We developed a cry-it-out method for our son when he was about eight months old after consulting with a sleep consultant (a sleep consultant for goodness sake! we were desperate!). He cried, and I sat in his room and shushed him, patted him, reassured him without picking him up. It took a few nights of crying before he started sleeping better. It was hard. I mean, REALLY hard. And it felt unnatural. And for those several days I dreaded the night. But I’m not sure my marriage would have made it had we not done it. No one was sleeping, we disagreed about how to deal with it, we argued all the time, and as the stay at home parent I was totally depressed. For about two months before we did the sleep training he would only sleep if I were holding him. Which meant I could never leave his side. Not for a second. I would rock him to sleep at night and then just sit in a dark room holding him, watching TV on closed caption. And he was miserable. He was grumpy all day. And I wasn’t being a very good mom. I started to feel resentful and depressed. It was a really dark time for my family.
Do I think crying it out is a good thing? Not really. Do I regret it? No. When I was pregnant I would NEVER have believed I would have done this, but I’m telling you, I’ve never felt more desperate in my life.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s damaged my relationship with my child. He is loving and cheerful and a champion sleeper…

Boy, am I glad that my son was an easy sleeper!

I didn’t see in the original article that the consensus was the CIO was bad. They say there is a growing concerning with CIO, which is not the same thing.

So far, I have not seen any data that show that kids who are subject to sleep training have any lasting problems. Penelope Leach (who is mentioned in this article) bases her conclusion on the fact that kids who are extremely neglected have lasting problems, so this must be the case with sleep training. The professor from Penn State said that his research showed that kids who were left alone actually slept worse than those whose parents came in immediately, but he also says this is preliminary data. (I would be interested to see how more research on this turns out.)

It sounds like the study was biased against CIO from it’s construction. Infared cameras were placed in nurseries and parents lost points off their “emotional availability” scores whenever the baby cried for longer than a minute? Um, how is this anything more than a game of semantics? The whole notion of letting a baby cry it out is to leave them to cry for a stretch of time. Therefore, parents who don’t leave their children to cry automatically win the “caring” game.
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I don’t care what side of the aisle you fall on. This study as reported doesn’t say anything meaningful about infant sleep or parent-child relationships. It doesn’t demonstrate any rational basis for a “growing concern,” it reflects the researcher’s own foregone conclusions. It seems DISHONEST to report on it as though it offered solid evidence.
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Furthermore, babies from one month to 24 months were included in the study. First off, there is widespread agreement that you don’t leave infants younger than four months to cry indefinitely. Secondly, that wild range of babies comprise a huge variety of developmental stages, and sleep is a component that will vary in accordance with that range (not to mention between individual babies). Seems like somebody is gearing up to sell a book to frazzled first-time parents who haven’t figured out there are SOME things you don’t have to be a martyr about when parenting.
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It’s just dishonest to suggest that this study says anything useful about infant sleep.

Tanya, you hit the nail on the head.

I could never let my babies cry-it-out for my own sake. I figure that as their mother, it is my duty to respond to their needs. I practiced co-sleeping with my son for three months and then he will wake up in the middle of the night about 4 times, I was exhausted during my 1 hour commute (each way) but when he turned 14 months, he started sleeping thru the night and transition from crib to toddler bed was completely smooth. Now my 7 month old daughter, still refuses to sleep in her crib most nights so I am still co-sleeping but will try start trying to get her to sleep in her crib again soon. I blame their poor sleeping beginnings to genetics, since my husband has a hard time sleeping or falling asleep.

I have always responded to my children’s cries, and I co-slept with both of them when they were little. Even now they sometimes wake up at night (they are three and a half now) with a bad dream or something, and I always go to them and lie down with them until they fall asleep again when that happens. CIO wouldn’t have fit my personality, philosophy, or parenting style. That said, I know plenty of kids who were sleep trained who are delightful and happy, and their parents got more sleep when they were babies than my husband and I did! It’s not like they just put their babies in cribs and walked away until morning. They all used graduated methods, and I guess that worked for them.

I think we just got incredibly blessed with a sleep champ – from birth. Having said that, I was absolutely MILITANT about putting the baby down as soon as he was drowsy (and I mean, from BIRTH). I didn’t put up with anyone “holding” him to sleep, and I still don’t (he’s thirteen months now). He has always been amazing at just falling asleep on his own. He actually prefers no fanfare. “Put me in my crib and walk away, please,” seems to be his motto. He smiles and reaches for his crib when he sees it, lays down quietly, and is asleep in minutes. On the other hand, when the occasional nightmare or disturbance crops up, we have never let him cry. We go to him immediately, bring him back to our bed, and lie down with him cuddling until he is ready to go back to bed. I would not have minded co-sleeping, but he wasn’t having it – he was always more comfortable in his bassinet, and now in his crib. He’s very clear about that! I am with Manjari – “CIO wouldn’t have fit my personality, philosophy, or parenting style.” However, I did use methods like bedtime routine, letting him dictate his own schedule with only very gradual nudging from me in one direction or another, and always, always, always putting him down before he fell asleep. So far, so good!

I think they need to define CIO. We co-slept and responded to every peep our daughter made for the first 22 months or so of her life. Once she was able to talk and understand that we were still in the other room, we slowly moved her to her own bed and sometimes let her cry for a minute or two after rocking/singing/patting, etc. We weren’t hard core sleep trainers or anything, but she did CIO a little once she was a toddler.

I think that it all depends on how you do it and the kid’s personality. I know some people who successfully sleep trained in a weekend. I couldn’t do it, but I know that it works really well for some families. On the extreme end of the spectrum, we have some acquaintances who sleep trained their 4 month old by simply not responding to him at all at night. Basically, he was put in his crib at night and they would get him up when the sun came down. This kid is withdrawn and my husband and I think it’s related to his parents’ unavailability and coldness (they’re pretty withdrawn people during the day too).

I don’t understand why the parents who stayed in the rooms with their children, patting their backs and comforting them and talking softly to them, even think what they did qualifies as “Crying It Out.” To me, Crying It Out is when you leave the baby alone to cry and don’t respond at all for whatever period of time (and I do mean more than a couple minutes).

Ferberzing consists of starting out waiting for a couple minutes once they cry, walk in, speak softly, don’t touch, tell them they are fine, walking out. Then you increase that to 5 minutes, then 10, then 15, then 20. Never over 20 minutes. Only takes around 4 days, 7 tops. But you never leave them for hours. That’s the method I was always followed.

Even Ferber himself doesn’t agree with Ferberizing any more.

Don’t care what Ferber thinks of himself or his method anymore. The method worked exceedingly well for me and I’d do it again, LOL. Even Norma McCorvey changed her mind. Doesn’t mean I don’t support R v W anymore either.

For those parents against CIO, have fun staying up all night, every night with a frustrated, exhausted baby! Goodbye sex life, quiet evenings with your spouse, a chance to sit down and recoup from a long, hard day of childcare. Hello sleepless nights, all-day fatigue, kicks in the head from your co-sleeping kid! You may look, feel and act like a zombie after months and months of this, but at least you can remind yourself how much better you are than those terrible, selfish, well-rested parents who let their kids cry at night for a few nights of sleep training.

I give my all to my child every second of her waking hours every day. But when bedtime and naptime comes, she needs her sleep, and I need mine. We are BOTH so much happier after our successful sleep training, and I won’t feel a bit of guilt for it. Have fun, naysayers!