Babies cry – it is a primary means of communication. The hard-wiring between a normal mother-child bond informs the mother (and father) that the baby’s crying is communicating something. It could hunger, discomfort, illness, wanting to be picked up, anger, frustration, not wanting to be separated, a way to release energy to fall asleep and so on. Parents’ understanding of their baby’s cry is vital to healthy bonding and the relationship. It takes new parents a while to get the knack for this. Too, sometimes parents own developmental issues come up (e.g., moms were told by their moms that they always pick up a crying baby OR moms were told by their moms just let a crying baby cry it out). Other times, parents understand why the baby is crying but they’re just too dang tired or busy or distressed or mad or unhappy with their partner or stressed over the holidays or can’t pay their bills that they don’t take the time and patience to respond to the baby’s crying. Of course, babies learn pretty quickly that crying is a powerful means of communication with their mommy and daddy, and this newly discovered power can take on secondary-gain characteristics to ensure the response they seek. Personally, as a father, I clearly remember times that my son or daughter needed to cry it out. Other times, they needed me and mom their to comfort them and figure out what was wrong. The crying it out approach we took when we were sure they weren’t hungry, sick, lonely, wet, unattended or unloved. Other times, we could tell something was wrong and we held them, loved them and figured out what they needed, whether it meant comfort time in mom and dad’s bed for a time, calling the doctor, or going the ER room. It takes a balance, an openness, patience and persistence. It also takes courage and faith and giving yourself time and permission to make mistakes and travel down the wrong alley. You’re still the best expert on your child. You know when he or she needs to be picked AND where he or she needs to cry it out. You know if your own day-to-day issues and emotions are getting in the way of a more effective parent-child interaction. You can tell in the tone, length and quality of the cry what the child needs or might need. If you can’t you have ways to reach out for help. If you don’t then get them. Polarized thinking – always letting them cry it out or always attending immediately to the cry is not useful. Our relationships with our children and ourselves are always evolving if we remain open and thoughtful. Looking at the big picture and the shape of our country today, I am concerned that we should all remain open and questioning with a big dose of humility, lots of self-care and much, much more LOVE, COMPASSION and UNDERSTANDING of ourselves, our children, our wild animal friends, our planet and our neighbors around the world. We are one and our only salvation will be consciousness and living with love intentionally in all aspects of our lives. We cannot teach our children this if we don’t first teach ourselves.

Any attentive mother knows her child and what they can handle. If you think your baby can’t handle crying for 20 minutes — or even 5 minutes — as she learns to fall asleep on her own, I’m not going to challenge you on that. You know your baby. But I know MY baby. Like millions of other mothers, I had a sense of when she was mature and independent enough to start going to sleep on her own. I knew she could handle it — and she did, like a champ. Millions of other families do this. If limited amounts of crying traumatized children, there would be generations of adults walking around with PTSD. It’s NORMAL.

I agree with Rebecca — please stop bashing other parents about their decisions. If you truly believe your parenting choices are working for your family, then you shouldn’t need to trash other people to justify yourself.

I think the more important distinction that the psychology today article made was – should we always RESPOND to a crying baby? Are there benefits to it? Is it harmful not to?

And not whether a bit of crying here and there is damaging. I think most parents can see the difference between abuse and sleep choices.

Leaving a baby to cry is a personal choice. Crying (behavior), to me, communicates a need to be acknowledged, not a manipulation or defect that needs to be fixed or disciplined. Still, I can see that good people sleep-train their babies without any apparent problems.

But to suggest that babies thrive under controlled crying strikes me as perpetuating an attitude that advocates dismissing emotions for discipline’s sake, that it’s for their good – and ours. As if this grants us permission to claim some peace and quiet.

Don’t we already deserve some alone time, proper sleep? Do our needs have to depend on our children’s behavior?

Sleep for children is not a challenge in independence as you might find in academics or life. Sleep is a primitively controlled basic need that demands that a set of expectations by the child be met – or development alters.

How does it serve us to demand when children sleep and how, especially as infants?

