It’s not quite that simple. Some of my babies cries make me want to attend to him and others of them don’t. Some of them sound more urgent or more anxious and some sound more angry. I honestly have no difficulty ignoring the angry cries. Obviously my youngest is 8 months and when he was younger it was different and less emotionally expressive, but he was that expressive by 6 months (actually pretty much then). He also glares at you when he’s angry.

My first was much less emotionally expressive than this one as it happens (and cried a lot less). He only really came into his own when he got verbal (but his first word was at 8 months as it happens). Like you always knew what he wanted but knowing how he felt was harder. He has three main facial expressions “sad/anxious and quizzical”, “excited” and “tantrum”. My second on the other hand does the full gauntlet of human facial expressions and already knows how to use them to full advantage.

And if making my life harder means making a very new life easier... well that’s the gig I signed up for, isn’t it?

Everyone in a family’s needs should be balanced not adults martyring themselves to children who will not ever appreciate the sacrifice or be in any way different to peers whose parents didn’t martyr themselves.

And I do think that babies are supposed to slot in, not because they’re inconvenient pieces of luggage but because the whole of growing up is about learning to live in the world with other people.

@DieAntword

Whilst I don’t you can argue with science, well just have to agree to disagree on a personal/anecdotal level I think - fundamentally, it’s obvious our parenting styles are very different- mine is working for me, I assume yours for you- so best of luck.

DieAntword, as a culture we set a lot of store by the concept of 'settling in'. We have 'settling in' sessions to nursery, school, my goodness, we even have inducton sessions for work. Routines are varied and others interrupt what they are doing to help people settle in to things. Babies are 'settling in' to the world, and need that foundational being revolved around in order to learn to live in the world with others, secure of their place and not feeling the need to demand the attention they have a sense that they needed and missed.

Well that argument would work better if there was any reason to think babies dont “Settle in” to life perfectly well via CC.

I could have been convinced by those arguments before I had two happy well adjusted children who’d undergone the process but not afterward.

I genuinely feel the pressure that people put on new mothers who don’t have that experience and are usually filled with anxiety about doing something wrong and “ruining” their babies is horrendous. None of the normal parenting techniques people use are going to “ruin” your baby whatever style you chose.

'Undergone the process'?
I can't say I felt I wanted my babies to 'undergo a process', tbh.
(And I worked, had older children, dc who fed at night until they were nearly 2, went through house moves, job changes, business start-ups, etc. etc. etc. So more sleep would have been a lifeline).
I'm no better or worse a mother than anyone else, particularly. But it seems to me that there are some things that need to be sucked up in the early days/months/years, because of the physiological and emotional needs of a baby or very young child. And while you can't tell a CC baby from a fed-round-the-clock co-sleeper at 20 - just like you can't tell a bf from a ff baby - some of the effects are likely very subtle.

So you think people should endure even a year’s worth of multiple night wakings oftentimes that require hour long “processes” in themselves (of rocking or shhh patting or feeding or cuddling) on the basis of preventing effects so subtle they are not observable at all?

Not people who are happily cosleeping and enjoying their night cuddles but also people who are either unhappily cosleeping or for whatever reason cannot cosleep?

Because I think that’s too much to ask of new mothers for such insignificant unmeasurable effects.

An effect subtle enough not to be observable to an outsider doesn't have to be insignificant in that person's life. And then there are the unprovable correlations. How is anyone to demonstrate that the controlled crying endured (it's the baby that's doing the enduring in that scenario) at 6 months is related to the massive separation anxiety at reception start aged 4? You can't. But just because a baby is unable to vocalise or even remember something, does not mean it has had an effect.

I don't think people 'should' do anything. I think there are factors they might want to consider when deciding whether to do CC or not.

FFS. Does not mean it has not had an effect.

If cc causes separation anxiety aged 4 that should be demonstrable. Either retrospectively (get a randomised bunch of kids with separation anxiety and see if their parents used it - imperfect but not awful as a first look) or better yet longitudinally (get a representative cohort of babies whose parents are willing to use CC and assign parents to CC and non CC groups and see how their kids are doing as they go through their lives).

That wouldn’t be a subtle and unobsevable effect. But there’s no evidence of it being a real one.

I can see so many problems with either of those studies that I can't imagine them getting off the ground (otherwise, surely someone with an agenda - either way - would have done one or had one done?) Anyway, there's nothing to say it 'causes' it, inevitably, in every individual, but perhaps for that individual it did have an impact.

Seems pretty speculative, I could say eating carrots might make people more angry so better not eat carrots just in case but without any evidence to suggest it’s true it would be a bit silly to consider it.