that I know Simon and I are incredibly lucky with how much Adam sleeps. He’s always slept fairly well at night and he’s recently begun sleeping through from 730 or 8 to about 530 the next morning.
That being said…
I think Cry It Out sucks. I think its a stupid idea and cruel. I do not think it teaches a child to self sooth. I think it teaches a child that no one is coming to comfort them, so why bother to cry? My son? Self soothes. He takes a pacifier that he spits out automatically when he’s fully asleep. That is self soothing.
I became totally against Cry It Out when I heard a story from a mum on a board I used to frequent. This mum told the story of her (approximately) 2 year old daughter crying in the middle of the night and the mum let her cry, because that’s what you do. You let them cry. They couldn’t possibly, at 2, need you for anything in the middle of the night. Well, when she went to get her daughter the next morning the child and her cot were covered in dried vomit. Whether the child had cried so much that she’d made herself sick or had cried because she had been sick the mum didn’t know. Because she never once checked on her once she was in bed.
The story is bad enough. What’s worse is the response of the other mothers on the board. Who all told her that she had no way of knowing that her daughter had been sick and so she shouldn’t feel bad about leaving her to cry. What?!?!?! Of course she could have known. She could have taken a peak at her daughter and made sure she was okay, which she so obviously wasn’t.
Now you know one of the reasons why I don’t read at that board any more.
My next Cry It Out story is recent and I heard it long after I had made the decision to never let Adam Cry It Out.
Its Dooce’s story about Leta. Now, you have to watch the Momervision video to find this out, because Dooce doesn’t mention it in the blog post, but its not just that they let Leta cry herself to sleep at 5 months. Its that it took thirteen nights of her crying most of the night before Leta slept on the 14th night. So for almost 2 weeks, Dooce and her husband left Leta lying in her crib, crying. 13 days of it. How is that not cruel? How is that teaching the child anything but that mummy is never coming to comfort her?
I do understand sleep deprivation. Although Adam sleeps fairly well, he was still waking up at least once a night until, really, this past week. And sleep deprivation isn’t just no sleep, its no consistent sleep. Its never getting more than 3 or 4 hours in a row for day after day after day.
What I don’t understand is treating a child like that. Of ‘teaching’ a baby that mummy isn’t coming, so you’d better just shut up and go to sleep.
I try to respect other’s parenting styles, I really do. I don’t want anyone to judge me, so I try not to judge others.
But 13 days? Is entirely cruel.
And makes me wonder if that’s the real reason Dooce checked herself into the mental hospital not to long after she let Leta cry it out. I’m not saying Dooce doesn’t have Mental Health Issues, lord knows I have enough myself. I am saying that I think she set herself up for her crash. By, yes, I am going to say it, the guilt she created by torturing her daughter.
Dooce will probably never read this. She has no idea who I am.
But I’ve lost a little respect for her now.
And I’m happy for her that Margo is a better sleeper than Leta was.
Cry it out horrifies me. Do I always leap to G’s side the instant he cried? No. I have put him to bed crying and let him cry until he slept, provided that it was just a short time and it was of the cranky sort of crying and not what we always referred to as “Real tears”… and I am also always close by. Crying in the middle of the night? We -always- check on him, for just the reason you cited in your example from the board, there have been times he’s crying because of barfing, or nosebleed, or something that he needs help with.
Parenting is a fine line between vigilance and teaching self-reliance. Kids need to eventually learn that they don’t always get what they want – but that word “want” is key. I don’t believe infants ever have “wants”, and long after infancy parents need to be on the watch for “needs” versus “wants”.
I could go on and on… suffice it to say there’s a difference between teaching kids self-reliance and cruelty and parents need to figure out the difference -before- their baby screams miserably for two weeks straight.