We brought them into this world – can we not give them the freedom, especially in the first year, to adapt to this world with our full support, sleeping close (because they’re wired to do so) and attending to every call for comfort so they develop a kind of unshakable belief that the world is safe and they are worth having their needs met?

If we can’t adjust our lives to consider each family’s members challenges and unique patterns of development then what’s the point of having a family?

Lori
TEACH through Love

As a side note – I assume most typical kids can be sleep trained in a few days?? If there isn’t prolonged or continuous crying with rising stress levels over sustained periods of time – so I get what you’re saying about there being no brain damage but crying for release is very different than crying in distress and I disagree that the latter is completely innocuous or necessary to produce independence or self-soothing behaviors.

My child cried for hours and hours on end in his first weeks, it was an absolute nightmare, we tried everything (although CIO would never ever be an option for us). Eventually we got a Cranio Sacral therapist to visit us and do a treatment. It was absolutely miraculous, she literally realigned what needed to be realigned in his little skull. It confirmed what I painfully knew, he was literally in pain following a long and traumatic birth where I was encouraged to push before the pushing stage putting undue pressure on his head. Here in New Zealand most parents do bring their baby for a treatment with a cranial osteopath to check if there are any physical problems causing a child to be unsettled, including frequent night waking, I’m not sure if it’s so well known in other areas, but just vitally important information for parents.

I hear that Dr Heather admits it’s not appropriate for all babies, yet how many parents train their baby to dissociate and repress their need to cry out for their parents, or learn good sleep patterns as others define it, yet the baby literally needs treatments that go undiagnosed, alergies are another example.

I just can’t come to terms with it being safe to purposely ignore a crying baby. I have 7 younger siblings and did a LOT of night waking during the years I was growing up and a teenager, pacing the corridor with a crying baby, checking nappy, making bottles, I never had it in me as a child or an adult to ignore a crying baby.

Having said all this I’m not expressing this to place judgements on others, just to be part of voicing this perspective because many parents can lose touch with there even being options when all around them are encouraging them to not pick up their crying baby.

The article argues that “there IS evidence that severely sleep-deprived mothers are at much higher risk of developing an already common –and dangerous — condition: postpartum depression. And PPD certainly CAN lead to long-term damage to both baby — and the entire family. CIO is a method that, when implemented thoughtfully, can often lead to improved sleep (and health and happiness) for everyone.” PPD is something that begin and peaks in the weeks following birth. Not even Dr. Ferber would advocate letting a NEWBORN CIO!!!

Thanks for taking on Darcia Narvaez, Heather. I noticed her blog several months ago and found her strident tone and distortions of the profession literature in service to her extremist agenda quite disturbing.

I’d like to point out that Darcia hints at her motivation for turning her Psychology Today blog, which is supposed to be about morality in children (her area of expertise) into a third-rate parenting harangue:

“ADDENDUM: I was raised in a middle-class family with a depressed mother, harsh father and overall emotionally unsupportive environment–not unlike others raised in the USA. I have only recently realized from extensive reading about the effects of early parenting on body and brain development that I show the signs of undercare–poor memory (cortisol released during distress harms hippocampus development), irritable bowel and other poor vagal tone issues, and high social anxiety. The USA has epidemics of poor physical and mental health (e.g., UNICEF, 2007; USDHSS, 1999; WHO/WONCA, 2008). The connection between the lack of ancestral parenting practices and poor health outcomes has been documented for touch, responsiveness, breastfeeding, and more (Narvaez et al., in press). If we want a strong country and people, we’ve got to pay attention to what children need for optimal development.”

In short, Darcia is pursuing her personal ghosts online. Cheaper than psychotherapy, I suppose, but not really a fair use of her pedestal, is it? Is such self-diagnosis of “signs of undercare” encouraged in psychology?

Mind you, if Darcia wants to look to her parenting as the root of her own issues, maternal depression is a far greater risk factor for an infant than formula feeding, CIO, or any particular parenting practice. Right?