Because whether or not to sleep train can be such a fraught decision for new parents, I wanted to share my sleep training story, and to explain why, given everything we know about stress, the argument that sleep training causes long-term harm doesn’t hold water.
Sleep Training My Son
When my son was 4.5 months old, I decided to sleep train him. Even by baby standards, my son was not much of a sleeper. He’d snooze for at most 4 or 5 hours, and then wake up every hour like clockwork, wanting to nurse but not wanting milk, popping on and off my breast and screaming in frustration.
I had gone back to work a month earlier, so napping to catch up on sleep was out of the question. Worse, I was commuting an hour to the office each way.
By then, I had reached the end of my sleep deprivation rope. I was so tired I could barely string two thoughts together. I had to coach myself through even mundane tasks like checking out at the grocery store. Say hello to the cashier. Take out your credit card. Pick up the grocery bags. Leave.
I was terrified every time I got into my car to head to work that I would nod off at the wheel and kill someone, quite possibly myself. I joked with coworkers that driver’s licenses should be temporarily suspended for new parents, but the situation really wasn’t funny.
So there I was the first night of sleep training, dripping sweat as I listened to my son’s cries. Minutes ticked by, each seeming longer than the last. I pondered whether the Ferber method included soothing every five minutes just so that you would realize only five minutes had passed.
But I was determined to stick this out, to get it done. Doing it halfway was worse than not doing it at all, I reminded myself over and over. If I were to give in, I could teach my son that crying for 30 minutes was what it took to get mommy to pick him up.
That night, he woke two more times, but never again cried more than 15 minutes. The next night, he cried for 10 minutes at bedtime, conked out, and slept until morning. That morning we greeted each other with a smile, and for the first time since his birth, I really felt like smiling at his freshly woken little face.
Although by all appearances, sleep training went well for us, some critics of cry-it-out methods would contend that I was an inadequate parent–one who had permanently harmed my son by leaving him to cry alone, uncomforted.
The Cry-It-Out Controversy
“An emotionally available parent would probably not let their baby cry it out,” claims Dr. Teti, a researcher at Penn State.
Dr. Narvaez writes in Psychology Today:
“Letting babies get distressed is a practice that can damage children and their relational capacities in many ways for the long term. We know now that leaving babies to cry is a good way to make a less intelligent, less healthy but more anxious, uncooperative and alienated persons.”
When someone tells you that you have permanently damaged your child, it’s hard to shake off, no matter how much happier you and your baby seem once you start getting some solid rest.
Thankfully, as someone who has studied the effects of chronic stress in animals and in people, I knew that claims like Dr. Narvaez’s are not supported by data and instead rest on a fundamental misreading of stress research.
Studies on Cry-It-Out
Studies involving cry-it-out methods find no ill long-term effects for babies, and big benefits for parents. In one study, rates of depression in mothers dropped from 70% to 10% after sleep training.
Critics of cry-it-out methods argue that these studies are flawed–they don’t have the right measures of harm, they fail to determine whether the parents actually used cry-it-out methods to sleep train their babies, and they rely on parents’ reports instead of observation.
Admittedly, some of these criticisms of sleep training research are fair. Sleep training research is hard to do, especially since researchers can’t exactly force parents to sleep train little Johnny, or prevent parents from doing so.
That said, there’s no evidence in humans–none–to support the view that sleep training is harmful. If there were, we’d have heard about it.
So what the critics of cry-it-out argue, really, boils down to this: They know that sleep training is harmful, because they know stress is harmful to babies.
The problem with that argument? All stress is not created equal. We were designed to handle short-term stress. Where we humans, and other animals, run into trouble is when stress becomes chronic.
Short-Term Versus Chronic Stress
In terms of their effects, the difference between short-term and chronic stress is one not of degree, but of kind. Short-term stress enhances memory; chronic stress impairs it. Short-term stress boosts the immune system; chronic stress weakens it.
(Seeing short-term and chronic stress as fundamentally different is not just my own heterodox personal take. This is the view of people who study stress for a living, including the renowned stress neuroscientist and primatologist Robert Sapolsky, professor of Neurology at Stanford University, who writes extensively about this key distinction in his excellent book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. The American Academy of Pediatrics emphasizes this distinction in its statement on early life stress. And the Harvard statement on child development, cited by Dr. Narvaez herself in her Psychology Today piece, makes a point of distinguishing between short-term and long-term stress.)
The Effects of Stress in Early Life
Short-term stress mobilizes us for action–the classic fight-or-flight response. Adrenaline and cortisol pump through our veins; our bodies brim with energy; and mentally we become hyper-focused.
But these short-term adaptations are harmful when switched on for too long, especially when we are young. Scores of animal and human studies show that early life stress, such as severe early social deprivation, leads to long-term changes in the brain, cognitive and social problems, and heightened susceptibility to anxiety, depression, and drug abuse in adulthood. Chronic stress is toxic.
But from this can we conclude that all early stress, even short-term stress, is harmful?
No. Absolutely not. In studies of short-term stress early in life, occurring within the larger context of a close caregiver-infant relationship, none of these ill effects are observed.
In fact, young monkeys exposed to early short bouts of stress, such as brief periods of separation from their mothers, become more resilient to future stresses. They are less anxious and have less extreme physiological reactions to stress later in life. This phenomenon is so consistent that researchers have labelled it stress inoculation.
My Take
So where does that leave us? A little stress, even in infancy, is fine, if not beneficial, but too much for too long is very, very bad.
Do we know exactly where sleep training fits in this spectrum? Just how much stress does a baby experience during cry-it-out?
The short answer is that we don’t know for certain. Everything we do know, however, suggests that this amount of stress, in the context of a warm, loving family, is just fine.
To see why, let’s return for a second to the American Academy of Pediatrics statement on early life stress, which provides examples of the types of stress children can withstand, provided they occur within a broader context of loving, supportive relationships. These include “the death of a family member, a serious illness or injury, a contentious divorce, a natural disaster, or an act of terrorism”. By comparison, sleep training seems pretty mild.
But I would go further. I believe that sleep training is not only not harmful, it is beneficial. Successful sleep training can decrease depression and chronic stress in the parents, and this benefits parents and their babies. Unlike sleep training, having a depressed mother during early childhood has been shown, repeatedly, to be linked with worse long-term outcomes for children.
Which brings me to what I find most troubling about the claims of sleep training opponents: Their zero-sum take on parenting. Worrying about your own sleep needs is selfish, they not so subtly imply. Any time you fail to put your baby’s needs before your own, you are potentially doing him harm.
What a narrow, cramped view of parenthood.
No one would ever dispute that parenthood entails enormous sacrifices, especially when your children are young and their need for you feels so endless and all-consuming.
But I think that because parenthood, and motherhood in particular, is so often judged in terms of self-sacrifice, we tend to forget that a primary job for parents is to be strategic.
As parents, we must weigh short-term costs against long-term harms, because our children cannot. We have to consider the risk of a few nights of stress and unmet needs against the risk of a car accident or job loss, and against the serious physical and emotional toll of chronic sleep deprivation on the entire family.
We can forget, too, that the parent-child relationship is one not only of sacrifice but also of profound mutual benefit. You being a whole, fulfilled individual with a solid relationship with your partner, meaningful social ties, and a sense of purpose enriches your world and your child’s world. You being a well-rested, healthy, and happy parent is good for you and good for your child.
References
Ashokan A, Sivasubramanian M, Mitra R. Seeding Stress Resilience through Inoculation. Neural Plasticity. 2016;2016:4928081. doi:10.1155/2016/4928081.
Center on the Developing Child (2010). The Foundations of Lifelong Health Are Built in Early Childhood. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu.
Crofton EJ, Zhang Y, Green TA. Inoculation Stress Hypothesis of Environmental Enrichment. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews. 2015;0:19-31. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.11.017.
Darcia Narvaez. Dangers of “Cry-It-Out”: Damaging children and their relationships for the longterm. Psychology Today. 2011.
