Teaching a Baby to Self Soothe April 25, 2008
Posted by Megan in Belief in Baby’s Crys: Cry It Out/Controlled Cry, Myths: Sleep through the Night/Self Soothing.trackback
When new parents start out life with their new born life, all is new, strange, scary, fascinating and exciting. But after a few days, weeks or months of possibly not sleeping well we as parents start to hear these words.
“Babies need to learn how to ’self soothe’ otherwise they will never be good sleepers”.
I think first we need to look at who is backing this myth and where it has come from.
When I first heard these words it was from one of my Plunket nurses, she said these words to a large group of new mothers, we (the Plunket nurse, new mothers and I) then went on to talk about how to “train” our babies to self sooth with controlled crying (well I of course didn’t encourage CC).
I’m sure there are many other organizations around the world like Plunket who support this idea of self soothing but they don’t seem to have any backing such as research or studies to show that children do in fact become bad sleepers if not left to cry.
Carrying on with my discussion group of new Mothers I would have to say nothing really came of the talk as the Plunket nurse could not commit to any length of time that was safe to leave the baby (this was after a talk which was on the damages to a baby’s brain development from prolonged crying) and no mother there really felt that any time was right.
I feel that this comment by the Nurse about – needing to learn how to self soothe – is very irresponsible, very untrue as well as creating more stress and pressure on new parents. These words are often said to a new parent as something they must do to their children. The parents are left with little guidance or understanding of what “self soothing” actually is and really why they should do it and are the reasons really a part of the parents beliefs.
I suppose we must look at the reasons why we feel we ‘must’ train our babies to self soothe.
For a start, organizations like Plunket, like to enforce cot/crib sleeping and sleeping alone.
Co-sleeping is a another whole question which I have and will answer in time but if you would like to see some good web sites like the Mother Baby Sleep Lab or this article on “why babies should never sleep alone” or Ask Dr Sears about co-sleeping or Ask Dr Sears or Sears again and again or Baby Reference (yes I know this web site needs up dating but it does have really good information) to help you on your way.
In the short we are taught in our culture that babies must sleep alone these teaching seem to be based on fear and sex (the lack of, the seeing of).
Baby sleeping alone can be very draining for parents who then need to get up and down all night to re-settle their children. This is also very draining for a poor breastfeeding Mother who has to get out of bed to go into another room to feed her baby.
So here is born the need to learn how to “self soothe”.
It is born from the myth that children must sleep alone in another room. It is born from the need to quell parent’s fears hearing their children cry out for them in the middle of the night (or even the middle of the day).
It is enforced by organizations like Plunket whose information come out of yesteryear and it is spurred on by “Chinese Whispers” of fear through our communities.
If we take away the idea that children must be in another room to “learn” how to sleep and replace it with they should be with their parents to learn how to sleep…then the whole need for “teaching a baby how to self soothe” becomes a non-event as they learn from their parents each night how to become good healthy sleepers.
Learning by following example or mirroring is how we learn best as young humans.
We as parents also need to learn that this learning takes time and may be done at a different time from other children…but in the end we all do learn how to sleep.
Some more links
As well as these ones here…there are a lot of them at the Sleeping with Natural child and Natural child project
This post from a friend also talks about discipline which I feel very strongly about too (I love the diagram)
Also a post on the Damage of CIO
Also for a bit of history and understanding of where a lot of our parenting styles came from reading this book which is on line is very eye opening….For Your Own Good
For a different view from another person who found me you could try CIO recovery
suuuuuuch relief, reading this post and others on the topic. For the last few weeks I have made inconsistent attempts to let my 7 month old son cry it out, despite my nagging instincts that this was wrong. Each time I eventually broke down and so the minutes/hours spent crying were for naught. The truth of the matter is, I don’t mind my son sleeping next to me, in fact I treasure it. We both sleep well, even if he nurses through the night and I am occasionally woken. And I don’t mind him falling asleep at the breast. Where I start to stress is when I come across articles that assert the importance of instilling independence in your child, and how ‘appeasing’ his desire to sleep while nursing, or next to you, is in fact doing harm. I get torn and panic sets in, that I am not being a responsible mother. But I know where my heart lies and what feels right to me, and that is not allowing my precious baby to cry despairingly for me to hold him, and not forcing him onto his back in his crib. When I’ve tried these methods I feel myself growing violent inside, not out of anger at my baby but at myself, for feeling helpless and ineffectual. I think the real damage done is not only to the child, but to the parent who is led to believe that she is being a bad mother…double whammy! You feel like a bad mother when your crying baby is scared and alone in his crib, and at the same time you feel like a bad mother because some article told you that you should have gotten your kid under control by now.
