I try not to court controversy because I don’t actually see parenting as all that controversial. A wide range of parenting decisions are totally OK and there are many approaches that can work like gangbusters. Parents all over the world are happily and lovingly caring for their children by breastfeeding, bottle-feeding, co-sleeping, crib-sleeping, baby-wearing, etc. There is no one right way, there are many right ways and without exception, I’ve found my readers reasonable, loving parents who are extremely good at figuring out the right answer for themselves.
So I stay out of the so-called Mommy Wars because I like to believe that we’re not at war. We’re all on the same team and from what I’ve seen on the Precious Little Sleep Facebook Group, we’re overwhelmingly supportive of each other in all the flavors of parenting that we’ve adopted for our unique families.
But despite the vast number of kind and thoughtful parents in the world, there are sadly, a few outliers. Parents who like to yell at people who don’t adhere to their personal philosophies. Which is their right (free speech and all that) I guess.
But the problem with the yelling is that it quickly turns into parental bullying. Telling people they’re bad parents. Shaming other parents to tears, claiming they are permanently injuring their children, calling them ignorant, heartless, selfish.
This “you’re doing it wrong” bullying often terrifies people who are struggling miserably, by telling them that they must sludge on no matter how bad it is for all involved. And as every parent who has ever felt a bit low or insecure (read: all parents) knows, getting yelled at never makes anything better.
A recent post on sleep training is a particularly harsh example of parental bullying. I would ignore it, as I’ve ignored the similar yelling articles that have come before it. But it’s getting a lot of undeserved publicity and making loving parents who I care about feel shitty.
So let’s talk about the yelling article (referred to as “Ol’ Yeller” from here on out). I want to discourage you from reading it because every time someone reads it a fairy loses its wings. However if you insist – and I strongly suggest you don’t – I’ve linked to it at the bottom of the post.
It’s Wildly Inaccurate
It starts by describing an imagined bizarro-world sleep training scenario with parents who presumably look something like this.
These parents are quoted as saying, “But we are in charge. We are the parents. He’s got to learn his place.” Do you want to know how many sleep training parents talk about their babies like this?
Exactly zero.
I have personally interacted with many thousands of families who have sleep trained their children and can say with full confidence that the fictional depiction in the Ol’ Yeller article is total bunk. Nobody is ever teaching baby to “learn his place” nor are parents cavalier about things. Parents who use sleep training (in all its various forms) are thoughtful, caring, and mindful of the how critical healthy sleep is to their child’s health.
It’s Full of Alarmist Unsubstianted Statements
Following is a selection of the many harrowing statements made in these articles:
“Due to the mechanism of self-preservation, his body shuts down his conscious self and falls into a forced sleep.”
“Over time, they learn not to signal to their caregivers as the bonds of attachment fray.”
“CIO teaches them to panic silently and detach from those whom nature intends for them to trust.”
“A growing catalogue of peer-reviewed studies clearly assert that CIO harms normal brain development and damages a child’s capacity to develop secure attachment bonds — essential to the cultivation of empathy, pro-social behavior, and future, healthy long-term relationships.”
“This leads to the “underdevelopment” of receptors for serotonin, oxytocin and endogenous opioids – chemicals essential for our experience of happiness. In particular, the neural pathways formed by oxytocin released in our infancy remain with us and continue to impact our adult physiology.”
“While it may be true that some professionals who advocate CIO are traumatized individuals, I prefer to think of them as simply misinformed.” (Thanks, I guess?)
Boy that’s a lot of very scary statements presented as fact. Essentially the message boils down to:
- CIO doesn’t teach babies to sleep, it forces them into a stress-induced fugue state.
- CIO destroys the relationship you have with your child.
- The damage has lasting and permanent consequences.
Ol’ Yeller concludes with the following statement:
“Research is clear. The school of thought regarding infant/toddler sleep known as CIO (in all of its forms) harms the most precious and innocent among us. To knowingly harm babies and children is wrong. Period. May we work for a day when CIO is looked upon like the ancient practice of Chinese foot binding is today: archaic, harmful and best relegated to the pages of history.”
What research is clear? Where is it? And how for the love of all that is good in the world can you possibly suggest that CIO is on par with foot binding? How does any reasonable reader come to such a concluding statement with any response beyond simply this?
It’s hard to step back from these inflammatory statements and not respond on a purely emotional level (although I want to, I really do). But if there is, as the author says, “A growing catalogue of peer-reviewed studies” concluding that “CIO harms normal brain development” we would all want to know about it. The article frequently alludes to research to support its claims (such as the ones I quote here), so let’s dig in.
It Misrepresents the Science
Ol’ Yeller doesn’t cite any specific research but instead makes vague references, so I’ve made my best guess as to the specific science it’s drawing upon to make its conclusions.
This article (like many others) claims this study proves that sleep training destroys parent/child bonds. But that is not what this study measures or concludes (the study is also full of flaws which are described nicely here). Researchers followed 25 infants (4-10 month olds) over a 5-day extinction sleep training program in a sleep lab, testing the mother/child cortisol levels at each day. The mothers and babies had elevated cortisol levels on day #1 but Mom’s cortisol levels decreased when the crying ceased, while the child’s cortisol levels remained elevated. I don’t want to get too far down the path of picking apart this study but it in no way demonstrates that the parent/child attachment has been damaged. A more reasonable conclusion is that having nurses (aka strangers) put an infant to sleep in the context of a sleep laboratory is stressful for infants. Also while “elevated cortisol” sounds like cause for concern, it’s not. It’s a normal and healthy response to new things (such as having a new caregiver, which in this case was a qualified lab nurse). “Elevated cortisol” does not constitute a toxic-stress response which is when a child experiences severe and chronic neglect or abuse.
Ol’ Yeller repeatedly mentions an article called Baby Bonds quoting, “According to their research, 40 percent of 14,000 children born in 2001 lack secure attachment bonds formed by “early parental care.”” However Baby Bonds is specifically about significantly underprivileged families in the UK who are at much greater risk of neglect, abuse, drug/alcohol addiction, etc. Baby Bonds cites this meta-study on attachment disorders which concludes that about 15% of children in middle-class US families have an insecure attachment, most frequently associated with drug/alcohol use, chronic maltreatment, or children with neurological disorders (e.g. autism). The logical conclusion to this research is not that cry it out causes attachment disorders, addiction does.
Ol’ Yeller also mentions a rat study looking at different rat mothering behaviors (high degree of licking vs. low degree of licking) and the impact low-licking has on the development of the rat, namely that rats that get licked more are less fearful later in life.
Now if that was is as far as you went with it you might come to the conclusion, “I had better get back to licking my little rat because I don’t want him to grow up fearful!” But bear with me with the rat licking stuff a moment longer (if I have to slog through rat research, you do too!).
The conclusion the scientists come to is not that low-licking rats are neglectful parents who are damaging their pups with chronic maltreatment, but rather that low-licking behavior is a form of adaptive programming that helps those animals thrive in their particular habitat. More simply, fearfulness is a necessary survival trait for those specific rats.
So does this science support the idea that sleep training is harmful? Nope. Is it even remotely related to sleep training? Nope again. Further, none of my readers are low-licking rats.
Ol’ Yeller makes allusions to research on attachment (more rat research? why yes thank you!) indicating that when rat parents are cuddling, nursing, and being responsive to their pups, both the parent and pup brains produce happy chemicals (or if you prefer fancy talk endogenous opioids, oxytocin, and
norepinephrine). People produce these opioids too which help give you warm fuzzy feelings when you hold your baby. The research finds that rats who are put into isolation (and thus don’t get the neural support of these opioids) end up depressed and fearful. But once again, sleep training is not remotely akin to newborn rats being placed in isolation. Parents who sleep train adore their children and attentively care for them throughout the day. These children – YOUR children – have plenty of opioids to support healthy brain development. Removing “45-minutes of bouncing on the yoga ball every night at bedtime” is not the same as putting a 2-day old rat in isolation.
Ol’ Yeller also draws upon research to imply that parents who utilize sleep training view their infants as manipulative and/or are less-fit parents due to depression or unresolved negative feelings related to their own childhood. Once again this takes research entirely unrelated to sleep training and misrepresents its conclusion. The study asked pregnant first-time mothers (meaning they had not yet given birth) to watch videotapes of infants crying and describe the crying as either manipulative or simply communicating.
Unsurprisingly, the pregnant women who had a history of depression or difficulty in emotional regulation were more likely to view infant crying as “manipulative.” So a reasonable conclusion from this study would be that people who struggle to manage their own emotions are going to have a harder time handling the negative emotions of babies. This study has absolutely nothing to say about parents who sleep train, nor does it suggest that parents who sleep train are “bad people” who view their children as “manipulative.”
TL:DR
In short, none of the research presented says what Ol’ Yeller claims it says. It doesn’t remotely substantiate the alarming and frankly ridiculous proclamations peppered throughout the article. Ol’ Yeller simply bandies about vague and misconstrued generalities from unrelated research to provide a veneer of legitimacy for what boils down to nothing more than the author’s personal opinion on the matter.
