A new book puts more pressure on parents to pick up that crying baby, calling the cry-it-out method (CIO) “toxic” and “very bad for brain development,” the BBC reports.
Many of you consider yourself natural or attachment parents, so chances are, you would never consider “Ferberizing” your baby. That’s where you lay baby down awake and occasionally soothe the child, but do not pick her up, even if she cries. This sleep training was popular in our moms’ and grandmothers’ times so as not to “spoil” the child.
But in a new book Dr. Penelope Leach (The Essential First Year – What Babies Need Parents to Know) claims that there is no scientific evidence that cry-it-out works, and is in fact detrimental to babies.
Still, we hear it a lot today: variations of excuses for employing the CIO method to get your baby to sleep. If parents sleep better, we’ll be better parents during the day. Or comments like this, from a Babycenter discussion:
Crying it out will make everyone happier!
Or,
I’m a first time parent that has begun the worrisome task of sleep training my 5 month old. I’m letting him “CIO” with minimal intervention and no it’s not easy. I would love to rock, feed, and hold him forever, but I must look at the long term health benefits of my son being able to self sooth and fall asleep without my involvement, which is more disruptive then [sic] productive.
Or this skeptical response on an IVillage board:
Define brain damage and to what extent CIO causes it. What KIND of brain damage? I dont think this article answered any of that. I am a big proponent of CIO but only when used correctly.
Ohh. I see. “Proper” daily dosage of crying for a baby. Huh. My sons’ pediatrician never mentioned that necessity.
If you’ve tried CIO and it’s made you uncomfortable, that’s because it’s supposed to. Instinctively, as a parent, you are supposed to respond to a baby’s cries. That’s why babies cry. That’s why my breasts swell when I hear an infant cry, even months after my toddler and I finished breastfeeding.
Dr. Leach said that letting a baby cry for over a half hour is very harmful,
We are talking about the release of stress chemicals. The best known of them is cortisol, which is produced under extreme stress…
The reason that a baby gives up after half an hour, three-quarters of an hour or an hour is that it has given up and that its expectations have been altered.
I’ve heard it said that babies stop crying because they have learned that mummy wants them to go back to sleep. Babies are not capable of that sort of learning.
So really, parents, what you’re witnessing is not “self-soothing,” you’re witnessing emotional defeat. Doesn’t that break your heart?
I speak as a single mom who did not let her babies cry-it-out. I for sure know it’s hard. And I know that people are quite passionate about needing their sleep. So babywear until bedtime. Cosleep. Breastfeed until your gurgler is nodding off. I found that putting an infant Baby E on a blanket under a tree, so he could watch the branches move, soothed him just before bed.
Find your trick. But don’t trick or exhaust your infant into sleeping when it’s convenient for you. Because let’s face it: As parents, not much is going to convenient to you.
Image: BBanauch on Flickr under a Creative Commons License.
Follow me on Twitter or find me here.
{ 9 trackbacks }
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
My nephew, whom I wrote about on my blog, was left to cry. He eventually stopped crying altogether because she never responded to any of his cries. Not even to eat. He was fed when convenient for her. Now, this is extreme, but it shows that babies will give up and it’s so sad. She had him fir only 2 months.
My parents got him and he relearned how to cry. In fact, he cried a lot. Mote than other babies my mom had (she did inhone daycare before). Now I know he cried so much because he was probably happy someone responded. He had th saddest start in life.
As my friend, a psychologist says, ” Its kind of hard to self soothe when you have no concept of self”
I’ve never understood how folks can’t see that the baby just learns that no one will meet their needs. It is all so very sad.
Isn’t it great when the research backs us up?!
I am wondering, however, if anyone has any ideas as to how this relates to Dr. Jay Gordon’s night weaning technique. On his website, he says that a baby over one year old who has received quality night parenting up to that point may cry if not fed on cue, but will be more angry than truly distraught. I’ve been considering night weaning for my daughter, but the thought of her crying when I could just nurse and make her happy has so far deterred me.
Hunny, that totally makes sense!
I still go and check on my son when he cries or yelles for me and he his 2 years old now. If he doesn´t need me he just plays in his bed or looks out of the window until he´s tired enough to fall asleep. But if he cries there is something wrong. There was not one time when he just cried to make me come back him. I will continue to check on him at night when he needs me until he stops on his own and not until I want him.
My husband still blames me for not toughing it out, letting our son cry it out. Yet I feel guilty for even having tried it. It was two nights of misery. The first night he cried for two hours until he threw up. The second night I was totally beside myself as my husband assured me that we have to stick to it. Our son screamed for six hours and then passed out. A few weeks later my pediatrician told me that was a good start.
I feel terribly guilty about how I muddled through my son’s “sleep training”. We also tried the no-cry-sleep-solution with no success (in fact he became so sensitive to me leaving the room that I ended up staying longer and longer).