Gunnar M. Reactivity of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenocortical System to Stressors in Normal Infants and Children. Pediatrics. September 2, 1992;90(3):491.
Hsiao YM, Tsai TC, Lin YT, Chen CC, Huang CC, Hsu KS. Early life stress dampens stress responsiveness in adolescence: Evaluation of neuroendocrine reactivity and coping behavior.Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2016 May;67:86-99.
Lyons DM, Parker KJ, Schatzberg AF. Animal Models of Early Life Stress: Implications for Understanding Resilience. Developmental psychobiology. 2010;52(5):402-410. doi:10.1002/dev.20429.
Parker KJ, Buckmaster CL, Sundlass K, Schatzberg AF, Lyons DM. Maternal mediation, stress inoculation, and the development of neuroendocrine stress resistance in primates.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2006;103(8):3000-3005. doi:10.1073/pnas.0506571103.
Sánchez MM, Ladd CO, Plotsky PM. Early adverse experience as a developmental risk factor for later psychopathology: evidence from rodent and primate models. Dev Psychopathol. 2001 Summer;13(3):419-49.
Sanchez MM, McCormack KM, Howell BR. Social Buffering of Stress Responses in Nonhuman Primates: Maternal Regulation of the Development of Emotional Regulatory Brain Circuits. Social neuroscience. 2015;10(5):512-526. doi:10.1080/17470919.2015.1087426.
I want a do over
The fact that she expected a 4 month old to sleep longer than 4-5 hours shows how litter she really understands how babies work. Even adults wake at night. A breastfeeding baby will wake up every 4 hours at night to be nurses since bm digests quickly. I have a master’s degree in biology and a mother of two. I’m not impressed with the “science” of this article.
After we sleep trained, my 5 month old son would go 10-12 hours without nursing. He would nurse more in the early morning than before, and continued to gain weight and thrive. Many healthy babies can go longer than 4 hours without feeding by 4-5 months. Do you have any evidence showing they cannot? Or is this just your opinion?
I sleep trained my son and it is my biggest regret. They are so helpless and to hear them cry for more than a minute feels like a lifetime. They have no one and They rely on the mother to survive. My son is six and has social anxiety. I don’t know if it’s correlated or not. But knowing that I could have contributed, by Hearing his cries and leaving him to fend for himself when he needed me most, will forever haunt me.
I have successfully conditioned our 4 week old who is regularly sleeping 6 to 7 hours at night currently. Was that Master’s degree in bio from Chuckles University by chance?
This literally has no information on how a baby can successfully be “sleep trained” correctly …as in fed and not starving and won’t need food every four hours etc.… So you basically are saying it’s OK to starve your baby until they realize you’re not going to feed them and fell sleep crying? That is literally the worst advice. That literally sad to say that parents should let their babies cry like that without describing what kind of cries there are whether they are tears or no tears… Whether they’re hungry or not. This is so black-and-white. I wish people would stop giving such shitty advice and encouraging parents to let their babies cry in when in desperate need of their soothing. That’s not a baby learning to self sooth… That’s a baby coming to terms with no one’s coming so you might as well give up and changing connections in their brain when that happens. Change that is forever permanent. Some of those changes include brain damage from high levels of cortisol. Why don’t you do some research on that and come back here and update this.
yes, but there is a difference between a breastfeeding and short nursing at night, and a long battle with a child after this breastfeeding. But I’m not a fan of any cry-it-out method and using it especially on a newborns, sounds more like the way of spartans 😉 I prefer method like hold with love by susan urban. the fourth trimester theory presented there is the one of the best things that I discovered on the internet
My baby slept through the night from 3 months.
Hi!
I absolutely love your site and what it’s all about.
This is my first time receiving your email notification…and as a marketing professional, I have to ask why you post the full article in the email? You should only post the first paragraph and then ask us to continue to your site. It will help with SEO if you get more clicks to your site. Just wanted to let you know if you didn’t already 🙂
Thanks again for such great content!
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 12:22 PM, Expecting Science wrote:
> Amy Kiefer posted: “Because whether or not to sleep train can be such a > fraught decision for new parents, I wanted to share my sleep training > story, and to explain why, given everything we know about stress, > the arguments of those opposed to sleep training don’t hold water. ” >
Thanks for the suggestion! Marketing and thinking about SEO are definitely not my strong points–so if you notice anything else, please let me know what I am screwing up 🙂
Thank you!
I have seen that argument made. It is my understanding that it is based on a single study of 25 infants that failed to include a control group.
Melinda Wenner Moyer has an excellent piece on sleep training. She describes the multiple problems with that study. And problems aside, its findings do not support the conclusion that sleep trained babies continue to experience distress. Here’s Moyer on the topic:
“There is, however, one study cited multiple times in Clinical Lactation that specifically assesses the effects of crying-it-out on infant cortisol levels. In this 2012 study, University of North Texas educational psychologist Wendy Middlemiss and her colleagues tracked the behavior and cortisol levels of 25 infants, ages 4 to 10 months, as they went through a five-day sleep training program à la crying-it-out in a sleep lab in New Zealand. The researchers measured the blood cortisol levels of the infants and their mothers before and after the babies were put to sleep on the first and the third nights. On the first night, the babies cried, but their cortisol levels did not go up upon being left to cry themselves to sleep. On the third night, none of the babies cried much at all, and their cortisol levels stayed constant. In other words, the sleep training worked.
What Middlemiss considers a cause for concern is that the babies’ cortisol levels never dropped during the course of the study (the mothers’ cortisol levels did, on the third night). “What’s dangerous about the situation,” Middlemiss explained to me, “is that the mother has no idea—because the behavioral indication [i.e. the crying] is absent—that the infant had remained stressed.” But how do we know the infants were stressed to begin with if their cortisol levels never rose? Middlemiss says that the babies in her study must have been stressed as soon as they arrived at the sleep lab—it’s a foreign environment—so it didn’t matter that the training itself didn’t incite a further increase. But there were no comparison groups included in the study to validate such a conclusion—no infants lounging around at home with much lower cortisol levels—so it’s unfair to assume that the sleep-trained infants were stressed. (Middlemiss told me that she once took cortisol measurements of babies while they were at home, and that their cortisol levels were lower than the babies tested in the sleep lab, but she didn’t include this information in her study.) Even if the babies at the sleep lab were highly stressed, the obvious take-home is that parents shouldn’t bring their babies to sleep labs—not that they shouldn’t cry it out”
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/the_kids/2013/07/clinical_lactation_jumps_on_the_dr_sears_bandwagon_to_say_sleep_training.html
I don’t think Moyner misrepresented Middlemiss’s findings. I think what Moyner is saying–and I agree with her–is that it’s very hard to know what exactly is happening in Middlemiss’s study, given the way it was designed and what she found. You cannot tell whether the babies were stressed by cry-it-out or the hospital setting, and she did not find an increase in cortisol with CIO, just no decrease after 3 nights. You cannot conclude some tragic decoupling of parent and baby distress from this study. The results don’t support that conclusion. They don’t really tell you much of anything.
Her study was riddled with problems, including improper statistics, poor design, and large amounts of missing data, as I now detail here: https://expectingscience.com/2016/04/21/the-middlemiss-study-tells-us-nothing-about-sleep-training-cry-it-out-or-infant-stress/
Certainly more and better research would help clarify matters. Until then, I think it’s fair to say everything we know about sleep, stress, and development suggests that CIO will not cause lasting harm. If a new study comes out on the topic that supports this view or refutes it, I will be sure to cover it.
I just started to look at that article as well. But initial thoughts are cortisol levels are circadian. They drop to nearly undectable levels during the night, peak at waking then slowly drop the rest of the day. So 1. it appeared they used a within subjects design, they wouldn’t need a control group. The group is the control group by making the change on one night and comparing it to a baseline. and 2. we would expect cortisol levels to naturally drop through the night, quickly. If they even stayed even that would actually be elevated beyond the norm.
Even in a new environment the babies should adjust quickly.
