how do you get the word out about more gentle sleep methods?

[llwr]

Dinner the other night:  Mom1, " He's a GREAT sleeper ever since we did CIO!"   Mom2, "Yeah, isn't that awesome, that works SO WELL!".... etc...   I don't say anything because it's already done and they're happy with it, besides everyone knows my kids don't sleep so why would they listen to me?  But I was sad for the kids the rest of the night. 

It boggles my mind that we treat infants this way.  I actually really value independence, but I think it's absurd to expect it from a baby who can't feed or toilet, walk or talk...  We're expecting babies to do what millions of adults have trouble with.  Would CIO be acceptable in a nursing home?  

I also can't stand the idea that CIO teaches self-soothing skills.  I was actually told the other day that my 5yo had no self-soothing skills.  It wasn't meant to be rude; she also said it wasn't good or bad, just different, and that we were doing a great job.  But she also mentioned how her kids learned to self-soothe because of CIO.  I find it really ironic.  I'm attempting to teach 5yo so many self-soothing skills.  At bedtime I tell her a story that includes stretching, deep breathing, touch (that she can do herself), imagery, listening...  CIO doesn't do that.  She is a very intense and spirited girl who had a stimulating, off-routine day with other people and was put to bed wired by someone else at a place that wasn't home.  Of course, it took hours.

How did CIO come about anyway?  Is is all about Ferber?  Didn't he later say you shouldn't even use his method?  (link please)

I have a hunch that since above babies were good sleepers before the 4 mo regression, and since they responded so quickly and easily to CIO, that a more gentle method also would have worked.  But how can you raise awareness about them?  I know that offering advice can be dangerous.  And I can hardly say, "this is what worked for us" when my kids aren't great sleepers.  I happen to believe that temperment plays a huge role, and that parenting is too complex to be simply evidence based, but I can't see why someone who only wants to sleep all night would bother to listen.  I can't even say CIO didn't work for me because I refused to use it.  Is something like "The Baby Book" by Dr. Sears an acceptable shower gift?  Are there any books that are acceptable?  Is there some gateway to AP that might get them moving in a different direction? 

[pek64]

I don't have those conversations anymore, since my son is older. I also have no sympathy for those who choose such parenting methods. Well, maybe a little.

Penelope Leach (not sure if the spelling is correct) has spoken out against crying it out, and one of those speeches is on youtube. She talks about a study or studies that shows that a crying baby is in distress and the developing brain is being flooded with, I think, cortisol. Do a search on youtube to find it.

Those who believe in that kind of parenting are, in my opinion, not likely to change. One argument I used to make, however, is 'if you were stuck in a hospital bed, in a full body cast, how long would you want to wait for a nurse to respond to your signal?'. Of course, they usually said they would understand that the nurse was busy.

[pek64]

Ferber wasn't the first to suggest crying as a parenting method. His views, from what I read, are largely unchanged. He's trying to distance himself from the CIO with no response, in my opinion.

[llwr]

Originally Posted by pek64 


Those who believe in that kind of parenting are, in my opinion, not likely to change.

Definately.  I know these people won't be changing, and that it's none of my business anyway.  I just find it so sad.  My own journey into AP was intuitive and accidental.  All my research about natural childbirth led me to gentle mothering and following my intuition.  Cloth diapers led me to EC.  I didn't find MDC until my 2nd child.  I suppose it's naively optimistic for me to hope some small piece of non-threatening information could help someone else's nightime parenting.  The information's not hard to find, after all, if you bother to look for it. 

[Imakcerka]

Well if the difference is hearing your baby cry for 4 hours in your arms or 4 hours in a safe place away from my raging hormones...  Um... I'm gonna take the safe place.  My oldest slept 4 hours a night with one nap during the day from day 1.  Ped said she was fine and healthy.  And she was.  She just didn't want to sleep.

I'm not going to judge and call someone a bad parent because they can get their baby to sleep and I can't.  All the night bfing and holding did nothing for us but put me in the biggest depressive funk ever.  Losing 60 lbs in 2 months is a little unhealthy don't you think? 