Worse, it entirely overlooks the overwhelming body of direct scientific evidence that outlines the importance sleep and sleep training. Research that maps out the significant and lasting impact of chronic sleep deprivation and the negative impact of ongoing disjointed sleep on the well-being of the family. And research showing, in test after test after test, sleep training has been found to be effective, safe, and beneficial.
(Note: Stay tuned for a follow up post discussing the body of scientific evidence on sleep and sleep training.)
The bottom line? No parent wants their child to cry, just like nobody wants their child to wake up 8 times a night, take 20 minute naps, and be miserably overtired all the time. Cry it out is definitely the last approach parents reach after all others have failed. Many people find other methods to successfully help their child learn to fall asleep independently with little or no tears.
But parents that resort to letting their child cry in order to learn how to sleep have not failed. They’ve simply come to the difficult conclusion that the range of so-called gentle methods are not working for their child and that to continue on the current path of chronic sleep deprivation is not conducive to the health of their baby or the family. For those children, sleep training is the appropriate answer.
But sleep training is not child abuse – full stop.
This has been a long pretty heavy discussion so let’s end with this little bit of happy palette cleanser.
Ol’ Yeller Articles which are not to be read (if you value fairy wings) can be found here and here.
Love this!! Thanks for writing this!
Amen! I don’t think (at least I hope) that any parent wants to have their child crying in their crib during sleep training. I had to try CIO twice (first time was a failure due to my own inconsistency). Before sleep training my husband and I were bouncing and bobbing our 17 pound baby for over 30 minutes, while the little guy wailed. Everyone was miserable (including our son). It’s not an easy decision, and I still hate the thought of those dark days of CIO, but my son sleeps so much better and can fall asleep on his own. It’s not an easy decision, but ultimately it was our last resort for us, and our son is much more rested.
Thank you again for posting a well thought out, educational, non-judgmental, factual article with humor. As a 4th time mom, I’m so over the debate and issues, especially surrounding sleep, but I can imagine how much this would have rattled me as a new mom. Sleep training sucks, but it’s like anything else you will do as your child gets older, potty training, big boy bed, learning to walk, ride a bike, handle rejection….it’s hard to see them unhappy, but that’s growth and as loving caring parents, it’s our job to do what’s best for our child’s long term growth and sleep training is definitely one of those things.
So true. I mean, I do not like to hear my kids cry. What monster does? But like it or not, that is precisely what every kid is going to do — when I refuse to buy yet another toy, deny them seconds on dessert, punish them for shoving raisins up their sister’s nose, etc., etc., etc.
But I would be a bad mom if I chose not to do what was best for them just so that they would never have to cry (I think we’ve probably all seen the terrible results of a parent who has given in to their children too often just to appease them). Sleep was the best thing for my son, and CIO gave that to him. And though he did cry during CIO, he cries for longer when I won’t let him play with the remote.
Well done.
We worked hard to set up good sleep routines, etc. in order avoid CIO with our daughter, and the Ol’ Yellar articles STILL made me feel like crap for the minimal amount of crying that was/is required in our house to get everyone some sleep. Thanks for posting this.
I think people aren’t educated on CIO or sleep training enough. When most people hear it, they think of leaving a baby alone for hours at a time crying by itself. They also think it’s for newborns and not 6+ month babies. I was never against CIO, but I was so glad to have found this site to make me feel better about what I was doing. It was such a relief to read that I didn’t have to sleep train until 6 months and I could nurse my baby to sleep until then. I have followed your advice since day one, and yes I may have an unusually “good” baby, but everything I’ve tried here has worked. He has STTN since 5 months and puts himself to sleep without crying within MINUTES now. So, anyone that tells me sleep training is abuse is out of their mind. How is helping and promoting good sleep abuse? It’s sleep TRAINING i.e. TEACHING. (I know, I’m preaching to the choir). I recently met a man with a son that didn’t STTN until three years. THREE!! To that, I say no thank you. And to you, Alexis, I say thank heavens for you and your site. /rant.
With the support of your website behind us, my husband and I sleep-trained our 11-month old whose previous full-night sleeps had been disrupted when we moved. The first two nights were the hardest, but by the third night we were barely up. We coupled this with a consistent bedtime and before-bed routine and we now enjoy a child who can put himself to sleep and STAYS asleep until (the acceptable part of) morning.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for writing this! I am so tired of reading commentary on how parents are “damaging” their kids by not following a specific parental edict. We can make different choices – and everything will still be okay.
I’d like to add, that as a scientist, research is so often misconstrued. Each study is a tiny piece of evidence building towards a larger body of knowledge – and needs to be interpreted in that light. Rarely is a single study definitive. Further, the misinterpretation of scientific research is often worsened by scientists’ inability to talk about their work in digestible sound bites.
I just saw the article was written in Philadelphia. I’m now ashamed that I lived there and am associated with that person!
Thank you so much for this! My daughter and son in law were sure they wouldn’t have the fortitude to carry through with CIO, so my husband and I moved in for the first few nights. She was six months old. Rather than the hysterics we all expected, there was intermittent crying and complaining the first night (and no hysterics, no vomiting, etc.) 20 minutes the second, just a bit of fussing the third and….peace and quiet after that. She sometimes cries for a few minutes, but doesn’t expect us to come. She comforts herself. I have a log called CIO NIGHT ONE, which I could send you, if you’re interested. She basically sleeps 12 hours a night from then on, with some interruptions when sick, when dragged from one home to another, etc. And now she’s 21 months.
Alexis, once again I am so blessed by all the time and effort you pour into each post (and on top of that your loving attention to your Fb community, and there are a lot of us!) on top again of being a mommy, etc. My husband is writing a book and I know from personal experience (being a sometime writer’s-widow) how time and energy consuming it is. So thank you thank you thank you for your gift of sanity saving posts. This one was great, as usual, and I’m gonna save it so I can have it ready if/when someone posts the Ol Yeller on my FB feed. Keep up the outstanding work (please please please…PLEASE!)
I had read this “Ol’ yeller” article previously and I definitely realized how ridiculous some of it was (those fictional parents? please!). But, I still feel like some of those statements, while maybe there isn’t a solid study to back them up, make just as much sense as the claims those who are pro-CIO make (because again, I haven’t seen any good studies). And I am not necessarily for or against CIO; I really struggle with it.
For instance, in this article, it states that the elevated cortisol levels could be because nurses unknown to the infants were involved, but we don’t know that is the case. The moms weren’t bothered by having random strangers around enough to have elevated levels. Why would that be the only thing affecting the infants? Why can’t it be that they were upset to be crying and not be comforted?
I also just struggle with the logic of CIO. It’s a baby, right? A small child who doesn’t understand everything we do. Why, logically, would “locking” the child in the bedroom and not returning until morning “teach” the child to sleep? I know the child would stop crying because it wouldn’t get him anywhere, and he’d eventually exhaust himself. And, he could learn not to cry because it does no good. But, no one can explain to me how that is “teaching” self-soothing. If you locked me in a trunk I don’t think I would teach myself to get over my fear of tight spaces. If I put my kid in a bathroom with a potty for long enough would he be potty trained? That would not work because there is a missing piece where I teach the child to use the potty by demonstration, rewards, etc. Where is the “teaching” aspect of teaching the child to sleep by leaving them in the crib?
I completely get how this is a heated subject and I’m not trying to bash CIO at all, I just honestly don’t know what to believe. Maybe one day I will have to try it, but I just still have these questions which I feel aren’t really answered anywhere. I just don’t know how we can prove CIO does what it is said to do.
Lacey, sleep training is a bit different than potty training. Potty training requires ACTUAL TEACHING of a child who is old enough to talk with you and understand. If anyone HAS locked their child in the bathroom and waited for the pee and poop to magically land in the right places, I’d wonder what special brand of crack they’re smoking.
The difference here is that babies (and parents) form all kinds of habits and coping mechanisms to get through this stage. It’s pure survival mode sometimes. It certainly was with my son. I was hallucinating because I was so sleep deprived. That was definitely not safe for me as a mother, and absolutely not safe for him as my child. So when we hit the 5.5 month mark and all our usual coping mechanisms no longer worked, something had to change. For his health and for ours.
We started with removing the pacifier, because that was the least of all the evils. And let me tell you, it was grueling. But we just could not physically or mentally keep up with putting it back in his mouth every 30 minutes at night. Our son was a suck-soother from birth, and it was the hardest thing we ever did to put him in bed without his paci those first few nights. I was also not going to replace the paci with myself, since that would guarantee I would never sleep again.
So what’s left for an exhausted, hallucinating parent to do but take it away? The result was a child AND his parents who slept so much better, could function in order to take care of said child better, and a child who was HAPPIER for the better sleep he got. We were all happier once it was done.
It’s kind of like removing a bandaid. You know it has to be done. You can decide to go slowly or quickly, but the thing HAS TO come off. Sometimes sleep training is like that. But we never cavalierly sat on the couch pontificating on how our child has to learn his place. We sat in the hall, I was in tears, and we questioned whether this was best for our child. But when we ALL were sleeping at night because of that hard work? Absolutely worth it.
I now have a happy, healthy, securely attached, deeply loved 2.5 year old boy who sleeps like a champ. He takes good naps, he sleeps 12 hours solidly at night (barring sickness or teeth, of course, but CIO doesn’t apply to those), and we all are very happy.