I’m still trying to figure out how to make up for that time for our son, and making sure our daughter does not have to go through the same experiences. I’ll never again put so much stock in what people tell is “necessary” for MY child.
I agree that when babies cry, it usually means something. It’s either they’re hungry or something’s not right. As parents, we have to learn on how to pick it up and take care of our babies.
Ok. Babies cry for all kinds of reasons. Does every crying episode a baby experience lead to brain damage? Really? Cortisol is released into the brain for stress in general and a week or to of sleep training is not going to forever harm a child. In fact there is a lot of scientific evidence that lack of sleep for both children and adults is harmful. I did a modified CIO method with my daughter. Did she cry? Yes. Does she now fall asleep happily on her own? Yes. Did she stop crying altogether? No. Did she stop crying after 5 min, or 15 min. or 30 min when sleep training? YES BECAUSE SHE FELL ASLEEP. Not because she learned we wouldn’t respond. I think if a child has stopped crying it is due to neglect in general and not CIO. Does she cry when we put her to bed now? Very rarely–when she’s sick or scared or has pooped. Do I come to her every time? Yes. Does she still have faith I’ll respond to her needs? Yes. Did I feel guilty following CIO–maybe for about 5 minutes.
We are a much happier family now that we’re all not sleep deprived. Our bedtime routine takes about 15 minutes, 95% of the time my daughter is happy and chatty when I put her in the crib and my daughter sleeps through the night and wakes up happy. She knows we respond to her needs, she is highly verbal, highly interactive child way ahead of the all development milestones. She also knows how to fall asleep on her own. Sometimes she even asks to take a nap!
If you don’t want to teach your child how to fall asleep on their own, fine. But I just see a lot of what I read as fear mongering to rationalizing the choice not to sleep train and trying to get others not to sleep train and feel guilty if they do.
My youngest child is about to turn 20 in a few weeks. I remember reading Penelope Leach’s book when both my sons were infants and I also remeber throwing it against the wall in frustration. In the part labeled 0 -6 Months, she advocated soothing your baby to sleep.
Since my second son was still crying and being rocked and breast fed through most of the night by 6 months, I eagerly turned to the part of her book that was about 7 -12 months. The 1st chapter started off with words to this effect: If you haven’t taught your child to sleep through the night by now you’ve done something wrong or you have to change your ways or something like that. That’s when I threw her book against the wall with a few choice words. (N.B.: My oldest son would fall asleep before I put him all the way in his cradle or crib!)
At his next check-up I asked the pediatrician (who is one of the nicest and kindest people on this planet) for advice. He said, “Let him cry it out. It will take 3 nights and then it will be done. I promise. But DO NOT go into his room, not even once.” He saw the look of horror on my face and then he lent me a video from the TV show 60 Minutes that demonstrated this technique.
After watching the video we employed the technique with VERY HEAVY HEARTS. And you know what, it worked in 3 nights. The 1st night he cried for 1 & 1/2 hrs. — horrible, the 2nd night for 45 minutes — terrible, the 3rd night, 15 minutes. By the 4th night he did not cry at all!
My son is now a happy and very successful student at one of the world’s top engineering schools with a major scholarship. He loves his father and me very much and acts it and says it often. He has also had a fabulous girlfriend for over a year. I don’t know if we did any “brain damage” but he is more than OK and I’d take whatever P. Leach says about getting your infant to sleep with a grain of salt.
Just my opinion and experience; and I wanted to insert a different point of view based on that experience. I know that it’s anecdotal. I do not think that there is anything wrong with picking your baby or toddler up when he or she cries at bedtime or any other time. Obviously that’s up to each individual parent and we shouldn’t be judgmental about what another chooses to do. There is no ONE correct way to do this. Good luck to all of you who are facing this dilemma and are just trying to do what is best for your child — it’s not easy.
This is a great discussion! I am somewhere in between on this topic. My son co-slept with me- mostly because he slept so soundly and woke once at night to nurse for about 20 seconds and then he’d fall asleep- and I barely woke up. I tried putting him in a crib, but it just didn’t work. He now goes to sleep on his own- with a cup of tea near his bed so when he wakes up thirsty he has a little tasty (soothing) something to drink. Crying it out might have worked for him, but he fell asleep so quickly just feeling me next to him I never wanted to try.
Then I became a foster parent- my little girl is totally different. She will cry for hours. If I lay next to her she just wants to play. When she wakes up at night she wants to play and chat- not sleep. So the little bit of sleep training I did with her was more about learning to sleep on a schedule and learning to sleep at night. When it’s naptime, I put her in her bed and let her cry- usually about 30 secs. to 1 minute now; when she cried longer I would go pick her up and sooth her after 5 minutes or so. But I found with her that picking her up got her excited rather than soothed. After 5 months with me she sleeps great. Sometimes we bring her into bed with us in the middle of the night, most of the time with just let her stay in her crib but we’ll pick her up and put her back if she’s crying. She had a different start than my son so I think that some of her unsettled behavior might come from that- but she is very consistant now.