[begoniamama]

i do think it's also about becoming educated though - these moms have probably been told that CIO works, it can be a quick fix to a sleeping baby and is the norm in a lot of circles. i think it's also a matter of having your own child. i have distinct memories many years ago of telling my cousin to try letting her baby cry in order to get to sleep, since they were having sleep issues. granted i was a young know it all with very little baby experience - but i was nonetheless uneducated on the subject. after much research and having my own child - for me it was a combination of research seeming to point away from CIO but also my instincts telling me it wasn't right. nothing in my body was telling me it was okay to leave my son to cry, alone, in the dark. in fact everything in my body was telling me it was wrong. i have since apologized to my cousin, who now without CIO has a healthy well adjusted sleeping through the night child. Now my son may not be sleeping through the night but we are doing fine, and he is a great sleeper otherwise - he actually does wake up in the night, rolls around a bit, talks to himself, and is able to soothe himself back to sleep. since i know he is capable of that, i also know that when he cries he means it. i guess i believe that in CIO situations the baby isn't actually self soothing, but instead giving up on the hope that anyone is coming to his cries. that's sad to me. 

[CatsCradle]

One thing that I can't understand about CIO is the disconnect that you would have to have as a parent to practice it.  My DD is almost six and we still co-sleep, and I wake up at her every murmur.  It is like something is squeezing my heart (I'm serious, I seriously feel pain in my chest).  When I hear little children screaming and crying on the subway or bus, I get very tense (for the child).  It must take a heart and mind of steel, in my opinion, to choose CIO.  It doesn't come naturally to me in any respect.  

I understand, in probably an academic way, why people think it is important, but I just don't feel it in my soul.  It just doesn't make good sense to me.  I was very alone as a child in many ways that I won't describe here, and I think one of those things was the abandonment that I felt as a young child (not abandonment in an abusive way - at least to the parents who practiced CIO - but just the idea that I was alone and my small mind and soul couldn't understand the aloneness).  I believe in independence when independence is appropriate, but I think that many have jumped the gun and do it because they think their kid will be a momma's boy or girl without the ability to think and act on their own.  It is an unfortunate method and byproduct of our "independent culture."  So explain to me, if this CIO method works so well in our culture, why are there so many effed up people out there.  The next time someone starts complaining about 30 year olds living in their parents' basements, I'm going to ask them if those parents' CIOed or not.  Sorry, it really riles me.

[Bokonon]

Originally Posted by Imakcerka 

Well if the difference is hearing your baby cry for 4 hours in your arms or 4 hours in a safe place away from my raging hormones...  Um... I'm gonna take the safe place.  My oldest slept 4 hours a night with one nap during the day from day 1.  Ped said she was fine and healthy.  And she was.  She just didn't want to sleep.

I'm not going to judge and call someone a bad parent because they can get their baby to sleep and I can't.  All the night bfing and holding did nothing for us but put me in the biggest depressive funk ever.  Losing 60 lbs in 2 months is a little unhealthy don't you think? 

But you have to admit that this is an extreme example and not the norm of why most parents choose to CIO.

[CatsCradle]

Originally Posted by Imakcerka 

Well if the difference is hearing your baby cry for 4 hours in your arms or 4 hours in a safe place away from my raging hormones...  Um... I'm gonna take the safe place.  My oldest slept 4 hours a night with one nap during the day from day 1.  Ped said she was fine and healthy.  And she was.  She just didn't want to sleep.

I want to comment on this too, as I think there are legitimate reasons to take breaks from the insanity.  My prior post was more about the "psychology" of CIO and why people practice it.  I think there is a large portion of the population out there that do it because they think it is right and will produce better results in the long term.  I happen to disagree with that line of thinking.  I've had bad days too, believe me, and I'm not knocking anyone's decision to do what is best in those circumstances.  As a parenting philosophy and practice, though, I don't think CIO has good long term effects.

[MrsGregory]

I always so much more comfortable talking about what has worked for us than telling other people what should work for them.  I do this in life and I do this here on Mothering.