It was a method of last resort, but it worked where nothing else did. We don’t regret it at all. I hope that helps some.
Lacey these are great questions and certainly every parent considering sleep training has similar thoughts. Luckily there are good answers to them! Good evidence exists that sleep training is not harmful to kids and that it does exactly what it is designed to do, which is change the baby’s sleep associations to remove the things that require parental help all night long. Leaving the baby until morning isn’t how it works at all! Generally parents just need to make these changes AT BEDTIME, and that’s all it takes to get on the road to better sleep for all. There’s tons on this blog that will help you understand the why and how if you are interested!
With respect to elevated cortisol levels and self-soothing, one thing that can cause elevated cortisol levels is sleep deprivation. Also, I’m not convinced babies crying to sleep are crying because they are scared or panicked. Sometimes I think they are crying because they are tired but don’t know how to go to sleep. You can see this with toddlers who melt down when they’ve skipped a nap. When babies and toddlers (and me) are tired, they feel yucky, so they cry. I’m not at all convinced it’s related to panic or fear.
Ashby, thanks for making that sleep deprivation elevates cortisol point – that’s what really convinced me, personally, that it can be an equally valid choice to sleep train, when I was reading the Ol’ Yeller articles and crying from sleep-deprivation eye burn and hallucinations.
don’t know if this is all stuff you’ve heard before, but here’s my take: there are all kinds of things that babies cry about and you as the parent are responsible for “teaching” them how to go through life. the “pacifier shuffle” does not help the baby in the long run, just as giving a baby candy at every meal is bad for them — they like it but it’s not good for them. “sleep training” is not really supposed to be about letting a baby cry all night long. it’s about working toward putting your baby down and teaching them to fall asleep on their own. you work toward that goal for 6 months but if you didn’t follow Alexis’s advice from age 3 months on putting down sleepy but awake 😉 you’ve found yourself with a baby who absolutely won’t fall asleep without immense parental effort. i imagine there’s a considerable stress level for a person who grew up not being able to fall asleep without some major crutch. put them in a new situation, and what do you think there brain will experience? finally, we have to also always balance what’s good for the baby with what’s good for the parents — this isn’t about letting your baby cry till they pass out so the parents can party, it’s about the parent feeling that they are delivering tools of self-soothing to their baby so the parents can get the break they need to best care for their little ones.
Hi Lacey,
I think those are good questions, and it’s good to ask them. Alexis can answer them a lot better than I can, but I wanted to address quickly just one point, concerning cortisol levels and stress, because I was surprised Alexis herself didn’t say something that she has previously said about this point. It may well be that children who go through CIO are stressed even when no strangers are involved (although it’s reasonable to expect them to be *more* stressed when strangers are involved). In fact, they obviously are: they are crying, and that’s a symptom of stress. But one has to keep in mind that there is not just short-term but also long-term stress: the stress caused by fatigue and frustration and sleep-deprivation that many parents and children experience, and that generally lead parents to try CIO. My child was so much more stressed and less happy before we sleep-trained her (with a combination of CIO and other techniques), and so were we (the parents). So that’s worth keeping in mind when we think of stress. I’ll let Alexis or others handle the question concerning teaching (but Alexis has many posts about this). My take would be to highlight the differences between babies and older children, and how “teaching” takes a very different meaning, but again, I’ll let others speak to that.
In re your locked trunk scenario… Actually, it WOULD teach you to get over your fear of tight spaces. That’s the foundation of exposure therapy. Google it. I went through it myself actually. (I wasn’t locked in a trunk, it was something else, but you get the idea.) Exposure therapy and EMDR therapy both work this way.
However, that’s not really how CIO works, so it’s not relevant. I just wanted to show you another side to the logic since that seems to speak to you.
A baby in the crib who is upset and afraid doesn’t know the parent isn’t coming back into the room because they want him to be able to sleep well, right? I just don’t understand how we know that extinction CIO teaches the child to “self soothe”? That’s really my question, I guess. So many people have told me it’s important to teach them to “self-soothe.” But, why does leaving them to cry until they pass out do that, or how does it do that, or how will you know they have learned to self-soothe from this?
My child, I think, is still too young for CIO training. (He is 5 months and was 5 weeks premature). One night simply because I was delayed in getting to him, he had woken shortly after being put to bed and left to cry for probably 15 minutes. When I finally got to him, he was drenched in sweat and almost gagging he was crying so hard. That just doesn’t seem healthy to me, so I am trying to imagine purposefully leaving him in that state one day if I started CIO. And while I would surely believe he would eventually stop crying and pass out if only due to sheer exhaustion, is that “self soothing”? Wouldn’t he wake up again and still be upset? How do we know CIO doesn’t just teach them to not cry because it’s pointless, not because they are some how soothed? I know other CIO articles have mentioned how babies in orphanages don’t cry because no one has attended to them (basically, CIO, b/c there aren’t enough workers to tend to them). Well, they don’t just not cry at bedtime.. they don’t cry for dirty diapers, to eat, anything. That suggests to me they are just learning that crying is futile, not to self-soothe themselves out of every state of need.
Lacey, I have the same concerns and questions. I feel like I could have written this! I have nothing against CIO,I just haven’t used for my children (a 4 yr old and 7 month old). I do take a issue with something, though – it’s sort of the opposite of people saying, “CIO RUINS YOUR BABIES!!!1!!” – the sleep books telling me if I DON’T do CIO, my baby is missing out on sleep. And maybe they’d argue, “Science says waking up 3 times a night and needing help falling back asleep needs to be fixed,” but so far I can’t bring myself to do CIO for the same reasons you mentioned.
Lacey and Ashley,
I totally get your concerns and trying CIO was a last ditch effort for us, but I think there is a huge difference between a baby who at 7 months is still waking up 3 times a night for feedings and a baby like mine who was up every hour (literally) all night long, wanting to nurse to soothe back to sleep. I believe she had trained/conditioned herself to wake up that frequently and wasn’t actually needing to nurse that often. So we gradually implemented CIO. First week I went in every time she cried but only nursed every other time, and the off times I would check her diaper, give her the pacifier, hold her a minute and put her back down. She would cry but typically not for more than 5-10 minutes or so, and then fall back asleep, then she stopped waking every hour and now it was every other hour. So we did the same again, nursing every other time, and so on. We did the graduated CIO at night, where we would let her cry 5 minutes, then go in and soothe, then give her 10 minutes, go back and soothe, etc.We never had to go more than 15 minutes. She learned that she would be attended to, just not immediately upon crying. She began to learn to put herself to sleep (not by crying her lungs out until exhaustion, but by finding her pacifier, rolling around in her crib, “talking to herself”, etc.). It was a gradual process. I don’t think Alexis would condone letting your baby just wail and shriek for hours on end until they pass out from exhaustion, but suggests graduated CIO. I truly believe the process is more traumatizing for parents than the baby. However, if my baby started crying hysterically, then I would go to her before the 5, 10, 15 minutes were up. This method might not be appropriate for everyone, and some babies are naturally great sleepers and great self-soothers. Mine was not. She is VERY personable and wants people and attention ALL the time, which I think spills over into bedtime. It’s not an easy decision and there will always be research that both proves and disproves almost every single thing we do as parents. For all the great things that “research” has accomplished, I think it also has paralyzed us in so many ways. Use your instincts, but also know that so many “parenting” choices make us feel uncomfortable because we are in the process of shaping human beings. Discipline is hard because we love our little ones and don’t want to make them feel bad, but discipline is necessary. Allowing our kids to explore their world knowing that they might fall down and get hurt is uncomfortable because we hurt when they hurt, but that is how they learn boundaries… Not everything we do as parents make us feel good, but that is precisely why parenting isn’t easy. I think the best we can do is follow our gut instincts and don’t begrudge other parents for following theirs.
I actually read the cortisol study before I even found TT page. I found it interesting just how little was discovered with the research. The babies didn’t have elevated levels after CIO, they just had the *same* higher levels they had the first day when they were protesting louder. It was only over 5 days, with strangers, in strange beds, with a totally different routine, and there was no control group of babies who were rocked/bounced to sleep.
A couple months after sleep training, we traveled out of state for 6 days. Every time my son woke up in the strange crib he flipped out sometime in the middle of the night. We bed shared after each time because we didn’t want to wake the entire hotel, and I promise you his cortisol would have been much more elevated than it is at home. For one thing, at home he rarely wakes up in the middle of the night anymore and when he does he settles right back down.
For many babies, strange environments are scary by themselves. And “sleep training” is not so much teaching the baby as it is getting out of their way. I also don’t think anyone on this site would say you HAVE to do this, or that this is the one true answer for all babies. The only thing you have to do is what works best for your family, with the baby’s quality of sleep being the primary factor to consider.
Well babies with colic cry at least 2-3 hours without stopping. So i wonder why babied with colic turs out healty babies?
