What does crying it out actually mean practically?

[LittleMG]

Hi everyone, yes we’re having to
cry it out. I can’t do it anymore. It’s so awful my little boy doesn’t understand why I won’t do what he wants.
how long will this take? hours days?
how many times a night will I have to sit here like this??
Ive done some research and I’m
in the room with him I can’t just shut the door on him. But no one says practically how long he’ll be able to cry for all night?? HELP XX

I gave my dd love and warmth....while she was crying in my arms! I would hold her and she would STILL cry as she wanted rocking to sleep. She was not crying because she wanted emotional support...she wanted me to get her to sleep!

Imagine being utterly dependant on someone else to be able to fall asleep. We teach our children everything else, I don't understand why teaching children that they can rely on themselves to fall asleep is deemed 'cruel'. It's so odd.

For my first I did Ferber at 6 months old. For my second I did side-settling from 3 months old - not a single tear and he spontaneously started sleeping through the night once because he was comfortable falling asleep in his cot rather than in my arms or being sung to or being bounced up and down or whatever other crutch

We teach our children everything else, I don't understand why teaching children that they can rely on themselves to fall asleep is deemed 'cruel'.

We don’t teach them anything else in the same way that sleep is “taught”. You don’t just plop your baby at the end of your driveway at an arbitrarily chosen age and wait for them to start walking to get back home. You don’t suddenly just stop giving milk and put a pizza in front of a baby to teach them to eat solid foods. You don’t teach them to talk by ignoring them until they start forming sentences. Every other skill is taught in age appropriate ways and starting with the very basic foundations to those skills.

And that’s ignoring the fact that sleep isn’t a skill to be taught, it’s a biological function. It’s complete nonsense that waking at night is somehow detrimental to babies and that it’s healthier for them to sleep through from an early age, no research supports that. It’s also complete nonsense that if you support your baby to fall asleep that they will always need that. Every baby will grow out of needing so much support when they’re ready for it. Every baby will start sleeping longer stretches at night when they’re ready for it.

If a baby is waking more than what is considered normal for their age, and/or the wakeups are considered problematic, then issues causing that need to be investigated because it is never a good idea to sleep train a baby that may have a medical need.