I've been insane in the middle of the night.  Little Miss has cried by herself for a time, because it was either that or shake her, and Papa was off working his 18th or 19th hour that day.  I didn't practice CIO, she still co-sleeps, and we're progressing with her sleeping through the night.  I'm comfortable saying "There are tons of methods I'd try before I'd try CIO.", but I'm not comfortable saying that any mother that lets her kid cry unattended is a bad mother.

I don't think CIO teaches self-soothing skills.  For us, the few days after I'd have to set her down and walk away, she'd be even clingier.  It made my heart softer towards her, but it was still misery sometimes.

[Imakcerka]

Originally Posted by CatsCradle 

I want to comment on this too, as I think there are legitimate reasons to take breaks from the insanity.  My prior post was more about the "psychology" of CIO and why people practice it.  I think there is a large portion of the population out there that do it because they think it is right and will produce better results in the long term.  I happen to disagree with that line of thinking.  I've had bad days too, believe me, and I'm not knocking anyone's decision to do what is best in those circumstances.  As a parenting philosophy and practice, though, I don't think CIO has good long term effects.

 
I don't advocate CIO.  I do advocate knowing when to not allow the guilt to take over your life when it doesn't work.  My situation is not extreme.  Gonna have to say I know more parents that had the difficult sleeper over the easy sleeper. 

[pek64]

The issue is about consistently choosing crying it out as a parenting option, as opposed to a temporary need to separate from a stressful situation to make sure you have control of your actions.

Losing 60 lbs in 2 months certainly is a problem. Were you eating enough to provide for yourself and your child?

My own family praised my brother's wife for ignoring her crying children as a constant practice, while criticizing me for nursing my son quietly to sleep. My anger comes from never dealing with them. I appologise for making anyone who needed or needs to walk away to keep from doing harm feel bad. I did not intend that.

[llwr]

I just wanted to clarify that I was referring to CIO as a first choice method, not as an insanity break or a last-choice method.  And it really was intended to be about information and education. 

From the time my first was only 3 months old, all DH and I heard about was CIO.  I really felt a lot of pressure, not because the people telling us cared so much, but because we really needed some rest.   We ended up doing it 2 times.  The first was after trying for 4 hours to put her to bed and only took about 5 minutes.  The second was awful.  It took at least an hour, felt terribly wrong, and I decided I couldn't live with it ever again. 

I think it was about 3.5 mo when I really started reading and got my only real-life advice ever that wasn't CIO from a ped who recommended Baby-Whisperer (saying she was too young for Ferber, giving the impression that he was acceptable, but not great, after 1 yr) and baby-wearing. 

So when I get the opportunity, I try to talk about normal development (like the dreaded 4 mo regression), that I really like the no-cry sleep solution, that my babies would nap for a long time if I wore them, that it's ok to give them a minute if they're not super-upset to see if they'll settle, and that I personally didn't feel safe bed-sharing when they were tiny, but I could get some sleep while still helping her if we just laid together on a safe spot on the floor or she could even be in a moses basket on the floor or I could sleep with a hand inside the crib, and that eventually they do get better.  But I usually don't get the opportunity.  I kind of wish I knew a non-threating way to offer that, to let people know there are other options, that there are other ways to get the rest that everyone needs. 

[Adaline'sMama]

Originally Posted by Imakcerka 

 
I don't advocate CIO.  I do advocate knowing when to not allow the guilt to take over your life when it doesn't work.  My situation is not extreme.  Gonna have to say I know more parents that had the difficult sleeper over the easy sleeper. 

Mom cant be a good mom with no sleep. I dont advocate, CIO, but we did do some sleep training when DD was about 18 months. We stopped nursing then and she just cried her self to sleep every night for about 10 minutes. If I layed with her, she would play and kick and wallow, and stay awake until 2 am. If closed the door and told her I loved her and we'd see her when the sun came up- she was out in 10. I dont think it's right to let little, bitty babies scream for long periods of time, but as they get older and they are sleeping horribly, momma has to sleep sometimes to stay sane. Crying for a few minutes is one thing, screaming till they are hoarse is another. I think sometimes when people say that they did sleep training, what they really mean is that they let their kid cry for a few minutes, and we assume that they were screaming for 3 hours all alone.

Regardless, no sleep training should be done before 6 months.