The increase in cortisol has been present in your baby since inuteral! Every time as a pregnant woman you were under ANY stress your baby was bathed in cortisol! I mean every time…if you were anxious waiting for test results, you had a death in the family, financial or employment issues, ANY issues! I can bet you experienced stress especially during delivery! No pregnant mother goes the entire pregnancy without stress! I’m not trying to scare you but if elevated cortisol levels got you thinking than please know all the facts on cortisol! That is why some mom’s who have traumatic pregnancies experience some of those issues talked about in ol yeller with their infants and children as they grow! It wasn’t because normal stressed moms used cio! You can look at the research on cortisol levels in pregnant moms who experience traumatic experiences (negative stressors)and how it effects infants using google scholar! If you would get pregnant again would you have a guilt attack and feel like a bad mom everytime you were stressed because you were bathing your baby in cortisol because you were stressed out? I am only trying to guide you in helping you understand cortisol also the mother you mentioned whose cortisol levels went down have the ability to meet and learn the nurse caring for her baby had good intentions the baby lacks that capacity! All my babies cried even at grandma until they learned she was a positive presence im sure even it that case their cortisol levels rose! I hope this helps in your understanding!
Lacey, I couldn’t have worded this better myself. I am not for or against, I’m somewhere inbetween. I don’t think this is a black and white issue, nor does it work for every baby. I resorted to it recently for my 15 month old after nothing else was working and I felt terrible everytime and it got me nowhere. Maybe I wasn’t consistent enough, maybe he is too old, maybe he is too stubborn, or maybe this is not the way it’s supposed to be. He might technically be a toddler but he is still a baby to me, a baby who needs to be coddled, to feel warmth while he’s sleeping, and to not feel like he’s being abandoned. I understand abandonment is most often never the intention, but from my perspective, that is how the baby feels. It’s such a western way to think…to expect them to be independent from the get go. Don’t you like sleeping next to someone? Don’t you like to feel the warmth of your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife? Then why after 9 months in the womb, do we expect them to be great sleepers on their own? Before this gets heated, I understand all babies are different and it may work easier on some than others, I don’t think a mom who use this are terrible or cold, I just think this technique should be used after exhausting other options first. You are going to be stressed and tired as a new mom, that’s part of the deal… eventually you WILL sleep and they will sleep. I especially don’t believe this should be used on a baby younger than 6 months unless absolutely every other thing has been tried. They could be colicky or it could be the fact that the first three months are called the fourth trimester…. Babies just want to be close to their mommas! Obviously if this has worked for you, this was not intended to point fingers. I just hope a new mom might consider the fact that it doesn’t have to be easy, and again…this will end…they grow up so quickly!
Awesome post. Thanks for all the hard work you put into this research Alexis
You are so much more level headed about subjects like this than I am 🙂 I love your calm, funny, intelligent writing. You are a great writer. Thanks for sharing your research and conclusions!!!
THANK YOU!
I think many parents don’t realize two things.
First, children change over time. Babies grow and develop very rapidly over their first year. Sleep training is not a one-and-done deal. It is a process that evolves as baby grows. What works for a few months may not work the next. There are interruptions to consider, like teething, travel, growth spurts, illness. We should have mercy on our little babes and help them where we can. Our daughter has been weaned from the pacifier before, but uses it again. She has been put to sleep awake and allowed to fuss for 10 minutes before, but I have been rocking her to sleep lately. We’ve been doing works at the time, based on her needs at that time. Our daughter will very likely not go off to college needing a pacifier and to be rocked!
Secondly, most parents highly underestimate the cognitive ability of a young baby. Babies can learn so much more than we tend to believe! Our daughter has known the concept of “no” to mean “don’t touch” since she was able to grab with a purpose (about 4 months old)! Most of my family/friends were amazed! At around 6 months old, I began *teaching* her to go to sleep. How? Two steps: first, “lay down” meaning to keep her head on the mattress; second, to “leave it alone” meaning to not play with her pacifier. A baby that is sufficiently tired with a satisfied tummy, who keeps his head on the mattress and has nothing to busy his hands, WILL go to sleep. Usually within 3-5 minutes. If still not asleep, then I would consider baby is not tired enough, get her up to play more, and try later.
The real gist is that you CAN *teach* a baby, even a young one, to do all the necessary steps to fall asleep (consider what an adult may do to help him drift off). Babies are capable of being lovingly trained and guided in all areas, including sleep.
Parents just don’t seem to realize this… which probably also contributes to the “terrible two’s” (a child who has been in training from an early age will hit this developmental boundary-testing closer to age 1 and be over the hump by 2, usually), and the widespread lack of respect among children today.
My fifty cents, anyway.
Thank you thank you!! I haven’t even read the ol yeller article and I’m not sure I will but you’re website became my bible when my first was little and I was trying to get her to sleep!! She is now the best sleeping child I know and I couldn’t thank you enough. I was back here again just a few weeks ago as my second is now 5.5mo. Once again you’re webiste has been so so pivotal in beginning the sleep training process for #2 who has already learned how to put himself to sleep! I am so thankful your website exists and I refer many a pregnant and sleep deprived moms here 🙂 I appreciate this safe haven!
I read the article (sorry fairies!) and even read a lot of reader comments. For me, a large thing that the readers (anti-CIOs) don’t seem to get is that we (or I) am not choosing between rocking my poor son to sleep for five minutes or having him cry-it-out for an hour. We are now at the point where getting him to sleep through rocking and nursing takes about an hour (sometimes longer) and then he sleeps for 45 minutes. And this goes on all night. I’ve had him checked out by the pediatrician and there is nothing wrong with him. He is 90-100% on the scales. The pediatrician acknowledges that my son simply has a dependency on using my boob to fall asleep and stay asleep. No way around it. For the last six months I’ve tried everything I can think of to break this dependency, and it doesn’t work. Having dad (when dad is home from the fire station) deal with night wakings causes hysterical crying. I’ve even tried co-sleeping, but he needs the combination of rocking and nursing. And my son, though he still smiles and interacts lovingly with us during the day, you can tell is glazed and miserably tired.
If it was simply a matter of rocking him to sleep at night for minutes, or even four times throughout the night, then it wouldn’t be an issue for me. But my six month old and I are on average getting about four-five hours of broken sleep which is not healthy for him.
The ironic thing is that I used to be in the WIO (wait it out) camp. That’s because my first son was an easy sleeper. I now understand (somewhat bitterly) how CIO in some cases can seem like the more humane choice than continuing the course of “helping” the baby to sleep through rocking, nursing, etc.
I think you are spot on. I’d have no problem rocking a child to sleep for five minutes for years. But many folks are in the position where bedtime takes hours. And when someone us up so much in the night that they are hallucinating, it’s not really humane to expect them to just wait that out for months or maybe even a few years.
The gift of nighttime sleep, is truly a GIFT.
WOW. so eloquent, so well-reasoned. I can’t imagine being able to put together this coherent response the way you did! my usual response is something like “my babies seem well-adjusted and seem to love me, sooo…” I want to add this dimension that I know people who refused to let their babies cry at bedtime. But believe me their babies cried to hysteria at all sorts of other times. I’d like to see a study comparing stress levels of crying at bedtime and crying because…. no candy, can’t get shoes on, found a spot on their shirt, etc. And i know people who didn’t want to sleep train their babies and they still sleep with their kids who range up to age 10. and these kids cry and sob and say they’re scared when asked to sleep in their own beds. So where are the long-term studies of kids who are petrified of being alone because they were never granted the gift of learning how to COPE? (does that sound weird? that i think of self-soothing as a tool for life?)
Great points!! Crying is communication for babies- in all its forms. Sure they aren’t happy that Mum and Dad have said its bedtime when you first start out, but they are also not happy when bath time is over, over Daddy leaves for work, when candy is limited to one piece. I always said to myself that I would sleep train young as I couldn’t imagine trying to NEGOTIATE with a 2/3/4yr old who could get out of bed and walk out of their room. A 10yr old who won’t sleep on their own sounds like hell to me.
Nailed it.
Thank you for this fab article! X
thank you for writing this! I did read the other said article (sorry fairies this was before the wing losing information came to light) and after reading it I felt like I had lost my wings. My husband and I decided to “sleep train” our son and for us and him it worked, we now have a healthy beautiful bright and happy 3yr old who loves us both very much and who also loves his bedtime! Every parent has a choice and I hate feeling like I have done something wrong everytime a facebook friend posts more and more articles on how I have ruined my connection with my son because of my parenting choices when they have made different choices, yet (and I will say this ) they also regularly post about how often their child wakes and how little sleep they are both getting…. Hmmm …..
I don’t have the answer as to what the situation is. all I know is that:
Someone I know whose mother was depressed when he was a baby cannot be intimate with women because he doesn’t get warm fuzzy feelings (is there a link to nervous system/cortisol/hormones?) around women, he only feels resentment. He suffers night terrors to this day. His mother left him to cry though I don’t know when from, think from the start.
I cosleep and breast feed my 1 year old because I don’t want to run the risk but ultimately I don’t really know and I don’t judge others who choose whatever they think is best for them and their baby. Are there some people more or less sensitive? I don’t know.
I am a trained counsellor and heard of a case where a client recalls being left crying in their cot and suffers low self esteem, they felt regularly abandoned throughout their life seemingly without logical rationale for feeling this way.
I don’t have the answer as to what the situation is. all I know is that:
Someone I know whose mother was depressed when he was a baby cannot be intimate with women because he doesn’t get warm fuzzy feelings (is there a link to nervous system/cortisol/hormones?) around women, he only feels resentment. He suffers night terrors to this day. His mother left him to cry though I don’t know when from, think from the start.