But none of that matters
Because the whole point of the paper was asynchrony. That the babies behavioral cues (crying) are important for the mother to get in sync with the baby, as shown by cortisol levels. As a matter of fact if the baby was freaked out by the new environment, that proves the papers point (but not those who cite the paper) that there was a greater asynchrony between moms cortisol and babies. In short, it doesnt matter why the babies cortisol levels were high, new environment or sleep training, they were high and therefore should have elicited a behavioral response, crying. But they didnt.
I dont think this paper provides any evidence against cry it out. This paper says when a mom and baby spend 5 days in a sleep training program, their cortisol levels get out of synchrony due to the babies crying cessation..thats it. Crying increases cortisol for baby (or stress increases both) which evelates moms levels.
For this to be against the cry it out method (which I dont use, we used partial by checking every 15 min on our first 3 children to great success) one would have to accept the basic assumption that asynchrony causes long term neg effects. And I dont see that supported in this articles review. So this paper was done fine for what it wanted to measure- a between subjects design with a control group would have worked as well. But I do not believe it shows what people want it to.
PhD behavioral neuroscience.
That sleep study you mentioned was considered a fail because infants cortisol levels were not measured during the night when they would clearly show high stress levels. If you measure cortisol levels in the morning when the child is awake, been fed and attended to of course the study would show stress levels were low. So the study was not conducted correctly to measure stress levels in the first place. Neuroscience now reflects on the fact that leaving a baby to cry for periods of time is incredibly stressful and harmful as it teaches the baby that no one will come for them if they cry out that they are not settled, fearful, hungry, dirty or wet. Its regarded as neglectful in many ways by neuroscience experts.
The other aspect of this that I’ve always wondered about: what is the effect of long-term sleep deprivation on the child? Surely long-term sleep deprivation is a form of chronic stress?
I once came across a study (and sorry, I don’t have the citation) which found that with even an hour’s less sleep, cortisol levels would spike in the evening, when the person would normally go to bed. That’s one hour. What is the effect of days, weeks, months, even years, of inadequate sleep on the child? And surely that is far worse than a few days of short-term stress?
Absolutely–I did not have the space to get into that research in this post, because I really wanted to focus on stress research, but Alice Callahan has an excellent summary at her blog Science of Mom on how sleep deprivation is also bad for babies and children: https://scienceofmom.com/2012/02/13/why-sleep-matters-to-babies-and-parents/
Her series of posts on sleep training are the best in-depth discussion of the topic I’ve seen.
Are you saying that all (most? some?) children that haven’t been sleep trained are chronically sleep-deprived? What brought you to that conclusion?
Our current cultural norm of 8-hour solid block of sleep (or 12 hours – 7pm-7am – the golden standard for sleep trained babies) is by no means a biological nor a historical norm for humans in general.
It is not just the obvious and overt stress that the baby (and the mother) experiences from mother’s unresponsiveness during sleep training but the potential long-term effects of tampering with these biologically and evolutionarily normal patterns of sleep, breastfeeding and parental soothing that prevented me from ever considering sleep training as something to be implemented.
I think that in cases where babies have not learned to soothe themselves back to sleep, but instead require lengthy parental intervention every time they come out of a sleep cycle, sleep training can mean more uninterrupted sleep. That certainly was the case in our household–my son was a much happier better rested little boy once he could fall back asleep on his own.
The objective of sleep training a baby is to stop them crying at night time and not to deal with the underlying cause of why they are in distress. There is no evidence to support that sleep trained babies actually sleep more.
Are you kidding? My 10 month old had bags under his eyes for months on end from all of his night wakings and inability to connect sleep cycles. Co-sleeping didn’t even help him get a full nights rest! He was constantly waking and needing to be helped back to sleep. A week after sleep training his dark circles and bags are gone from his sweet little face and he is SO much happier. The poor boy was chronically overtired for moths. I will never regret giving him the space to learn how to sleep.
My sleep trained baby ABSOLUTELY sleeps more.
Thanks for sharing. Our experience with our son was the same. He was a much happier little guy when sleeping a solid 10 hours at night.
What do you mean by inadequate sleep in the child? Most babies (and toddlers) will rouse frequently during sleep (though not awaken fully, if responded to promptly such as in a co-sleeping and breastfeeding situation). That happens naturally, it’s not like someone is trying to deprive them of their sleep (like in war zones where bombs fall all the time)….
Let me start by saying I really enjoyed reading your post! I personally hate “studies” that really are just strong opinions of what affects people mentally. I had a very unstructured childhood, filled with everything in the book that can “damage” a child. But I turned out happy and healthy with a family of my own. Now as a new mother I’ve read every blog and book on how to do anything and everything. It seems to just all be opinions on how to not screw up your kid. If letting your baby cry it out (to a certain extent) works for you and you don’t notice negative outcomes then great for you! Being a happy healthy mother to a new baby is the most important thing you can do for the little one (in my opinion). So do what works for you! Thanks again for the post.
Thank you!
I think this is a sad attempt to make yourself feel better for putting your baby through this. As a parent, you should respond to your baby. If your baby is crying out to you, do what your biology is telling you to do, and respond. I don’t understand CIO at all. I think it’s extremely harmful. You are just saying that a little bit of stress is fine. But who are you (or anyone) to say where that line lies. To me, letting your babe cry for hours in a day is chronic and extreme stress. Letting them cry for 2 minutes because you are tying putting on your three-year olds shoes to get everyone out the door; that, my dear, is short-term stress.
Totally agree. Leaving your child to cry goes against your instinct as a mum for a reason. If humans were still living in a primative way, you would never leave your child to cry as it would attract predators! It’s just not natural. Research has found it hugely increases cortisol levels in the brain for a significant time after the child has been left which can cause mental health problems later in life. My child is an awful sleeper and I work, but he will always have me there when he cries.
Do you have specific papers on the huge sustained increases in cortisol after sleep training? I have not seen any, and I would love to read them.
I truly hope the next time you are crying your husband or friends doesn’t ignore just because they want sleep. Ultimately the issue here is you had to return to work, had you not I am sure you would never have put your 4.5 mth old through this. The reason babies stop crying is because they give up. If you were to do that during the day it would be classed a neglect.
I find astonishing that anyone can justify CIO.
I’m a SAHM and I sleep trained my daughter we she was around 6 months old. It has nothing to do with working or not working outside the home. Sleep deprivation isn’t good for anyone.
I agree! So many parents looking for shortcuts these days – if you can’t give your child your full attention, don’t have one.
I thought your article was fantastic. I have seen the difference between moms who sleep-trained and moms who didn’t, whether or not they worked or stayed home, and the evidence in favor of it is extremely strong. I sleep trained my little boy, without ever leaving him to cry for longer than 5 mins before soothing him, and he has slept through the night the majority of the past two years. The idea that they would sleep through distress, or be in distress and be awake and yet not cry, is absolutely ridiculous. Anytime my LO hit a growth spurt, he would begin waking up at night again until I started producing more milk, and/or supplemented with more food. As soon as he was satisfied, he returned to sleeping through the night. When he hit any milestone, or was sick or cold, he would wake up and let me know he needed me by crying. He doesn’t sleep through distress and never has. I find it ridiculous that people put their own health and safety last. I believe some of the people who have commented would rather you have gotten into a car accident on your way to work then let your child CIO for short periods of time to learn to sleep. Anyone who does it right knows that you don’t let the infant cry for hours on end! Sleep training works even if you return to soothe and touch the baby every five minutes. If someone doesn’t want to sleep train, all I do is feel sorry for them and the fact that they will be sleep deprived for the next 2 to 10 years depending on how many kids they have. I don’t berate and belittle them and tell them how messed up their children will be because they don’t know how to get themselves back to sleep. I don’t write list of all the bad things that happen physically and mentally when a person is chronically sleep deprived and wave it in their faces.To each his own, but the mom judgment needs to stop.
http://www.examiner.com/article/study-shows-babies-who-cry-it-out-remain-stressed
Please see my latest post about this study, and why it shows nothing of the kind: https://expectingscience.com/2016/04/21/the-middlemiss-study-tells-us-nothing-about-sleep-training-cry-it-out-or-infant-stress/
I think expert opinion is exactly that, opinion. It is considered the lowest form of evidence, ranked far below randomized trials and observational studies, which in this case all suggest that cry-it-out is not harmful.
