It's certainly good to clarify the difference between extinction and controlled crying. These are some questions and issues I'd have liked this article to address:
- how are parents told to comfort their babies when returning to the room? Are they allowed to pick them up? Or just pat, or just shush? My understanding of an infant's primal need includes being held closely...LOTS! Hence why baby wearing is so soothing for most babies.
- given object permanence kicks in at 6m, then presumably babies are immediately comforted just by their parent's presence? I have not tried CC but just in my experience my son has never been just satisfied with my presence in the room, he's wanted to be held and fed etc
- from the work of co-sleeping and SIDS expert Dr James McKenna, babies have not changed much biologically from our ancestors. They need to be close to mum pretty much all the time for breastfeeding, and they only slowly mature from their neurologically immature status at birth. We know this because their small tummies digest breast milk quickly because it's low in fat and protein, they have more fat on their backs than tummies showing they've evolved to get heat transmitted from mum in a tummy to tummy position, they cannot control their bladder and bowels, and animals like this have always been close to mum otherwise predators would sniff them out. Ditto with crying...crying too long would attract predators. No we are not apes, but we are animals, we are mammals and their biological needs are what they are.
- babies are biologically hardwired to need frequent feeds during the night, and this is also vital for mum to have a good supply. Implicit in a CC approach is the view that babies should sleep deeply for long periods. Are people who are using CC still feeding their babies frequently overnight? If they are not then this is a denial of a legitimate need. How does a baby's brain grow optimally (double in size in the first 12 months) if it's continually going 8, 10, 12+ hours with no milk (food, water, sensory stimulation)?
- if parents were more educated about the benefits of co-sleeping (which SIDS and Kids recommend, along with breastfeeding) and bed-sharing, which IF DONE SAFELY evidence has shown is safe, then would as many people need to use CC? Variations of co-sleeping have for me and plenty of people I know made frequent night feeds manageable. Yes we still get tired, yes we get the shits with it some times, but it is manageable. It might not be culturally acceptable but it is biologically normal for babies to need to be near mum at night too. Of course, where parents cannot practice co-sleeping safely it should not be done.

I do accept that where, for a variety of reasons, co-sleeping is not an option, and frequent night feeds or wakings are pushing a mum to the limits of her mental health, CC is better than the alternatives.
Parenting is not a 7am-7pm job. Yeah, maybe that sux sometimes, but we're the adults in this.

A critique of the study cited in this opinion piece: http://evolutionaryparenting.com/a-not-so-blind-review-of-the-recent-cio-research/

It is a great article and I liked the last paragraphs, having just experienced child number 4 (now 9 months). My already slightly hazy sleep-deprived memories are of trying various things- a mixture of approaches depending on how he was behaving.

Sometimes he needs a cuddle, sometimes rocking (and singing works a treat!), sometimes he wants to be left alone (gets irritated if we hold him and goes straight to sleep if we lie him down!) and sometimes we let him scream for 3 or so minutes at a time and he just reaches a crescendo then settles and sleeps like the proverbial. It now distresses me a bit to read that we might be occasionally using the terribly named "extinction" approach... But it came from exhaustion and did seem to be the only thing that worked when he is in a particular mood (which I interpret as perhaps "over-tired"). Now it is virtually never needed because we learned to pick the early warning signs and get him down before the bomb goes off ;-).

For us the keys were firstly knowing it would get better eventually ("don't worry- he's ok"), working as a team, working out how to interpret him, and not being too rigid. I find it truly scary that some people might try to push a regime, or "answer" (eg controlled crying, every time) on a child, when, just like older kids and adults, they have different needs at different times. Like that dirty nappy I didn't smell when I put him down, honestly honey!!

Monique,

Why on earth did you link to the website of Tizzie Hall? I don't think you have any right to be linking to this website when desperate parents might be reading your article for advice.

Have you read her (disgraceful) book 'Save our Sleep'? In it, she offers a case study of a 1-year-old child who gets extremely distressed at bedtime, screams until he vomits and, in her view, 'deliberately defecates' in his nappy in order to avoid going to bed.

Her advice is to leave him (yep, leave him), and then 'change his nappy when he is asleep'. That's right, you read it correctly: let him cry to sleep in a nappy full of excrement.

Tizzy Hall is an incredibly controversial (not to mention unqualified) monger of controlled crying (for good reason as this example demonstrates). There are many other places for parents to get information about controlled crying, and many organisations (such as Tresillian) offering free assistance with controlled crying (although I personally am not a fan).

So can you remove the link please?

Or are you receiving funding from the Tizzie Hall machine?

No one disputes the sheer exhaustion and shock that comes with having babies and small children but ethically there is a question about how we “teach” them to sleep via leaving to cry….my observation as a mother (and I have two young children who I have never left to cry on their own to sleep) is our society is deluded and obsessed with forcing the independence of sleep on our young when biologically they are designed to sleep close to us - it's a fact we far too often choose to ignore.

The cultural influence of fear of co-sleeping that has been created over the past 100 years has forced methods for babies to sleep alone, self settle is the term so over used..

I think its rather dismissive to say there is no harm, especially since The Murdoch Institute Report has never been peer reviewed and the emotional/mental health feedback was given by the parents of the children in the study it was not independently assessed and six years old is not regarded as longer term – but the media pounced on it, make all those people not feel guilty who may have sat outside a bedroom listening to a 6mth old baby cry by itself for up to 20 minutes – even if you did return is this right?

What about the negatives with controlled crying? The clinginess, the vomiting, head banging cots, the night terrors – were these all attributed to “normal development”? and we need to remind ourselves there has NEVER been a study to explain how long its actually safe to leave a baby to cry.

Why did the media never report on Dr Middlemiss from the University of Texas study on the concern of cortisol and the cry it out technique? Too much guilt for everyone to handle?

I’m a co-sleeper I get more sleep and so do my kids, it doesn’t affect my relationship and no they wont be in my bed aged 15….maybe if co-sleeping was not so demonized there would be less post natal depression and a management of expectation about motherhood. Especially the first years?

I’m not sure if the author of this Monday Myth is a mother herself? But humans are programmed to respond to the cries of its young, (see recent study http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/17/crying-babies-hard-ignore) and as leading mother and infant/SIDS researcher Dr James Mckenna explains..true sleep development starts around 2 years old.

Parents need to be realistic about infant and baby sleep it saddens me people believe and convince themselves that to cry oneselves to sleep or self settle “is a gift for life” – then why do we have so many adult sleep issues, why is mental health on the increase? For Margot Sunderland Head of Children's Mental Health in the UK and author of The Science of Parenting to be concerned about sleep training and how it works on the brain must not make us questions or is our culture wanting things to be easier, parenting to be easier?

We need not to create unrealistic expectations by such unqualified authors as Tizzie Hall who sleep train 2 week old newborns and offers backward breastfeeding advice so to finish your article that parents can turn to “ a wealth of mums, whisperers, angels, and child health nurses out there “

Why not suggest they turn to their hearts, their instincts about what feels right and what sort of relationship they want with their baby….because no way in the world would I be sitting outside my 8mth olds room for up to 20minutes listening to them cry even if i do return, it’s not right and it was never supposed to be, they all sleep longer in their own time just like any other developmental milestone which cannot be forced.