I hope you will accept my choice 🙂 I cosleep and breast feed my 1 year old because I don’t want to run the potential risk on relational issues for my children but ultimately I don’t really know and I don’t judge others who choose whatever they think is best for them and their baby. Are there some people more or less sensitive? I don’t know.
I am a trained counsellor and heard of a client who actually gets flashbacks of being left crying in their cot and suffers low self esteem, they felt regularly abandoned throughout their life seemingly without logical rationale for feeling this way. Saying that if Mum is depressed and sleep deprived maybe controlled sleep methods are preferable for Mum?i don’t know.
It sounds to me like there was a lot of long term abandonment going on with both of those sad stories you mention. That said, no one on this site is likely to ever criticise you for cosleeping! If it’s working well for your family, that is wonderful. I myself intended to cosleep with my kiddo but he had other ideas starting around 6 months.
Sad story, bit if the mother had serious emotional and mental health problems perhaps that had more to do with it. In a loving home where parents are properly doing CIO for the SPECIFIC reason of letting the child figure out how to fall asleep on their own (not crying ALL night). I can’t see how 3-4 days of 45 minute crying could cause damage and intimacy issues. Apples and Oranges.
I would add that parents who CIO do respond to nighttime NEEDS, whereas a depressed or mentally ill mum might not.
As a CIO extinction mum myself, I can say with confidence that when my son needs me at night, I’m there. If he’s just crying because he doesn’t want to sleep (and you do learn to tell the difference), I usually don’t go to him.
Yet another wonderful article resource for me to send to people who feel the need to “educate” me on the dangers of CIO.
I shout our success from the rooftops, and enjoy my opportunity to have a beautiful 11 hour sleep every single night – which has been going on since my LO was 10 weeks old (we didn’t wait until 6 months as many others on this website did due to my excessive PND)
Love putting my 18 month old to bed as he does the rounds saying “Ni Ni” to everyone and then snuggles down into his blankets.
Amen to that x
Thank you for this & thank you for your website. My baby has never been a great sleeper, but things had detiorated so drastically that at 7.5 months he was waking up every 30 minutes. Co-sleeping wasn’t working as he nursed & flipped & flopped all night. I was miserable but also convinced we couldn’t handle CIO but it basically worked after 1 night! It’s now 6 or 7 weeks later & I feel like a human again & my baby seems happier as well. We are still working on getting him to sleep through thr night – he wakes up once or twice a night to nurse, but atleast I now feel like hopeful that we will eventually get there!
THANK YOU! I’m listening to my son wail right now as we sleep train. It’s so hard but we so need the sleep, and this article is coming at just the right time.
As with any issue to do with parenting, it is greatly divided. This article was somewhat distasteful in the execution of their opinion but the story that was used was pretty appalling. And if it was true or not, I consider letting a child cry so much that they throw up and than let them fester in it,child abuse. I can see that being damaging to the bond even if on the subconscious level. But I don’t think lumping all methods of sleep training into the category of abuse. Every family is different. My beliefs are that babies will learn in their own time, that works for us. But I know with most people’s busy lifestyles waiting for it to happen on its own is out of the question. And that’s fine.
Thank you for this very well written and thought out article! I am looking forward to the other one!
My opinion about this particular topic:
(I am a pediatrician. My husband is a pediatrician. My area of expertise in recent years is children in foster care.)
CIO is not abuse. Period.
My [long] personal story, with CIO: (not as related to the topic at hand, so feel free not to read further)…
I practiced pediatric medicine for 7 years before having my first child at age 35. Being a pediatrician did not really prepare me for motherhood. (Other than knowing all the scary things that can go wrong, of course!) I think motherhood HAS made me a better pediatrician.
Against my better judgement (and my own advice to countless other parents), I co-slept with my daughter from the start, out of desperation, after going more than 96 hours without sleep (a combination of post-partum anxiety, low milk supply, my own history of chronic insomnia, and a baby who cried whenever put down). She slept attached to the breast all night every night for a year and a half. We went through so many variations of sleep arrangements/attempts to change that it seems ridiculous now: swing, king size master bed, floor in master bedroom, mattress on floor in master bedroom, mattress on floor in nursery, arms reach co-sleeper, sidecar crib, mattresses pushed together, I’m sure I’m forgetting some. As long as she had me close (and free reign to nurse) she seemed to sleep fine. I did not. I was a mess the entire year and a half.
My fears about making mistakes at work because I wasn’t getting sufficient sleep were overwhelming. I was depressed and miserable (despite antidepressants and counseling). I argued with my husband all the time. (Often about sleep training). We were complete wusses when it came to letting our daughter cry.
I don’t know exactly why, but at some point, it did dawn on me that my daughter’s sleep was getting worse. She would sit up and cry at every natural arousal from sleep, expecting me to reach over and lay her back down to nurse. She would toss and turn or get up and wander, asking for milk or a snack, or climb in bed with Daddy (we were in a separate room from him by then) multiple times every night.
Starting when my daughter was about 8 months old, I had read every piece of sleep literature I could find. (Between working and desperately trying to catch up on sleep, it took a long time to read enough to convince me to CIO). I had made unsuccessful attempts at No-cry sleep solutions, 5 S’s, Healthy sleep habits,… You name it. But could never bring myself to ‘Cry it out’, because “I just couldn’t do it.”
When my daughter was 20 months old, still nursing for comfort all night long (and I was 4 months pregnant), I desperately begged my mother to “jump start” sleep training for me during her visit over Christmas. Mom would be in town just 3 nights, but I had to break the cycle. On Christmas Eve, my husband and I went to a hotel. The third night, my husband stayed home and participated in the serial reassurances with my mom. It went amazingly well. Maximum crying duration even from the first night was under 30 minutes. “She must’ve been ready,” we told ourselves.
But she became dependent on daddy patting her, and within a week, crying started escalating in duration, for up to two hours with each sleep arousal. At the two week mark we decided to try full extinction (per Troublesome Tots advice). New video monitor and everything. Almost immediate improvement. Seemed much better for a week, then MONKEY WRENCH!!! Long weekend out of town over MLK holiday.
Our consistency faltered. We spent a few nights co-sleeping again. When we got home, we tried starting over but also started disagreeing again about how to do this sleep training thing and started sabotaging ourselves. We doubted success, because it should’ve been over and done with by now, right? But we kept at it until another MONKEY WRENCH!!! She climbed out of her crib.
After three terrible nights involving roughly three to five hours of sleep per night, the kId in tears, me in tears, middle of the night arguments, and my husband once again sleeping in a separate room, I read a new (I think) blog Alexis had written about toddlers and sleep and Ferber (the one book I had avoided due to misperception). I ordered Dr. Ferber’s book on my iPad then and there.
And we started over. This time I kept extremely detailed logs. We used a gate at the door and converted to toddler bed. We followed a schedule of when to offer reassurances down to the second. We got an “ok to wake” owl and stoplight clock/nightlight that turns green at 6:15am.
It worked. There were some rough nights (when I had a sleep study performed on me and couldn’t be part of the normal bedtime routine, when kid started getting a cold, and an extinction burst?), but within 2 weeks there were minimal tears (less than 60 seconds) and she sleeps an average of 12 hours (10 during the night, 2 hour nap).
And thank goodness. Because I recently caught Infectious Mono (EBV), and combined with pregnancy (now 6+ months), work stress, toddler chasing, and still two breastfeeding sessions per day, my exhaustion was peaking again.
My daughter has always been a pleasant and delightful kid, but now I can actually appreciate that, rather than obsessing over how tired I am and feeling resentful of her and myself and life. Having a chronically sleep deprived, grouchy, depressed mother would put my (and your) kid(s) at much higher risk of toxic stress than a few days, weeks, or even months of extra crying could EVER do.
Alexis you are wonderful! What a balanced, positive and professional perspective you offer to parents. I was just getting bothered by these articles and was soooo happy to see that you looked into it. I knew in my heart the argument was provably flawed but didn’t have the energy to pursue my own investigation. So appreciated!!!!!
Thank you for this! I always have had doubts about using CIO on my babies since I heard about the cortisol study. It’s no fun hearing someone tell you that CIO is wrong when it’s what worked for us.
First, I love the CONTENT of this article. I was so upset when reading old yeller’s post.
But secondly, can I just say HOW you presented it with Gifs an all? I mean bravo!!!!! Are you my spirit animal? Are we twinsies? Soul mates?
Just want to let you know that your site was THE ONLY SITE that helped me go from getting my 4 month old screaming daughter from waking up every 45 minutes for 5 weeks straight to sleeping through the night, (meaning, a 3 hour stretch, followed by a 5-6 hour stretch and another 2 hour stretch.)
You’re truly doing God’s work on earth woman. Gifs and all.
THANK YOU for this post and for treasure trove of genius you’ve given us thus far. Can’t wait for the book!