Frankly your whole article is opinion. Your evidence is based on 9 journals which you have used to argue your case but do not fundamentally speak about cry it out. One of your journals is from a study on rats! 9 Journals does not an expert make or a well researched piece for that matter. The 6 professionals in the article linked above have come to the view of the detrimental disadvantages of CIO through their own thorough academic research, their own journal publications and their positions – doctors, professors etc. If you actually read the link properly you will see the wealth of knowledge all of their backgrounds hold. I’m sorry but I’ll take their expert opinion any day which is based on actual knowledge rather than an opinion piece by someone who went to University and now thinks they can debunk the damages of CIO by using only 9 journals. It’s scary when people like you do things like this and put it out on the internet. In this case may common sense prevail for those who are reading it.
I debated for a long time whether to reply to this comment, or to even post it. But I wanted to make this forum an open one, to all points of view, and I think this comment raises a really important larger question, of how to evaluate information on the internet.
Several things: Whenever I investigate a topic, whether for this blog, another forum, or just for my personal use, I tried to read a diverse set of opinions on the topic, and look closely at the sources each side cites. Are they major medical establishment positions? Are they literature reviews or single studies? Or are they based on personal knowledge, emotions, or anecdotes?
I also try very hard both to be impartial and to admit my perspective outright where I think it matters. At the same, I realize that no one is perfectly objective, especially not when it comes to parenting.
On many occasions, though, I have come to a topic thinking one thing and come around to thinking the opposite. I thought folic acid supplements were less important in early pregnancy than they are. I breastfed both my children for over a year, and was disappointed to find that the research supporting long-term benefits was so poor. If I found credible evidence that sleep training was harmful, in any way, I would say so.
All that said, I appreciate you taking the time to read my article and comment on it. We all have to make our own individual decisions when it comes to our children. And what is overwhelming clear to me is that people on both sides of this debate care deeply about doing what is right for their children.
The author’s claim that a parent’s core job is to “be strategic” is a crucial moment in this piece, revealing once again how the CIO method is a function of life in our hyper-extended, economically precarious, and capitalist culture. In the author’s eyes, the role of parent has been recast in the terms of entrepreneurship and business. This illuminates the true motivations of CIO as a cultural practice: to make the mother more economically productive and to foreclose the expression of emotion in the child to the same ends. This is very sad, and highlights the economic roots of the practice, which did not emerge until the Industrial Revolution peaked in the nineteenth century, intensifying during the twentieth century as behaviorism imposed a mechanistic frame on human emotions and relationships. Perhaps instead of thinking in th short-term, the author should talk to adults who were raised with this approach, and ask them about the years of psychological damage they have worked through as a result. Not nurturing a baby in distress causes incredible damage to the nervous system.
What I don’t understand is how a child in distress (short or long term) is learning how to connect sleep cycles. I only started looking into it and I’m tremendously confused by all the information. I don’t like the thought of crying it out at all but I am tired after 10 months. So just thinking about it as a possibility. My child goes to bed fine (well, mostly) but after a short period of initial sleep she comes every 1-2 hours. Three times in a good night, hourly in a bad night, which predominate since month 4. But just technically-how is cio helping my child to find back to sleep at 2/3/4 o’clock in the morning? It is a contradiction per se to me. How to distinguish genuine hunger from habitual/comfort feed? (We breastfeed.) How to tell my child that even after 2am the cot is still fine and there’s no need to prefer co-sleeping? What message do I give to my child by letting her cry? What about the amount of time they need to calm down after they nearly vomited due to crying? When their little lungs are shaking in spasm after they stopped crying? And how is this helping her sleep? I simply don’t understand the correlation. How is the difficulty of connecting biological sleep cycles eliminated by crying? Please enlighten me. Btw, she naps during daytime twice, 30 mins on the dot. When in the cot. Longer in the pram sometimes, or when I’m with her in bed. Can set the watch to it. Not enough for all the sleep specialists out there. But that’s how it is. No chance to put her down on her own unless she’s very, very tired. Then not so much of a problem.
Any advice/explanation very much appreciated.
i highly recommend the gentle sleep guide, it explains about sleep, our expectations and the so called sleep charts where actually made up!! after having my second son it saved my sanity. My eldest slept well for 7 wks. My youngest wakes 1-3 times at 27mths. But there is no way I’d leave him to cio. It’s tempting when I’ve not had a full nights sleep for so long, but the fact that I want him to know I’m always there regardless and that it would break my heart to hear him scream out for me, I know it is totally the wrong thing to do.
Also it’s not recommended to miss night feeds for babies under 12mths as breast milk is their main source of nutrition regardless of the time. All the best it will get easier
The Gentle Sleep Book!!
The gentle sleep book!!
Hi Ena, I’ve read The no-cry sleep solution (E. Pantley) about three times now and I still don’t understand what to do apart from feeding and picking them up when they get unsettled. I have no idea how this should help them to sleep longer either. Maybe I’m too tired, haha. About the night feeds-yes, I’m aware that they shouldn’t skip any feeds. But this as well is a very contradictory topic. The other camp says they don’t need so many feeds at this age anymore. That’s why I’m so reluctant to start sleep training.
Hi Romina, great questions. Babies and adults wake up slightly between sleep cycles. Most often, we simply fall back to sleep and do not even remember waking up. But because very young babies must learn to how to fall asleep, they often form sleep associations with however they are put to sleep or put back to sleep. Then, when they often wake up in the middle of the night and are unable to fall back asleep on their own, they want parental intervention, usually bouncing, rocking, nursing, or swinging.
The goal of sleep training is to break these associations, so that babies stop relying on them and learn to fall asleep on their own. For some babies, this can be as simple as learning how to put their binkie back in their mouth. For others, they are very reliant on their sleep association and need to learn that they can go to sleep without it. That can be frustrating for babies–they want something and are tired, and they have to learn to do without it.
But most babies will, after a couple of nights of consistent sleep training, do learn how to fall back asleep on their own. When they are distressed, because of a toothache or an upset tummy, they will still cry for you, and then you get them, soothe them, etc. The key is keeping them falling asleep on their own, and letting them practice that skill as much as possible.
The second time around, knowing the importance of falling asleep without assistance, I was very careful to put my daughter down drowsy but awake as often as possible from about 4 weeks on, picking her up and soothing her if she fussed, and then putting her back down while still awake. She did not cry; she was not distressed. I would often sing or talk her to sleep, but I tried very hard to let her drift off on her own as often as possible. She slept better earlier than my son, partly, I believe, as a result of practicing this skill from an early age.
I wish more pediatricians told parents about the importance of teaching your baby to fall asleep on their own early, unless you intend to co-sleep. Babies start forming sleep associations as early as 4-6 weeks, and then by 4 or 5 months, they can be hard to break. Most night nurses, doulas, and others with significant newborn experience tell new moms about the importance of drowsy-but-awake.
