Crying it out

S* asked what I believe about crying it out.

For a start, I believe babies cry because that is the only way they can communicate until they acquire some language. I also believe that babies cry for good reasons. Yes, they do cry to get attention, they do cry to get you to do something, but what is so bad about that? They are babies after all and they won't be babies forever. But until they are able to meet their own needs in terms of security and confidence, in soothing themselves, as parents, we'll just have to fill those needs.

Everything I have read about how babies' brains develop and the impact of stress on the growing baby, about how emotions, memories shape cognition and development, personality and character, just reinforces what I believe about not letting a baby cry it out.

Mother nature has already given us the tools for mothering. Birth, and breastfeeding in particular, produces hormones that promote mothering behaviour - prolactin, oxytocin etc. These hormones help us feel protective, they slow us down (feeling relaxed and sleepy) to mother and to be attuned, sensitive to the needs of the baby/child. They promote the warm fuzzy feel-good feelings - oxytocin's main job. After a while, the hormonal dance gets so intricate and so well-co-ordinated that even the sound of a baby's cry, or the smell of his skin, can cause milk to let-down, causes our hearts to race and instinctively, we look to respond.

That is precisely why, if you ask the mothers who try the CIO methods, why they feel so gut-wrenched when they leave their babies to cry it out. Hormonally, we are wired to mother, to respond to a cry of distress. But CIO techniques go against the grain of the mothering nature. And CIO techniques are created by culture, not nature. Yes the literature promotes CIO, supports the idea that babies should be taught to be 'independent', to learn to 'self-soothe', to learn to sleep according to schedule. But who writes these books? How well do they understand the biology of parenting? What are the benefits to the baby who is taught to 'sleep through the night'? Where is the value?

The doctor on one website says that by teaching a child to fall asleep on her own, "you will be teaching her some very valuable skills! Although this is extremely difficult, it is really worth the struggle. To be successful in life she needs to learn how to put herself to sleep. When she does, she, and you will be much happier."

What are these 'valuable skills'? And why are we in such a hurry to teach these? How does success in life relate to a need to put oneself to sleep? I think children have no problem going to sleep. The issue is WHEN they go to sleep and for HOW LONG - and who has an issue with this? The parents.

I believe there is a lot of money to be made by experts telling anxious mothers and fathers what to do and offering solutions that may work for the adult but not the child. They tell us what we want to hear - that there is a solution, that we CAN train babies, that it will be better for everyone in the end. But is it really?

We trust the 'experts' - the doctors, the writers, the child development specialists etc - more than we trust our instincts as parents, more than we trust in our ability to communicate with and understand our babies.

As adults, if we are told to do a task which we feel ill-prepared for, we would naturally feel stressed, afraid, anxious. So will babies. The only difference is that we can articulate how we feel and the babies can't - they can only cry.

To leave a baby to cry it out sends certain signals to the baby - chiefly that their needs do not matter, their needs are not valid. It is a glitch in the correct communication cycle where baby signals a need and a response is given.

How does this build trust? Or independence? Or security? I believe independence cannot be forced, that babies will learn to self-soothe and to sleep 'through the night' when they are ready for it and not before. To force a child to do so by ignoring his cries would be to place him in a situation where he has no control - and this can be a very frightening place for a child who is unable to verbalise his fears or rationalise why mom or dad won't come and help him when he cries. Come to think of it, it would be frightening to anyone caught

The psychological impact of such stress may have far-reaching consequences. Yes, in the short term, you may 'teach' or 'train' a child to sleep. But what the child really learns is that his cry has no value, that no matter how hard or how long he cries, mom and dad are not going to come.

Physically, there are also significant changes that take place when the baby is under stress. Heart rate goes up, blood pressure shoots up, respiration becomes more rapid, catecholamines are released in large amounts, cortisol level also shoots up. If the body is constantly exposed to stress in a stressful environment, it can and will affect growth and cognitive development because the child is constantly in a fight-or-flight mode. So emotionally, mentally, physically, the child is affected.

See position paper on controlled crying or CIO techniques:

http://www.aaimhi.org/documents/position%20papers/controlled_crying.pdf

While I do believe that as children grow older, they will be able to benefit from the structure of having a daily routine. But this is really an age-appropriate issue which hinges on readiness, on language acquisition as well.