And to just to add quickly that your site is the only site to include different LANGUAGE that helped us to sleep train. You mentioned that sometimes your kid will “complain.” It was so helpful to understand the difference between crying and complaining. As for the first week or so of our training, she did complain for 10 or 15 minutes when I put her down before she got bored with it and fell asleep. So in my opinion there’s a big difference between cry it out (where the kid is screaming, coughing gagging, and having an absolute melt down, which now as a I mom, I know how to respond to…) and “complain it out” where the kid is crying but at a steady level that doesn’t intensify before finally falling asleep. That distinction in the level of crying was so helpful and critical in helping me to push through those 10 minutes or so.
sooo many thx….glad there is someone intelligent out there, you, who can tell us how dumb these other articles are
im very interested in the research you mentioned you would discuss later. Is there a way I can be informed that you have written the article so that I can then read it?
There’s a subscription box below the article where you can enter your email to receive posts to your inbox!
Great post, and some great common sense. Unfortunately it’s easier to scare people then to un-scare them…. hopefully this will provide some reassurance!
i just want to say thank you. Thank you for writing this. I have tried every method under the sun with my now 20month old daughter… Who still struggles with sleeping through the night. We have attempted cio before but gave up because of The guilt we felt from cyber mommy bashing , and are currently attempting it again in desperation. I hate hearing her cry. But I’m literally unwell because I haven’t slept a single night without waking 4-5 times in 2 yrs. not one single night. CIO is the only thing that has shown promise . This time I won’t be bullied into quitting. Thank you for making me feel like a normal human being and not an evil hateful mom. I promise I’m not. I love my daughter more than anything. Anyway. Thank you for this.
I think pretty much all you need to know about the original article is who the author is.
” Amy Wright Glenn earned her MA in Religion and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She taught in The Religion and Philosophy Department at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey for over a decade….”
taking scientific advice about how to raise your children from someone who’s background is religion (and LDS no less) is like asking a chef to fix your plumbing. They might know something about cooking but its tangential to their actual expertise.
http://feminismandreligion.com/2014/01/03/an-lds-girlhood-by-amy-wright-glenn/
I think pretty much all you need to know about the original article is who the author is.
” Amy Wright Glenn earned her MA in Religion and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She taught in The Religion and Philosophy Department at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey for over a decade….”
taking scientific advice about how to raise your children from someone who’s background is religion (and LDS no less) is like asking a chef to fix your plumbing. They might know something about cooking but its tangential to the advice you need.
http://feminismandreligion.com/2014/01/03/an-lds-girlhood-by-amy-wright-glenn/
I don’t think this is true, with the prime example being Alexis. Her background isn’t in childhood sleep studies, but she’s wonderful at translating research from experts into entertaining and informative posts.
People are multifaceted and can have wide interests across many areas. The bigger issue is the utter lack of any true research and plain bullying done by the other author.
Thank you! I have not read the Ol’ Yeller article, but I have read several similar articles and occasional books. They always manage to make me feel guilty even though I know from my own experience that they are full of crap.
With my oldest child we did sleep training via the Ferber method because she would cry for 30-45 minutes of rocking every time she went to sleep and multiple times at night. She didn’t stop until she conked out. In some ways, it made it an easier decision for me to sleep train – she was already crying tons and didn’t seem at all consoled by my presence. Within a couple days she was sleeping so many times better. My 3 month old has been willing to drift off to sleep on his own fairly peacefully since birth and I’ve been trying to keep that going so I can avoid any need for sleep-training. But when I read things like the Ol’ Yeller article it still manages to make me feel guilty. I have thoughts like – even though he sleeps happily in his crib (in our room) and I hear him rustle around at night sometimes without crying – am I a bad mom for not co-sleeping? Etc. I appreciate you taking the time to stand up to this sort of bullying.
Thank you so much for this. Yours was the only advice that worked when we sleep trained our daughter. She is emotionally well-attached and a happy, thriving child at almost 3 years old. She is a great sleeper and we are all happier because of it. We did not sleep train our first daughter and swore we could not live with such chronic exhaustion again. At the time we started sleep training, I was part of an attachment parenting group online and was devastated by the judgment and fallout surrounding my announcement that we were sleep training our daughter. I struggled with it and felt so guilty. It was awful and confusing. I can see now that it was parental bullying and I wish I had been able to tune it out more, but it was coming from people I thought I trusted. I cannot imagine how damaging this article would have been at that time. Thank goodness I’m beyond all that now. And thank goodness for your voice on this issue. I hope the people who need to hear it are listening. “Sleep training is not child abuse. Full stop.”
I am so glad you took the time to write this article and to bring this kind of shaming to lite. I’ve been sent articles like this in the past (mostly because we are a military family and at times my husband can be a little strict). It is always interesting to see the non-science behind such things and compare it to actual studies. You have inspired me to do the actual research to put other parents at ease about their decisions. Thank you again for your article. It’ll be added to a must read list of my mommy group.
I am so glad you took the time to do this. As a scientist, I find it excruciating when people twist real research to fit their agenda, and so it is wonderful to have a link I can now send to counter weird propaganda.
Not sure but google says the author has a son? I wonder how his sleep schedule is… Unfortunately, this sort of preachy and unsubstantiated messaging usually comes from people who just don’t know what its like…
My son is now 16 months and sleeping throught the night, but I will never ever forget what it used to be like. Waking every two hours to nurse, pacing the room with him for over an hour each time to get him back to sleep and holding my breath when I’d finally put him in crib… just for him to wake again.
So yes, thanks Alexis for understanding us, “evil Mommies” 🙂
Gawd, Alexis, I love you, have I mentioned? Thanks so much for taking the time to write this. And for making such terrific GIF selections no less– the Nopetopus is one of my all-time favorites.
I have to say I read both pieces by that crazy broad and I LOLed my way through with zero guilt. The “…as the bonds of attachment fray” sentence was particularly brilliant and made me roll my eyes about 1,856 times. She can come and meet my CIO graduate toddler who is the happiest, jolliest, most secure, most attached, well-adjusted, WELL-RESTED kid in the land. Seriously LOLOL that three nights of sleep training when he was 8 months old did anything to “fray the bonds of attachment” (seriously Amy get a grip) that I’ve nurtured every day of his life.
Thank you again, will look forward to the follow up!
Let me add to the huge list of THANK YOU’s. I can’t tell you how livid I’ve been… some total moron in one of my FB mom groups posted a link to this ghastly piece of garbage article and prefaced it with “Happy Reading” and it led to a huge dialogue with the vast majority being IN FAVOUR of the content. I was utterly devastated and sickened. You have just nailed it with your evaluation of that piece of ?$!& excuse for journalism! THANK YOU!!!
I am a firm believer in CIO having successfully used it with my first child but I have a real dilemma in relation to my second who is now 10.5 months and whose sleep is currently pretty appalling.
From birth she has been a very windy baby. Usually around 2 hours after a feed she would start squirming and grunting and crying out until she could pass the wind. I think she took in a lot of air while breastfeeding. From the age of about 2-5 months she would often be inconsolable during the day, especially when tired and trying to sleep and would writhe and scream in my arms. Here’s the weird thing though: from about 3 weeks old she was sleeping 6-7 hour stretches at night and from 2-4 months she would sleep 11-12 hours straight! This stopped around 4 months when we went on holiday and has never recovered. Her days have improved to the point where she now falls asleep easily for naps and at bedtime and naps are usually decent – around 1.5 hours. However, her nights are now abysmal. As I write my husband is in with her for the fourth time in as many hours since she went down. It is not unusual for us to be up for 2 hour stretches (sometimes longer) just holding her while she periodically passes wind. She might then sleep for a couple of hours before waking up again. We are both exhausted and I feel like I am reaching the end of my rope. I had very bad PND with no. 1 but have managed so far to keep my head above the water.
I don’t know what to do. My husband feels it is time for CIO but I’m worried in case she is in discomfort from the wind in which case it seems unfair to her. FYI we have tried baby massage, simethicone drops, diet changes, probiotics and all the other stuff people trot out when you talk about wind and gas pains. We hold her until she is pretty much asleep and then put her down and have always done so. I don’t know what to do and would really appreciate and advice of help anyone can offer. Alexis if you have any thoughts I would be really grateful if you could share. Sorry for the very long post. She has just woken up again so got to go.
I would like to thank you for your insight on this! My children range from 137-20 and other than my nephew recently I haven’t even thought about this! His mother was an attachment parenting mom and was very one sided like it was the only way! I remembered her citing OL YELLER to me and now im chuckling inside! I didn’t respond because I did not know enough to even try but remember feeling like she was indirectly calling me a child abuser! Anyways way to go you just validated this mother and had a mom of teenagers read a mothering article on babies sleeping! You will all understand what I mean when your done with babies and happy about it!
P.S…secretly waiting for grandbabies in the FAR away future and then I will be back!
As a high level licking rat who is sleep training at the moment, bravo Alexis !
So the struggle is real…my huge (23lb) breastfed 9 month old is killing me. He comes from a long line of stubborn people. So my big question is how long do I let him cry. I have tried everything. He gets up at 7 nurses He takes 2 good 1.5 naps at 9am and 1p. I do not nurse him to sleep he goes down awake. He eats food at all meals. He goes to bed between 6:30 and 6:45. I nurse then do bath. Goes down awake very little crying. But you can bet your bottom dollar by 11p he’s up screaming. Yes I give Tylenol for teething and I have had his ears checked for infection. He will cry for 2 hours. So usually by 1am with everyone up 4 year old included. I nurse him. He will go back down but is up evey hour after that. What are we doing wrong?? He is actually a calm super happy kid during the day but his alter ego comes out at night. Please help!!