Hi Amy, Thanks for your reply. More questions – can you still speak of “bad” sleep associations when the baby might need a feed before bed but always finishes herself at some point, throwing her head back and coming off the breast, is capable of going off to sleep just by munching on her muslin, often just with dad present? The problem we’re having is that she doesn’t stay asleep for long, and her night wakings in combination with wanting a feed and also ending up in our bed at some point at night are what’s taking its toll after 10 months. Even if her feeds might only last 5 minutes, and she comes off herself, it still can happen about 5 times at night. When she’s feeling under the weather even more. We had nights where she’d come every hour.So is the need to feed itself the “bad” association? There is the “camp” (or school of thoughts if you want) out there that says that night feeds are still important for babies under 12 months and shouldn’t be skipped. And I kind of agree with that. But I also don’t think that she’s hungry or thirsty or whatever EVERY HOUR. But, and here’s the question, sorry, – How do I distinguish between a genuine hunger waking and a god knows why she’s up again-waking? Where and when do I refuse the breast? What do I do instead? She doesn’t take bottles so a water bottle is not really an option. We could try the sippy cup but she’s no great fan of that either. We haven’t tried yet. And I also don’t know how to make her stay in her cot all night. I mean, of course I could shove her in another room, refuse any night feed apart from one maybe and just sit it out. But I’m simply not sure about how this would help her in connecting her biological sleep cycles and fall back to sleep on her own without feeling abandoned and left alone all of a sudden. How do I stop her from feeding so much, waking so much, needing our bed after she was fine in her cot without messing too much with Biology and Psychology? And the state they get in when they have cried for 5 or 10 minutes! It takes another hour just to calm them down! I can’t see how that helps. Again, please enlighten me. I’m willing to listen and learn. Thank you so much in advance for your time and effort.
Hi Romina, I would agree. Your daughter does not need to feed every hour at 10 months. She can go at least 8 hours without a feed at that age, and probably longer. When I sleep trained my children, they just transitioned to monster feeds in the morning. Their weight gain did not slow down. They were happy and alert. If she is getting up every hour, no one, not you and not her, is getting enough sleep.
It sounds to me like you have some real fears about sleep training, though. And so it may not be the right approach for you, at least not yet. I would try to research some more gradual, and thus slower, approaches to weaning her off night feeds. Have your husband start putting her to bed and soothe her back to sleep, so she learns she can’t get milk. That should at least transition her hunger signals to daytime feeds, and should reduce the number of times she wakes up. If someone gave you your favorite dessert every time you woke up in the middle of the night, you might keep waking up and asking for it too.
I would also try to get her to fall asleep on her own, and to fall back asleep on her own, as much as possible. Try to put her down when she is almost but not quite asleep, pick her up if she cries, but then put her back down while still awake.
If you do ultimately decide to sleep train, I would just like to say, there’s no evidence that it’s harmful, and lots of evidence that it’s not.
She clearly has a mother who loves her, a lot. And she is going to be just fine.
Let me know how it goes.
I think your questions are totally to the point. Glad you raised them and I hope some of the CIO advocates can answer. For toddlers above 12 months I can recommend the Jay Gordon night weaning approach, though with my kids it only worked once they were a little older (14 and 18 months) and not bullet-proof. After a few nights you see which awakenings are genuinely for food, as those are the only ones that remain (with my youngest we went from waking >6 times a night to only 2 or 3), which saved my sanity. I feel reborn!
As for the duration of naps, each child is different, and even the same child can have different preferences on different days, let alone different moments in life. So, forget about the “average” child, and focus on meeting the needs of the unique one you have! <3
Hi Romina,
I tried to read the no cry sleep solution but found it of little use. Where as the The gentle Sleep Book, was both informative and reassuring. I felt the choices I made where the right ones. A lot of western parenting is based on what the Victorians did, ie cry it out and limited feeds, which we are now beginning to understand the effects its having. For me, once I accepted my sons sleep patterns and read the book life became a lot easier. The la leche league are great source of trusted information regarding Breastfeeding, i would trust them over any HCP every day. Our babies are small for such a short amount time. I know how hard sleep deprivation can be but personally for me I think CIO would be so much harder short and long term.
Oh great! I thought it’s only me who doesn’t get anything from it. I see if I can borrow the Gentle Sleep book from somewhere. That’s great, thanks so much for your advice. My guts would rather go with the gentle method.
Regardless, I hope someone from the other camp can explain to me anyway what it is they are doing abd how it supposedly works.
All these comments about cio by people who know NOTHING about cio is so frustrating to read. Those who use it understand that we begin to understand whether out babies are possibly having a nightmare, feeling sick or whatever. They communicate their needs by their cry and we read and respond accordingly. We don’t just ignore regardless of how they sound. Maybe because you just go in at every noise, you haven’t learned to evaluate that? Also yes, I truly do believe that babies whose parents are constantly encouraging them awake by coming in every single time are sleep deprived. From a mom of 2 well adjusted and incredibly well rested boys
That’s not completely accurate. Those that are using CIO are actually ignoring their child’s cry, regardless of how they sound. I have many moms on a parent group I am on that use CIO. They quote recommendations from the Happy Sleep Habits Happy Child book that promotes CIO and leaving your child to cry “for up to an hour.” Moms are talking about how their child was so distressed they were throwing up, but they continued to ignore them in order to “teach them self-soothing.”
Actually, since I used a form of CIO for my children, what I said is exactly true. It’s not black and white. There are a great many ways of using CIO, the most extreme are what you have mentioned, bit there are many modified versions that don’t have children anywhere near the point of vomiting. We listen to what they want. When I determined it was a ‘I want to party at 3am, I didn’t go in’. The longest it would go would be 5-15 minutes. You assume that it is one way but it’s not. It has many many forms.
I’m a critic of what is often called “crying it out,” but what you are describing sounds ideal: listening and responding accordingly! (I’m not sure if this has come up already, but not every medical cause of sleep problems can be ruled out at a young age. Fortunately, listening can make it possible to care for needs that haven’t been identified yet!)
I don’t see anything wrong with letting an unhappy baby express unhappiness through crying. Letting the crying run its course actually seems really healthy.
But it’s distressing when a baby seems to be desperately asking for help and not getting any. There are well-meaning parents who don’t distinguish when babies are crying (as an expression of sadness, frustration, feeling tired) and when babies are panicking. The result is that babies are left screaming and hyperventilating and shaking with visible fear (not pitching a fit, but scared and losing it). And it lasts much longer than 5 or 10 minutes, because the babies get so worked up. I guess we could say this isn’t “crying” so this isn’t “crying-it-out,” but eventually–even if it takes an hour or hours–it does produce exhaustion. So maybe I’m really a critic of “letting scared infants wear themselves out panicking until they’re too exhausted to continue.” But people do call this “crying-it-out.”
That’s where I’m coming from as a critic of the idea of “letting them cry it out.” What you describe sounds like a decent way to treat another person and also thoughtful, attentive, and attuned to individual difference. What I’m used to is a one-size-fits-all mandate to ignore noise that happens after bedtime, *especially* if the noise starts to sound frantic or lasts a long time.
I’ll just leave this here… http://evolutionaryparenting.com/stress-and-extinction-sleep-training-its-not-so-simple/
I find it interesting that the author did not reply to this comment, because I think it the article posted addresses all of her counterpoints in a very systematic, researched, and cited way. I’d really like to hear her response to it.
STTN is a developmental milestone – like walking, talking etc. If you would not force your child to walk before they are ready (there are sadly parents who try by using awful props like walkers which are a hindrance to long term development) then why try and do it with sleep? Trying to use adult sleep habits and imposing them on babies is incredibly unfair – and yes, it is selfish and purely for the benefit of the parents. If you’re not prepared to deal with the lack of sleep – maybe rethink the whole idea of having children
There is a book called The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings, that among other very interesting topics, talks about how different indigenous cultures approach infant sleep. There are cultures where babies are constantly catered to, and there are cultures where babies are essentially ignored for the first three years of life (other than being fed). Each culture ‘grows’ children into adults that fit in with that culture. I find it important to understand that there are many ways for us to teach our kids how to be functional adults in our culture and that training starts when they are infants.
Thanks for the interesting article. I’ve been enjoying getting a more science-based look at all these controversial issues. It’s not easy to realize that sometimes science does not support our beliefs, but it’s so imporant to be open minded.
I didn’t sleep train my first child and became so chronically sleep deprived and depressed I could hardly function.
I now have a second child (5 years later) and I decided to sleep train. I have 2 totally different children. The latter being so much more relaxed and happy and the other very wired and sensitive.
A mum has to do what they can to be rested and happy for her children and if that means sleep training then so be it.
Great article. I’m so sick of being made to feel inadequate and guilty for trying to get my baby to sleep.