Bottom line is every kid is different. I am at a different place now than when I had my son. I’m more tired, I don’t have the lovely hormons that lactating mama’s produce, but most important is that my mother’s intuition tells me that I need to address these situations differently.
That’s really the key- some parent- child combos work for the CIO method and others don’t. Good parenting is an eb and flow and a dynamic process of finding the best way for today. There’s never one way.
Best of luck to all with the joys and challenges of caring unconditionally for another little being. May each moment be miraculous!
Basically the idea of the Cry It Out method is to teach the baby to fall asleep on his or her own by progressively increasing the waiting time before responding to the child’s cries. Not surprisingly this method has often been misunderstood as involving simply letting the baby cry until he or she goes to sleep. Although this progressive method may work for some infants there are other things to consider. Read more about this in our post: http://www.justaskbaby.com/blogs/professor-elkind/cry-it-out
While I am very anti-CIO, I dislike the fear mongering involved and I am disappointed that age appropriate behavior is not addressed. Saying “babies shouldn’t cry it out” means something different to everyone. My “baby” is nearly 2 years old, and while I would never have let him cry it out when he was 6 months old, at 22 months he often will throw a temper tantrum at bedtime. But at this point, it’s his age appropriate behavior kicking in and testing his boundaries…..and what he needs is me to enforce them. Telling parents “CIO IS ALWAYS WRONG!” is setting them up for failure and misery.
Additionally, the rigid nature of the argument lacks empathy. I bought into all the extremist attachment parenting theories with my first, very very easy, baby. With my second child, I believed CIO was always wrong and I never let him sleep alone. And we never got more than two hours sleep at a time for over a year. Sleep deprivation is easy to dismiss if you’ve never suffered it badly. Add to that the stress of hearing your child cry and everyone being on edge? If you’ve never been there, done that, consider yourself lucky. Sometimes a parent needs to put the child down and step away to regain some sanity.
I hope that the anti-CIO faction understands that it’s very likely not detrimental much past 1 year. When your child gets old enough to actually try to assert their choices (i.e. the choice not to go to bed!) then it’s not CIO, it’s enforcing rules.
Every child is different. One child may be fine to be left alone, another won’t. It’s dangerous to say all babies should CIO fir three days. It won’t work for all. I have always HD a tough time falling asleep. My husband falls asleep easier. Should I follow his bedtime routine? No. I’m not him. I had one baby who would cry for 7 minutes before falling asleep for a nap. Every day. For a year or so. She coslept with me at night, but cried at nap time. I had another who would scream forever and then be hard to console for hours
I would have to agree with Sylkozakur. Some children are very sensitive and the “cry out” method may have a traumatic effect. Other babies may have an easier time dealing with it. I think it also depends on their age and what stage they are going through. My main point is that what works for some may not work for others.
@Hunny: “As my friend, a psychologist says, ‘Its kind of hard to self soothe when you have no concept of self’ ”
The argument cuts both ways — it’s kind of hard to feel “abandoned” (as most anti-CIO people claim) when you have no concept of self.
And you have no sense of object permanence before about 9 months, for that matter, meaning EVERY single time a person or thing goes out of the range of your senses, you have no idea that it continues to exist. When Leach mentions “giving up,” we project all sorts of initiative and conscious effort of adults “giving up” onto an infant. But the infant isn’t capable of such thoughts.
Infants simply respond to their environment. If a baby’s basic needs are met (food, warmth, etc.), but he is overtired and/or not ready to give up stimulation from Mommy or Daddy, he might cry. Babies adapt to the consistency of their environment, though. If a baby cries for a few days or a week at bedtime, and nothing happens except falling asleep, the baby usually will adapt. From an evolutionary perspective, there’s no reason to waste calories crying when it’s highly advantageous to fall asleep (from a learning perspective, a rest perspective, etc.).
There have been many studies showing sleep training to be effective. For some babies, that means instead of crying for anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple hours at bedtime while they are overtired and unable to figure out what to do, now they go to sleep in under 15 minutes.
Sleep training doesn’t work for all babies, and it works for some babies at certain ages but not at other ages. If you try it and don’t see results in a week, perhaps a different strategy is in order. But if you have a very fussy baby who cries for an hour or two at bedtime every night, and a few days of sleep training can get him out of that habit, the baby may cry SIGNIFICANTLY less in the future.
Leach’s argument doesn’t make sense in that case. If excessive crying is bad, and if for some babies sleep training can REDUCE excessive crying in the long term by a few days of crying at first, isn’t her objection to CIO actually DAMAGING babies?!