Bridget,
Well the answer is – as long as it takes. BUT I suspect there may be something here more than stubbornness. It’s pretty unusual to have middle of the night stuff like this and I’m wondering if you don’t have a “too long in bed” problem on your hands. He’s a healthy nurser – sleeping 3 hours a day. Most 9 month olds can be awake 4+ hours before bedtime and I suspect that he would do better doing to bed closer to 7:30 PM. Sure he falls asleep well at 6:30 but he can’t STAY asleep – he hasn’t been awake long enough to accrue a significant enough sleep debt to make it through the night so that at 11 PM he’s screaming – not because he’s stubborn but because he isn’t tired enough to get back to sleep.
Make that change for 1 week and report back?
Alexis
We let our son cry-it-out when he was four months and in just a few nights he was perfectly happy sleeping through the night without making a peep. The stirring and noise was less and less every night. The first night is the worse and then the crying tampered off very quickly and easily. He’s a very happy and healthy baby and we have a very close bond. I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t feel confident of a good outcome.
Hi there! I’m super new to this blogging thing so forgive my inexperience. I stumbled on a way to help a newborn to 9 month old sleep through the night. I have read quite a few of your posts and love them. So I thought maybe I could get your opinions. Inspiration struck while my baby girl was in the NICU. I’ve used it with both my babies, I didn’t tell anyone about it for 6 years because I am not a pushy person and didn’t want to offend anyone. My little sister got pregnant so I gave her one to use with her fussy little guy. When she had success and other friends and family had success with it, I thought maybe I should talk about it with people who are struggling with their littles sleep. Would that be ok?
I’m totally with you on this: I can’t really imagine how someone can even think that teaching children to sleep can be considered child abuse! I mean do they honestly think that having a child that hasn’t had enough sleep, that is irritated and tired is the best alternative here?
Hi Alexis,
Thank you for your well researched posts, I find myself always coming back to your blog because that means I don’t have to do the research myself! Partly because of your blog, my husband and I decided to sleep train our 2nd child (we co-slept for 3.5 years with our first which was the right solution for our family at the time). We decided to hire a sleep consultant to help us (or keep me from caving in…) when our 2nd daughter was 4 months old. That was a little over 2 months ago. I thought it was going to be easy, because our daughter was already sleeping 10 hours straight through the night, most nights (after I nursed her to sleep and transferred her asleep to her crib). We decided to sleep train though because I knew (thanks to your blog…) that this ideal situation would not last! Sleep training has not been easy and we still experience crying every single time we put her down for a nap or at bedtime. The only time she doesn’t cry is after night feeds (which are quite seldom, they tend to happen if she has a cold or something bothering her). I’ve been as consistent as possible. I avoid car and stroller naps as much as possible (but they still happen about 4-5 times a week). We have a solid pre-nap and bedtime routine. She sometimes cries for just a few minutes (victory!!!) but it is often more like 10 minutes. Sometimes 20 minutes of screaming. We are no longer working with the sleep consultant, and my husband will not agree to hiring someone again due to the lack of success (in our eyes…) of sleep training. I’m wondering if someone can give me some insight: Is this amount of crying considered normal? Best case scenario is just a few minutes of crying, average is probably 10 minutes. Bedtime is usually 15-20 minutes of crying (yes, that’s right, we have less crying before naps). I’m becoming a hermit. I try to stay home all the time, I avoid having friends or family come over because of the crying and I don’t go over to other peoples homes because I would never dare put her down in a play pen for a nap and have her scream at somebody’s house for 20 minutes! I’m wondering if the continued crying is due to some minor inconsistencies. We were instructed to do 10 minute checks with our daughter. We skip the check if she appears close to falling asleep. So sometimes we check at 10 minutes, sometimes we don’t… I never imagined still having over an hour of crying a day (combined) after 2 months of sleep training! Do you think we may have still have some “work” to do, or do I need to just accept this as what it is and get on with my life?
My first born usually cried for 10-15 min every time she went for a nap or bedtime too. Even after she was old enough to sleep through the night. This continued until she started to talk. Then she started talking to herself for 10-15 min. Now at 4years plus she’s quiet (I think) but I don’t have a monitor in there so I don’t really know. I decided that this little girl at least, just needed to let off some energy and unwind.
That’s not to say nothing can/should be done with your daughter. You should certainly observe and think. But sometimes crying just happens and you can’t control it.
Shortly after birth, my LO was diagnosed w severe reflux and to help her better, we used to kangaroo her vertically for 30-60min for her milk to digest via gravity before putting her to sleep which was also v short in those newborn days.
But as she grew we realise that her naps and night sleep is v bad and no matter how much we rock, cuddled, kangarooed, baby wear, gym-balled, etc etc she just either can’t sleep well or long.
Soon we arrive to the cruel decision to let her CIO. Everyone I know bombed me w the brain damaged theory and etc and everyday as I do it I feel so guilty. Her night tm routine was v successful.. I think after 1-2 nights she sleeps in her own cot without needing is to cradle, cuddle, gym ball bounced to sleep and it had been like this ever since. She did it in her 8th week.
However… Naps is anther prob. She can’t sleep long and well and I also use the CIO method. And she is still crying today as I type it. So I have tested it: carry her the moment she cried. Bad day for the entire day becox insufficient sleep and catnaps spoilt her mood. Another week I let her cry. And she cry sleep cry sleep and managed to clock in 1-2hr sleep. Wake up happy, refreshed, alert and makes all sorts of cute sound and do amazing stunts. No bond broken and dun seem damaged.
But she is still crying during naps. And I feel so bad letting her cry. She hasn’t gained same success like night and has been crying for past month still. But it almost always guarantee good sleep and happy child. But all the website on google had made me feel v lousy about it and i was this close to stop the CIO for naps… Till I read this… I hate to hear her cry. But I hate it as much that my dearie can’t sleep well. Seem more damaging to her brain to me than cortisol…
Ur article may address mums who let her kid cry only at night and when they are older.. I must be v bad to do it since week 8 and allowed her to cry during naps for nearly a month.. Still it brings tears to my eyes reading as I’m so confused whether to carry on or not
What do your instincts say? Does anything work? My son was colicky and it broke my heart hearing him cry so much…it tears you apart. We found the only thing that worked was co-sleeping. He calmed at being close to his dad and I, and was able to nurse quickly. I ended up getting 8+ hours of sleep each night because he calmed down so much just being close to us and being able to breastfeed on demand. We don’t regret it at all, and we’ve since never had to let him CIO because that was too hard on our hearts and went against our parental instincts. As far as napping during the day, I just put him in the carrier…. He would either sleep for 15 in his crib by himself, or 1.5-2 hours in the baby carrier while I did housework. There’s no shame in doing that. Do what you think is right, not what people tell you, and when people criticize you, just tell them to shove it 🙂 best of luck to you!
Best post on here.
My baby decided all of the sudden, at four months, that no amount of swaddling, rocking, feed to sleep, cuddling would put him to sleep anymore. Feeling like a bad mother to put him in his crib crying, I still did try and he fell asleep on his own after five minutes. Since that day every nap and nighttime is the same. He is not crying like crazy, just fussing and protesting to have to go to sleep, I can see when he is tired: fussy, red eyes, bags under eyes… I lay him down and he fusses and after 1 to 3-4 minutes now he is asleep. He will not sleep in his car seat anymore either. He has to be own his own bed. Cry it out was the only way for him. I would never let him cry longer that 5-10 minutes. Sometimes he does that at night and his cry is different, he is still hungry. I give him another feed and put him back in his crib and he is good for the night. Maybe I was lucky that he naturally streched his night overtime he never wakes up untill 5 am now at 5 months. You know what is best for your baby. Don’t let anybody tell you your a bad mother for doing Cry-it-out (my definition is to go back to the baby if she still cries after 5-10 minutes not let her cry forever)
Thank you for this article. My husband and I have been working with a local sleep consultant on a CIO approach to helping our daughter sleep, and it’s been a tough few days so far, though with some promising progress already. A few months ago, I read an article similar to the one you critiqued in this post, and its claims have been haunting me throughout this process, making me feel in the back of my mind that I’m some kind of monster for being selfish enough to let my baby cry in the pursuit of a good night’s sleep. So thank you again – I wish there were more safe places like this on the internet for parents who are interested in sleep training, because as it is the term “sleep training” is a total Google nightmare.
Just wanted to say we sleep trained our son at seven months (after co-sleeping and nursing to sleep for those first seven months) and it was the best thing we could have done for him and for ourselves. It’s nearly a year later now, but we have friends with children the same age who still are dealing with sleep issues. Thank you, Alexis, for inspiring us and writing such practical and well-researched posts. Good luck to all the parents out there trying to get a good night’s sleep! You can do it!