Irrespective of the ‘evidence’ on either side of the debate, let’s hope you’re right for the sake of all the baby’s who didn’t have the choice and couldn’t explain what happens for them emotionally when they are crying alone. Is it something to train them out of, to want the comfort of knowing they are not alone to deal with feelings they can’t fully comprehend and make sense of? The fact is, no one knows what (any given) baby feels when they are crying alone. We only know that they eventually decide not to cry anymore – it seems obvious to all that they give up on the crying – the question is about why they give up and what you believe is happening in their mind. It seems to me a fact that they have very little understanding of the way the world works so can’t really know why you won’t come. It’s important to think about how you feel when you are crying, and how you would feel if a loved one heard you crying and did not respond. For me it’s that simple. If you are ok with your child going through that as a formative experience then you live with that alongside them.
The new study only tested a teeny number 43 babies. Think the word ‘strategic’ makes it sound like war. I’d say the main role of a parent is love and nurture personally, not strategy. Although I understand your view and need to justify that you let your child cry distressed, there are always studies for and against in multiple areas. Research that only tests short term and so phew in number I don’t think is as relevant as long term studies and vast numbers tested. In short parents will always want to justify their choices on both sides or arguaments. Parents will never want to accept what they did was perhaps not the best. Personally what ever method you choose it down to your instinct and life style. If you watch primates in the wild they are very nurturing. In general most animals/mammals are very attebtative to their young. My instinct personally doesn’t permit me to ignore my child crying. https://modernalternativemama.com/2016/05/24/new-cry-it-out-study-misses-the-mark/
This article raises valid points regarding the study you mentioned. Human mums are forced by life government to perhaps be strategic and choose things against instinct, there is a great deal of research on the damage of cortisol (stress hormone) and although a child needs to learn to develop resistance to stress and become stronger this is best done at correct ages where the brain can process a balance of the amygdala and frontal cortex. I would tell any mum no matter your choice don’t feel guilty for your decisions and actions as you do them believing it is best. Primates don’t have google or scientists pointing out stuff, they just follow their hearts and instincts. Perhaps too much study causes a mum to feel distressed by her choices. I wonder if any mum would even do the CIO method if the 1950s hadn’t promoted it. Or if the government permitted mums to be mums and stay at home. Modern society it’s common now mums work, play groups educate and share raising your child, its common now formula is used over breast feeding. Times change, studies change, life styles change. You are pro CIO I am not, but both of us choose what we feel is best and no mum should be made to feel bad about that. Peace.
You’re starting with a hypothesis and you want evidence to prove that its antithesis is false. Your hypothesis reflects your desire to think you did no harm to your child by letting him cry it out. But when you value a mother’s intuition more than you value a job – a privileged thing to be able to do, sure, but worth noting nonetheless – then your hypothesis becomes the opposite.
In other words, if you respect a mother’s intuition – which you likely do not, because American society does not, in any way, share, or form – then the evidence you’ll notice is NOT there is the evidence that shows that no harm is done. There’s absolutely no evidence to support that these children turn out fine. All of the anxieties and turmoils and teen crises and whatnot that your children have experienced – who’s to say that they could not have at least been partly mitigated by more nighttime soothing? You certainly cannot, especially by citing methodologically flawed studies that measure ONE hormone a full 12 hours after the crying was done. Come on now, this isn’t just patriarchal propaganda; it’s also bad science.
So, I think the question you are raising is whether we need to prove that CIO is harmful or prove that it is not. I think, based on the existing research on stress, that there is no reason to believe that it’s hameful. To date, we do not have any compelling data that it is harmful.
“Short-term stress mobilizes us for action–the classic fight-or-flight response. Adrenaline and cortisol pump through our veins; our bodies brim with energy; and mentally we become hyper-focused.” Based on this explanation of how short-term stress affects us, how does someone think short-term stress enables a baby to fall asleep? I think it’s safe to conclude that the baby experiences more than just a bout of short-term stress. I have yet to find any study that has been done well enough (i.e. at any level that we’d accept for a drug trial) to either show the ill-effects or the non-effects of sleep training. Sleep-wise, her 4.5 month old seemed to be a very normal baby at that age. I think what is unnatural and a detriment to families, is expecting both parents to be working full-time with a 4.5 month old. Our society has become so sckrewed up that we think nothing of asking a 4.5 month old (or younger) to lay in a separate bedroom, with no interaction from anyone, for 12 hours!
Would you say that controlled CIO is even less likely to “harm” baby? I think a lot of people are so unsure of what CIO even means anymore. Does that term mean putting baby to bed and not going in again until morning, no matter how much they cry? From my experience, we let our 4 month old cry for 10 minute stretches before getting comforted so he could learn to be put down for his nap and fall asleep on his own. He still wakes at night and is tended to immediately (and co-sleeps once he wakes at night). Sorry just so confused and curious!
Fabulous article! Well-written and full of evidence-based information. Thank you!!!
“Sleep training” is more accurately called “Not tending to your crying baby because you want to sleep.”
I appreciate the effort you put into justifying your point, and I’ve read your post on debunking Middlemiss’ article; however, there are a few flawed premises in your piece, if I may argue. One has been pointed out by other comments, that is that parents need to be strategic. It is a point of view, and if you share it you might endorse ignoring infants cries as a mean to an end. If you don’t share it, you’d probably also disagree on the CIO idea. The second one is comparing the stress levels based on the AAP guidelines <> Well, a 4-5 months old (or even a toddler) most likely does not perceive any stress during an act of terrorism, death of a family member (other than primary caregiver) or natural disaster, and I’m in doubt as to the stress levels for those other events. However, an person whose neocortex is as rudimentary as that of a baby can and does experience severe stress when the triggering event is one that threatens its survival and is received deep in the mammalian brain (amygdala). A baby cannot understand that you will return eventually (in the morning) as it does not have a sense of you two being two separate entities in the first place. It also has no concept of time the way we do (way into preschool years usually). Then, at a certain age there is even the separation anxiety phase (which can last for years), meaning that the unexpected and incomprehensible absence of the primary attachment figure can feel like a life-threatening menace to the child. Simply because without a caring adult, that child’s life would be under threat.
Last but not least, how can a warm and loving home allow a child to vomit from distress?
Intuitively I always knew that cry it out must be a barbarian method, Swaddling was the thing that helped me the most! Also some other tips from Susan Urban from parental-love.com. After reading her guide I believe that you need to have a “”system””, not just loose tips from blogs, that’s much easier!
I have recently been having issues with my 4-month-old boy. He has always been mostly quiet and whenever he would wake up at night, he’s just making his “eh” sounds or babbling something. No crying. I would still always attend to his needs, because I know he’s awake and would then nurse him. I have never ignored him at night, regardless of how sleep-deprived I am.
We do not co-sleep (although we tried and we would both wake each other up, which was even more detrimental to my health), so slowly we transitioned him to sleep in his own room, but I would always get up at night whenever I hear him, and would be there for him. He would always greet me with a smile, even in the middle of the night.
Lately, whether it’s the Leap 4 from Wonder Weeks, or just more of his personality coming up, he would literally reject all my efforts to put him to sleep. He would be even aggressive when I try to nurse him to sleep, or try to rock him to sleep. He would cry more and more, the more I try to be a “good all-attentive and present” parent. One time after 2+ hours of things escalating, and nothing working any more, I decided to leave the room for a few minutes, to take a breath and calm my nerves. After no more than 5 minutes of crying, he finally fell asleep. I could tell he was tired, but sadly my efforts to help him (methods which worked before), no longer worked with him. I was literally losing it, and decided that for the safety of the baby, and for my sanity’s sake, I would give him a break. It worked.
I don’t know if this is considered CIO, but in those rare moments when nothing helps, I give him a break, and always within no more than 5-10 minutes he falls asleep. Sometimes I honestly don’t know what he wants. I offer everything – comfort, food, hugs, no hugs, play time, singing, rocking, reading a story, having fun time, changing diapers, and yet he still cries. Once I leave the room, he finds a way to calm down and fall asleep.
