Should babies cry themselves to sleep?

Question

My wife and I are in disagreement. She says we should close the door and let our 11 month old daughter cry herself to sleep. My approach is to pick her up, sit back in a chair and wait until she falls asleep.

What do the professionals recommend? If you can, please provide a link to a resource. (I tried to research this on American Pediatric Association website, but to no avail)

Answer 1

No, absolutely not. To the best of my knowledge, the AAP has no opinion on the question of crying (but if you look for the APA, you won't find it!!). But I am including a link to an article that may interest you (see sources section below).

Not only that, but crying does *not* teach a baby to go to sleep! Which way do you consider an effective way to fall asleep--to relax until you drift off, or to get upset, then angry, then furious, all the while screaming until you drop of sheer exhaustion for half an hour, then wake up screaming all over again? Which way do *you* prefer to fall asleep?

The first answer got the reasoning right...then drew the wrong conclusion. You *do* baby a baby. Then they outgrow babyhood and become children who do *not* want to be babies anymore!

Answer 2

Neither of you is wrong. Just remember that whatever method you use will set a pattern for the child. So if you pick up the baby and let her fall asleep on your shoulder, you may have to continue doing that for a long time. If you don't mind that, I say there is no problem with it. If you don't want to have to pick the kid up every night, then at some point you might have to ignore the crying for a few nights, and then the child will learn how to sleep on her own. There is a book by Ferber called Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems or something like that. It is the bible on this issue. It might be helpful to look at.

By the way, my wife used to get mad at me because I used to go into my daughter's room when she would wake up in the middle of the night and let her fall back asleep on my chest while I sat in an armchair. She thought it was establishing a pattern, and it was. But in retrospect it was not that long a time that my daughter needed help getting back to sleep, and I think now my wife is jealous that I had that time to bond with my daughter. My feeling is that you didn't have kids to listen to them cry. You had kids so that you could enjoy the time you spend with them.

Answer 3

NONONONONO!

Please don't let your little one cry herself to sleep.
It's NORMAL for her to need someone to rock her and comfort her to sleep.

Do you do something in order to relax to fall asleep? Most adults do.....drink a cup of tea, watch a tv program or read, etc. Babies are the same way. It's better if we help them relax so they can drift gently and peacfully off to sleep. Which skill do YOU use in your life? Getting all wound up and ticked off and passing out or doing something that you find relaxing until you are ready to go to bed?

An 11 month old still crys to communicate. Her crys need to be responded to. Babies cry to communicate – not manipulate! Babies are not meant to be independent! Think about it.....they cannot talk, walk, get their own food, use the toilet, function alone. Yet they are expected to somehow last for 8 to 10 hours without any adult contact!?!? That makes no sense at all.

There is information below for Dr. Sears and also from a Harvard Medical School study.

The Harvard study says, "Parents should recognize that having their babies cry unnecessarily harms the baby permanently. It changes the nervous system so they're sensitive to future trauma." They say that physcial contact and reassurance make children more secure as they grow.

Dr. Ferber, the doctor who popularized the "cry it out" method put out a new book last year. See the ABC News link below. "The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Ferber now says that allowing children to cry for extended periods of time was not meant to solve all sleep problems. A revised edition of "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" that will come out this spring will offer other solutions besides leaving a child alone in his or her crib. The original book has sold about 1 million copies."

Hope this helps you!

FORGOT to add these books:
Sweet Dreams by Paul Fleiss, MD
The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley - http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth/

Answer 4

My doctor always told me to try the 30 minutes at a time approach. I would let my child cry for at least 30 minutes when she was over 6 months old. I know how you feel as a parent with not wanting your child to cry, and to pick them up and just let them fall asleep on you. But believe me, we did this with our last child and she is 3 now and sleeps with us every night. That is a really hard habbit to break. The only reason that she does it, is because my husband would let her sleep on his chest when she was ill. Now we cant break her from it.

Answer 5

I let my son cry it out and within 3 days we could just lay him down and he'd fall asleep. I didn't want to make my son too dependent on me for everything. I did that at 51/2 months. He doesn't wake up in the night either! Every child is different and I'd compromise with your wife. If there's no compromising then...and you still want to do it your way then YOU hold her until she falls asleep and you see how it feels after a month of doing so...
GOOD LUCK

Answer 6

First and foremost, make sure she's not crying because she's wet, dirty, hungry, or uncomfortable etc.

Some people believe you should hold the baby and comfort her, and others agree she should cry herself to sleep.

The Ferber method is one where you let the baby cry to go to sleep. However, it doesn't call for crying for hours on end. Example, day one, you may let her cry for 5 minutes before going in to comfort her, and the next day for 10 minutes, etc.

This is a VERY brief summary; read about the Ferber method here. http://parenting.ivillage.com/baby/bsleep/0,,7fp0204j,00.html

Answer 7

At 11 months old your daughter should be falling asleep on her own. Let her cry, she cannot harm herself. You are setting the pattern for some very bad habits if you hold her every night till she falls asleep. Put her to bed, close the door and let her get used to falling asleep on her own. Sounds like she is training you.

Answer 8

In reality, “cry it out” is less a method than a philosophy, with lots of permutations. But the key and most controversial aspect of such sleep training is that babies are allowed to cry for some period of time before a parent intercedes. In the harshest version of this training, parents put little Kheydin and Kharlin in the crib at bedtime and simply leave them there, no matter how much they cry, till their morning feeding arrives.

Research out of the Centre for Community Child Health, at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Parkville, Australia, followed 326 children in the study till they were six years old and found no adverse health effects from employing less severe forms of the training. The study found babies and parents got more sleep in the short term without causing any long-term psychological damage or weakening the parent-child bond. Another study, closer to home at Temple, also suggests letting babies learn to self-soothe results in fewer night-time awakenings, less irritable children and less depression in mothers.

Someone wrote a column at Philly Mag.com last week in which the author reported on a study in which the authors link numerous modern child-rearing techniques, including crying it out, to poor outcomes. But they seem only to have found a correlation they prefer to call causation.

When infants can’t sleep, it usually means Mom and Dad aren’t getting much shut-eye either. That, in turn, can double the risk of depressive symptoms in mothers, cause strife in marriages and result in costly trips to the pediatrician.

For wiped-out parents wondering whether or not to sleep-train their restless babies, a new study in Pediatrics has some good news: strategies that let babies cry it out for limited periods while teaching them to sleep on their own can help families sleep better in the short term without causing long-term psychological damage in kids or weakening the bond between babies and parents.

The study looked at two sleep-training methods known as controlled comforting and camping out, both of which let babies cry it out for short amounts of time. Controlled comforting requires the parent to respond to their child’s cries at increasingly longer intervals to try to encourage the baby to settle down on her own. In camping out, the parent sits in a chair next to the child as he learns to fall asleep; slowly, over time, parents move the chair farther and farther away, until they are out of the room and the infant falls asleep alone.



Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/10/its-o-k-to-let-babies-cry-it-out-at-bedtime/#ixzz2h8p0BZAi

Answer 9

I dont have a link but I have advice! Ok I have a little sister and she only goes 2 me when shes tired so it means she wants 2 sleep in my arms but if she starts screaming then we put her in her room and she falls asleep!

Answer 10

Well I am not an expert and have no link but I know that you can't always baby the baby because then they will expect you to do that all the time. Sometimes babies just need to cry and eventually they will cry themselves to sleep. My son I put him in his swing and once he falls asleep I will put him in his crib they do like the rocking motion so some nights rock them and other maybe they just need to cry. I know when my son is changed feed and nothing makes him stop I let him cry himself to sleep.