Hi Katie,
We are looking at sleep training our almost 7 month old baby girl, we are currently co-sleeping (cot beside bed joined and sometimes she’s piggy in the middle. I have just discovered this fantastic website but am also confused by the difference on opinions all over the internet. Could I possibly ask your advice? I would love to know the strategies you used to get your boy sleeping soundly. I’m definitely not opposed to sleep training and would be grateful for any words of wisdom. At the moment I am keeping a diary and am making a point to try change from feeding her to sleep to using other methods, to test it out an hour ago I put her in the Manduca and walked her to sleep, I’m hoping that maybe this can lead to me eventually just picking her up for a quick cuddle and putting her in her cot but who knows!
Thanks!
Elyse
Hi Elyse,
Of course! We cried it out as per Alexis’s instructions on this site–we did not go in for checks or reassurance as we thought that with our son it would make it worse. He had been sleeping in between us in our bed and our goal was to have him fall asleep on his own in the crib. We picked a night to start and were consistent. The longest he cried was 50 minutes on the first night. After that it was 20 or less. And on the 9th night there was no crying at all (good thing I kept a journal about this). No one likes to hear a baby cry, but we felt confident that it was for a good reason and it was.
I’d recommend choosing one (or max two) websites you trust on this matter because constantly trolling the Internet for information about this might drive you crazy. I liked Alexis’s approach–she seems sensible, and a friend who is a mom of two had told me that was the sleep advice she had used. And it turned out to be very effective. Throughout last summer my son woke to nurse several times a night, but after a particularly hellacious stretch of waking, nursing and not wanting to go back down, he started sleeping through the night–12 hours in a row!
Anyway, I think you need to decide what your objective is and work from there. I wanted him sleeping in his own space and to be able to get to sleep on his own (which, honestly, after a certain age every parent should want!) and I wanted to do it before he started standing in the crib and crazy things like that! It was also important for me to have my nights back–to know that putting him down for the night wouldn’t depend on my breasts!
Once we started sleep training we made sure the last feed was at least 20 minutes before bed time and kept a consistent bedtime routine of washing up, changing, story, song and good night. But you can find all that advice on this site. Also, he was still sleeping in our room for this–if we’d had the space at the time, I probably also would have put him in his own room. We were putting him down hours before us, though.
I hope that helps!
Thanks Katie, this is extremely helpful, what you wanted is exactly what we want Olive to do. And you make a great point to do this all by the time bubs is able to stand in the cot! I’m practising this sleep training right now for the first time as at night she has her big sister that might be woken with her crying. Did you practice this with naps too? I’ve just feed her and noticed she didn’t settle but it’s very tired so I thought I’d put it to the test! She’s grizzling at the moment but not full on crying just yet. I remember doing this with get big sister too but she was 9 months old, Olive is a bit more “spirited” when it comes to bedtime!
Yes, we did more or less try it on naps (or a modified version), though we tackled naps after we got the nights sorted. Good luck!
Can anyone give me some advice? My husband and I have put much thought into this, and we have decided sleep training is the next best course of action. We have tried everything, and nothing else seems to work. I’m a FTM, we are living with my SO’s parents, and having to share a room with my 9 month old. Up until I started working again about 2 weeks ago, our daughter had a beautiful schedule. 2 naps a day, both an hour and a half to 2 hours long, 4 bottles and 3 meals. Bath at 8, in bed by 8:30 and asleep by 9. Clockwork, followed that routine everyday. Now it has all gone to hell. No amount of coddling, feeding, co-sleeping, etc., will help. She will scream for an hour. Wrote falling asleep for 10 minutes, and then wake back up again to do the same thing. Here’s the biggest issue with that; we live with her Grammy and grandpa, and they absolutely hate it. They will go in a get her out of the crib without asking us, and bring her into their room to play with her. Which isn’t a big deal, if we weren’t try to teach her how to sleep on her own!!! Because even then, when they are ready to go to bed, they will hand her off to us, and the same process will begin all over again. And if we let her cry, they will reprimand us for the method we are using, and make us pull her out. They completely disagree with sleep training, and make it sound like we are using abuse. I’m at my wits end. It is very stressful, and very exhausting. Please help!!!
This isn’t a sleep training issue, it’s a parental boundary issue.
Let’s take an extreme example. What if your rule was “no guns around the baby” and Grandpa took baby with him to go target shooting. Would this be OK? Of course not. But also because Grandpa wouldn’t be respecting your rules about the care and wellbeing of your child. This is no different.
You are the parent. You are in charge of your child. The grandparents MUST respect that if you are going to successfully share a space with them. I would talk to them about this issue. IF they’re going to undermine your parental authority you guys might have to decide if you can successfully live with them. Because this issue is going to come up in a wide range of parenting situations, not just independent sleep.
Our little one is 9mth old and we hired a consultant that my friends had success with and its been 5 nights day 5. They use a ferber approach, gentler approach. Staying in didnt work so we moved to leave the room, 10min checkins. First night he cried 40mins but since then, he’s been crying 60-90mins. This is lot longer than I thought and driving me nuts. I felt like checking in made him more upset and we suggested cio but the consultant is against it and recommended 15min checkin. It is a 10 day program and I would follow it but just to check, success of sleep training looks like they’ll learn and stop crying or at least on most of the days right? She said he may still cry more than an hour even after the profram but if he falls asleep and sleeps through its a success. What do you think? I disagree. If my lo cries everynight 1hr that is not a pleasant evening for us. Not crying or less than10mins cry to me is more like a successful training. Would we get there eventually? Pls share positive thoughts thanks
Hey Michelle, we followed Alexis CIO plan on this website and it took about 2 weeks but it worked. She now falls asleep on her own and cries for only 5 min before she knocks out. The first night was the hardest about 40 min of screaming but every night the crying got shorter and shorter. We tried the Ferber method and she would get even more upset and cry even longer so we desperately tried CIO. Follow Alexis plan she is a miracle worker!! With our second one we started him on the Alexis plan as soon as he was born meaning swing, white noise, right awake time and he is 6 months now and falls asleep on his own in his crib no CIO necessary.
Thanks Heather For your first one how old was she? I guess much harder when they are older than 6mth I regret not starting earlier, more challenging as he can cry standing up now.
Consultant made some changes so doing 15min checkin now. At least the good part is once he sleeps, he slept 11hr without waking up last two nights. Thats a progress right? Its just the protesting/crying part. Was 1hr yesterday. Hoping it will be 30mins today. When you said it took you 2wks, did she protest all along and then at 2wks mark, she stopped crying and fall asleep shortly? Its the crying part that makes me hard to bear.. tonight is night7 so I guess we just have to push thru and it should also work w us by week 2right? Pls pray
The crying/protest are the worst it’s so hard to listen to them cry. My daughter was about 8 months when we started. After two weeks she still cried but just for 2 minutes of like fussing crying. Hopefully it keeps getting better for you!!
Thanks Heather
Question, did you do nap training together or just bedtime training? Their training does both and its been so harsh for me and my lo. So i decided to quit nap training, just help him to nap and focus on bedtime training. I read that you can tackle bedtime first and I really dont care putting him to naps. Pls advise if you did both or if you were successful just doing bedtime thx
Hey Michelle, we followed Alexis CIO plan on this website and it took about 2 weeks but it worked. She now falls asleep on her own and cries for only 5 min before she knocks out. The first night was the hardest about 40 min of screaming but every night the crying got shorter and shorter. We tried the Ferber method and she would get even more upset and cry even longer so we desperately tried CIO. Follow Alexis plan she is a miracle worker!! With our second one we started him on the Alexis plan as soon as he was born meaning swing, white noise, right awake time and he is 6 months now and falls asleep on his own in his crib no CIO necessary.
Hi! I’ve not read all the comments, but what’s your advice for when cio causes vomiting? It did with my daughter, so we stopped. My son has a different temperament (much more laid back) but the same thing has happened. And when I say vomit, I mean throwing up so much that it requires a change of clothes for me, him, and at least one bed. It’s not hard to feel neglectful when this is happening 🙁
You wrote this article so I am assuming you sleep trained your children? How old are they now? I do not believe you would see affects of sleep training until your children are older so I would be interested in knowing what your relationship with them is like as time goes on compared to someone who didn’t sleep train.
Well since you asked…my children are awful. They absolutely HATE me and they run around like little tyrants. It’s like I gave birth to the Little Rascals and clearly all of their behavior and relationship issues are 100% rooted in sleep training.
Let’s unpack all the things wrong with your question. For starters, even if my children DID have dissociative social disorders (they don’t) there would be no logical or scientific basis to assume it had anything to do with sleep training. Some children will have issues. Not because one time they cried for 45 minutes, but due to a complex set of biological and genetic causes.
Further you don’t extrapolate from ONE CHILD or ONE FAMILY. So even if I answered your question with “oh my child and I have zero bond or positive relationship” this would tell you exactly nothing.
Secondly the reason you don’t see any effects of sleep training is because they are none. In fact this WHOLE ARTICLE was written to specifically call bullsh*t on all the people claiming there ARE effects and the bullsh*t studies they use to support that position.
You assume that there is some measurable difference between kids who learned to sleep independently and those that didn’t, so let’s break it down. The only difference is that they’re sleeping better. Full stop.
Hi. Can you please renew your links? Specifically, the link on the flaws of the sleep training/cortisol levels study, and the link to the different levels of licking from rat parents study. Those two don’t open. Thanks