I start to attribute this behavior to the fact that I trained him (unintentionally) to have both dependent and independent time. I would play with him, but would also let him play alone. I would sometimes help him fall asleep, but then I would also let him fall asleep on his own, when I see that he is calm (that has been the norm – he would easily fall asleep on his own without my assistance).
Either because of this unintentional training, or of his ingrained personality, he likes independence and can do without me too. He only has been crying a lot during the supposed leap 4 (if what the Wonder Weelks suggests is true).
I also believe that sometimes babies have internal tension and just like humans, they also want to cry out an emotion. For example, sometimes I also need to just cry out some sadness. Whether my husband attends to me or not, doesn’t matter to me. I just want to cry. In fact, if someone forces me to shut up, that upsets me more, and I feel some pent-up, unreleased tension inside, which can also be bad. In fact, psychology suggests that children who are never let to feel different emotions than happiness/calmness, can become neurotic and anxious later in life. True for adults as well.
Humans have a, what I like to call, a rainbow of emotions – from the positive to the negative spectrum. Babies are no different. We shouldn’t assume that they must only feel good. They should for the most part feel supported! If they want to cry, let them cry, but be supportive if you can.
Sometimes I just sit there next to by baby, as he cries, after all I tried to soothe him, and would only gently hold his hand, or sing a song, until he slowly relaxes and falls asleep. Even if he wants to cry, I guess it’s fine to let him be, but be the moral support, be there. I guess that can slowly (or not so slowly) let him see that hes’ not alone, and be still allowed to feel different emotions and be moody.
I still don’t want to ignore his nighttime needs for food. I am still not at a desperate point yet, but occasionally, if falling asleep after an eventful day is so hard for him because of unintended over-stimulation, then sometimes giving him 5-10 minutes to cry out that emotion can be helpful to both of us. I never let him cry out for more than 10 minutes without checking on his, patting him gently, talking to him calmly, giving him a hug if I have to, or just switching the mood by changing his diaper (this always helps reset his mood).
I also believe these methods are unique for every mother-child relationship. I don’t believe in hard rules. Any mother knows her baby better than any expert. Some mothers, in their attempts to cater to all their babies needs, may accidentally raise them too dependent and neurotic and always expecting someone else to help them. In their desire to be perfect parents, these moms can accidentally fail their kids. The truth is that there’s no rule!
Feel your kid, know your kid. Learn why they are crying – do they need you and stop crying when you’re there, or do they cry even more when you try to soothe them? Why would I persistently annoy my kid by sticking around, if my presence makes it even worse? It’s counter-intuitive, and I wouldn’t follow any “expert’s” advice. I would follow my own kid’s needs, even if it may seem again the logic.
My boy is still a very jolly little guy and we have lots of fun and play time together, reading stories, walking out in the sling, lots of encouragements during new activities and achievements, including an almost perfect environment in his room, so the occasional CIO for 5-10 minutes can’t hurt. I don’t believe it would. Both my husband and I are very caring and loving people, and our boy has a very peaceful home where I am sure he feels safe.
For the time being, I do my best without compromising my health much (although this parenting thing is definitely taking its toll on me health-wise), and I don’t appreciate other parents to cast blame on me for the CIO for no more than 10 minutes once a day or two, because I am sure even the most perfect mothers (according to these same “perfect” mothers) are still failing here and there. Because perfection doesn’t exist however much we try.
I daresay, the more you try to be perfect, the more you probably are going to raise either a narcissistic adult, or a neurotic one. My own mother, whom I love very much, I believe she, by trying to be perfect, in fact made me too dependent on her, to the point that I expect any partner to see me as the center of their world. Well, the real world doesn’t operate that way. My mother treated me like I was her God, so she would always put my needs before hers. That leads to me always expecting (subconsciously) that my partner does the same. And I need that, but today, at the age of 35, I know that this isn’t possible, and it’s also not healthy.
That said, my mom’s good intentions backfired to the point that I am emotionally dependent on my partner, and now I have to work on that heavily and learn to be more independent.
So, anyone casting blame on other mothers, should first see where they are wrong, and be honest that they also do something wrong here and there.
I find it extremely repulsive when one mother blames another for trying a different method with her baby.
Oh, another example – one mother posted on social media that when she was a kid, her parents would let her sleep alone. Today, as an adult she can’t sleep in the same bed with her husband (becuase of her parents’ choice when she was a baby). So, today she has kids,and always carries them with herself everywhere. I want to interject that kids are not the same. I for example, when I was a baby, I didn’t like too much physical contact. Even today I cringe if somebody accidentally or intentionally touches me. I never liked a lot of physical contact. So, what if this woman was my mother and she carried me everywhere, and I had to deal with this constant physical contact all day long? Who knows how much even more I would hate physical touch.
As a matter of fact, my own baby is perfectly fine without much physical touch as well. It even worries me that he doesn’t need my hugs as much as other babies. I still hold him and hug him but after what feels like 15 minutes he gets supper fussy and tries to set himself free of me. So I let him be on his own in his crib, where he likes to roll and play with his toys.
With that said – babies are different and there’s no hard rule for ALL babies. No such thing!!!
CIO may work for some babies, but not all. And those blaming moms, please, before blaming other parents, look into your own parenting and don’t assume you know better. Nobody knows better! Nobody will ever find the ultimate right way to be a parent! For thousands of years we’re still figuring out parenting.
Different methods work for different babies. Yet, the only consistent thing that should exist, this is Love! Love your kid, support them, be there with your moral and loving support. If you use CIO or not, your baby will feel your love! That’s all that matters!
P.S. I also don’t like the idea of leaving the kid to cry until they vomit, especially if that takes more than 30 minutes. I think there’s a limit to CIO, like a healthy balance.It’s true that babies perceive time differently. What is 30 minutes for an adult may feel like hours for the baby.
I even read that, if the mother is missing for more than 6 hours, the baby may perceive this as a loss of a dear person with all the traumatic consequences. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but surely I am not ready to put this to the test.
And finally, what the baby needs is a healthy, rested, cheerful mother! If sleep deprivation risks the mother’s health and mental state, this will endanger the baby too. Even on airplanes they say – put the mask on yourself first, and then your kid, because if you’re not conscious, then you can’t help them. This rule applies to caring for babies too. If the mother is on the brink of utter exhaustion and even risking her health, then this in no way makes her a bad parent, and neither is the baby benefiting in any way from such utter neglect of mother’s needs.
I still have yet to see the perfectly raised kid, and his perfect mother. Guess what? No such thing! We are all trying our best! Kids know that, or ultimately thye would always find little things to blame us for something. Down the drain go all your efforts to be perfect 😉
CIO method? Why not just give your baby nyquil. “My baby sleeps at least 8 hours and wakes up so calm and happy. It is not harmful because I have not yet found a study with empirical evidence proving otherwise.” Obviously /sarcasm.
But this is essentially how you are arguing your point. You cannot say a lack of evidence proves your point and also the evidence you do provide falls short by pretending to generalize to all age groups of babies. Also these studies are lacking from validity/reliability within their quantitative data. Babies from 1 day old – 1 year go through a great deal of changes. You cannot just try to jump wire their sleep schedule through doing nothing. Just because it works does not mean it is healthy or beneficial for most* babies. I understand you are trying to help parents sleep, but there are potential* long term effects to CIO methods. Babies will not cry themselves to death, they will eventually become tired and yes, fall asleep (hurray). But the process does not justify the means. I highly doubt babies, while screaming for 15 minutes, are learning how to soothe themselves during this highly stressed process. Rather they are just becoming so overly tired they give up and fall asleep much like an adult with depression. Imagine responding to an adult who just told you they “cried themselves to sleep” was healthy and if they followed this process, consequently would never suffer from sleep deprivation again.
Point of stasis: Yes both sides have flawed studies as it is almost impossible to conduct ethical short/longitudinal studies that provide quantitative data in regards to babies. Most of these studies only have qualitative data as parents never shy from expressing their “strategies” in how they raised their children.
You did it and want to believe it’s safe. That’s the justification for your piece. However YOU fundamentally (and intentionally) misunderstand the effects of uncomforted stress on the developing brain of a baby. There is plenty of evidence it is harmful and little that it is safe in reality http://evolutionaryparenting.com/mythbusting-sleep-training-claims-science-style/?unapproved=1703942&moderation-hash=6d1189a41526d58479783b07051aa4ed#comment-1703942
I was sleep trained as a baby. I have suffered from chronic insomnia as long as I can remember. My parents were loving and my upbringing was otherwise conventional but they left me to scream alone in my crib at 6 months for nearly an hour. My earliest memories of sleeping are filled with terror and of listening to the grandfather clock whirring as each hour passed. I never thought to tell anyone – I guess because I had learned from my experience as a baby that nobody would bother to help me if I did.
You may dismiss my story is merely anecdotal, but there is no reason for an otherwise loved, cared-for child of 5 to be lying awake at night until 3 in the morning. I would like to see a survey of adults who were subjected to CIO vs those who were not and to compare rates of anxiety, depression and insomnia. I think the results would be very telling.
Yes, that would be a very interesting survey. It amazes that those who use cio try to justify it. I remember watching the news about Romanian babies/ children left alone. They eventually up trying to communicate, it’s the same with cio, baby eventually gives up on their parents.
Hi wanted to chime in here as someone who was skeptical of CIO but has tried it over the last 3 nights. First of all, thank you for bringing a different perspective to this debate. A lot of what you read arguing against CIO states that you are basically forcing your child to accept the stress that no one is coming and they learn you aren’t reliable, losing hope of being comforted when they cry. Having tried CIO now I’m convinced this simply isn’t true. My son cried for about an hour night one, 15 mins night two, and 4 mins night three. Its hard to believe this relatively small amount of crying and distress would literally scar him for life and break our bond. During the day he still behaves normally and cries when he needs something. If sleep training had taught him to not expect love or support, why would he bother crying during the day by that logic?
I do think its extremely difficult for parents to leave their crying children and it does go against instinct. However, in making the choice to try this I considered, my baby cried and protested when I put him in his car seat, he didn’t want to be strapped in. Did I say oh no he hates these straps he is crying I guess I won’t strap him in or travel anywhere until he is no longer distressed by this? No I did not, I strapped him in and he adapted. Our loving bond is not shattered by that. He cried when I changed his diaper and put on clothes. Did I not change his diaper or his clothes? No I did it and now he is no longer distressed by these activities. I know the crying for sleep training is typically longer but as an overall portion of their lives it really is a drop in the bucket and there are going to be multiple times in his life he isn’t happy about something and cries but I do it because I know its best for him. My baby needs sleep just as much as I do.
Last note, a lot of people bring up other cultures or how we evolved in ancient human culture to raise children and be responsive all night. That’s all well and good, but I’m at where I’m at. I live in this country in this time and I have to survive the environment both myself and my baby are in currently, not some ideal from another culture or hundreds of years ago. I have to get up and go to work and pay the bills as we all do. Unless you are commenting from your off the grid yurt where you grow all your own food and are completely self sufficient, please stop holding moms to the unrealistic standards of other cultures or ages.
Comparing life saving equipment in a car to a completely discretionary parenting choices is quite the stretch.
As an adult who was left to cry it out as an infant, I feel like unless there are studies that track the long term impacts of these practices the science is all total bullshit. I’ve had nightly panic attacks since I was an infant. I have somatic trauma symptoms now as an adult as well as an insatiable longing to be held that I have carried with me since childhood. I have actual traumatic memories of crying desperately for help and not being answered. I had sleep breathing disorders and sleep disorders as a child. I slept on the floor of my parents room until I was sixteen because I was scared to sleep. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like science tracks what happens to the CIO babies once they become old enough to state their own feelings about their experience. My parents were excellent parents and were merely following the pediatricians advice. I don’t resent them one bit, but I do resent that these practices and very flawed studies are still being stated as “fact.”
I agree completely. I was also left to cry as a baby. As it turns out, it seems like it worked, and today I am a functional, successful adult so no trauma, right? Not really. These studies don’t last long enough so the babies can articulate how they feel. I know that today I am an adult who has lots of anxiety, can’t trust or bond easily with other people, feels disconnected from the world, feel like it is hostile, like nobody will ever be there for me, and that I need to do it all on my own because nobody cares. And this stuff is subconcious, I only realized it now after years and lots of therapy. Sure, outwardly I seem fine. But how likely it is that these deeply engrained feelings of helplessness were created exactly at that crucial stage when we are learning about how the world in which we have just arrived works? I would say very likely. Of course I can’t say for sure and many factors are involved. But this issue goes way beyond how long the baby can go without being fed or not waking up every 4 or 5 hours. Think about what it is like to feel abandoned by the beings on which your literal survival depends. Like you’re not important enough to be heard. It must be terrifying. I would never do this to a baby, I want to do better than that. Sacrifice a few months of sleep so my baby won’t be potentially scarred for life. I also resent that my parents were taught this and thought that their baby sleeping alone after a few days meant “success”.
Thank you for outlining the difference between short term stress and chronic stress! I sleep trained my first son(very successful) but for some reason I am terrified this time around. I was going back and forth on sleep training my second but after reading this, you gave me courage.ka
Glad to hear it! Wishing you all a good long night’s sleep.
The idea that we should intentionally “stress” our kiddos in this way, and that the stress may be good for them… I find to be a preposterous rationalization. We don’t apply intentional stress to any other aspect of our kids’ lives (I hope!) so why is it ok in this realm?
Strategic parenting can mean a lot of things. Every conscious parent is making decisions and trade-offs. But to not see sleep training as a by product of industrialization and working moms and a medical industry that was until recently been advising parents not to show affection to kids or even touch them because of germs (read up on the origins of sleep training) is to miss the actual source of all this: overworked parents, nuclear families, and convenience parenting.
We live in an era of convenience and these ideas about what babies “should” be doing is an artifact of modern thinking with no fundamental grounding in what’s best for babies as far as my research has uncovered.
Trying to decide how to approach sleep with my third and last child. I am not convinced CIO is appropriate for every baby.
My oldest never spontaneously fell asleep without being nursed or rocked until he was 3. He did not fall asleep in the car. For several months I could only nurse him in his sleep, because he was so distractible (even swaddled in a dark and quiet room) and would crane his head to try to see things. This meant a lot of night nursing just to get calories into him! We later learned he is not a neurotypical child.
We tried CIO with him for one night. He screamed continuously for over an hour until finally collapsing into an exhausted, disordered sleep; for the next several hours he continued to periodically cry out in his sleep. I couldn’t do that again. He is still not a great sleeper.
The first time my middle child just randomly fell asleep as a newborn, I was terrified — I thought he was having a seizure! Then I realized he was just asleep. I had never seen a baby do that. We really had no sleep issues with him but did a bit of CIO with him when he was around a year old, and he did well with it. He is neurotypical as far as we know, also a ridiculously heavy sleeper — until I put a side rail on his bed, he would roll right out without waking up.
So now my third baby is going through her first sleep regression. She has fallen asleep spontaneously as a newborn, but she also is my most active and chronically overexcited baby, constantly panting like a little puppy with her mouth and eyes wide open. I spend a lot of time settling her in football hold or wrapped in the baby carrier; she otherwise cannot stop moving her limbs enough to nurse. I don’t know if it is reasonable to expect her to settle herself.
Thoughts on CIO in neurodivergent children?
Re. my earlier comment, maybe CIO is the wrong terminology. It’s been awhile. For both children we used a method where we went to them at some regular interval to briefly reassure them.
Sleep training was invented (he literally made it up and pretended he did research) by a man in the Victorian age who knew nothing about children and it all spiralled out of control from there. There is no evidence that children NEED Training to sleep and ignoring their needs is akin to neglect.
http://www.integritycalling.com/blog/why-everything-sleep-trainers-tell-you-is-rubbish