WELL. I am sticking to my attachment parenting, because it is nurturing, and comes easy to me, and in no way do I believe I am putting my son at a disadvantage by not ‘teaching’ him to go to sleep on his own. He WILL sleep on his own in due time. For now, I get to have him next to me and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
wow well while i believe that it is not good for children to be under duress (it’s not good for anyone), the study stating that crying can hamper brain development has been skewed by everyone who comes across it–as usual. that theory comes from an italian research team of bioengineers. the results showed “particular risks for babies born prematurely (before the 37th week of pregnancy) or who weigh less than 2.5 kg.
‘We have confirmed our initial theory that prolonged crying can cause deoxygenation of the blood and that the brains of organisms not yet fully formed like those of premature newborn babies can suffer from this to the extent that it leads to serious growth problems,” said Florence University bioengineer chief Claudia Manfredi.’ ” (1)
not only that, many, many other studies done against cio/cc/ppp/si/whatever other names they have for it, do not take into account a responsive, loving, nurturing stay at home parent who is not abusive or neglectful.
furthermore, if you are a stay at home parent, well then all aspects of attachment parenting will work great for you. if you are a single parent who HAS to work, you NEED to have your sleep to be able to function in general and to be a good mommy when you are finally able to come home from work. those parents have no choice but to let their children learn to self-soothe (with whichever of those methods that they pick).
when people like you take studies and exaggerate them and do not account for (as do most studies in this arena) homes where abuse is absent and the infant is in the care of a loving, responsive caregiver, and in which case the infant did not already have problems to start with, i.e. born prematurely, low birth weight, etc), then, like Becky, who commented first and explained how she felt guilty, those parents who do practice cio, etc, will feel like horrible parents and will begin to wonder if doing what they are doing out of necessity (as many single parents have done before and who have gone on to have perfectly healthy offspring), means that they are damaging their beloved children!
please: do everyone a favor before you post publicly about a hot issue and make sure you have done complete and thorough research.
here is someone who HAS done their research and therefore this link is a good place to get started: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/774928.html
if we love our children with everything we are and have, do what is best for us in our own particular family situation, and educate ourselves well using the many resources available to us, then there is no need to feel guilty–and our children will turn out, more or less, just fine.
1. http://www.italymag.co.uk/italy/health/crying-bad-baby-brain-development-study-claims
BTW i CO-SLEEP and i NURSE and i WEAR my baby
BUT i do not believe that i should have to nap with my baby every day when she naps, neither do i think that i should have to go to bed at 8 pm every night when my baby goes to bed simply because she decides, at 9 months old, that she is not going to learn to sleep without me.
every stage of childhood requires growth and becoming more and more independent. i am a SAHM and i spend literally hours on the floor playing with my infant every day (at the very least, i am on the floor with her for 60% of the time that we are at home during the day) reading her books, practicing her manipulatives, enjoying creative movement set to music and practicing concepts like object permanence by playing games and fingerplays, and talking, talking, talking to her. i am there for my baby every single day and i will not have it said or insinuated that i am a neglectful parent or that i love her less because i let her fuss a bit after i’ve nursed her, let her get dozy in my arms, and then gently laid her down.
We had our first child six months ago. We’re exhausted, so we’re researching the subject, purchasing books and scanning web resources. I’m so fvcking pissed at the bullsh1t being spewed around as fact. I have found not ONE *fact* on the subject, despite all the claims.
I say fact, as in, something vetted by some kind or legitmate scientific methodic research with a large enough sample group.
And here’s the NUMBER ONE THING THAT PISSES ME OFF — all these books and resources claim to teach your baby to self-sooth. What the fvck?
LIARS.
There’s no TEACHING going on. It’s creating a situation where you encourage (force?) your infant to teach themselves. CIO/CC… NO TEACHING is GOING ON!
I was thinking of this last night at 1am when my son was crying. I picked him up, calmed him down, put him back in his crib, he started to fuss, so I started stroking the inside of his hand with the blanket. He clutched it and went to sleep.
Not to sound like I’m some genius, but to me, that’s an attempt to teach and yet, I’ve not read any such suggestion in any of them $19.95 books.
I’m going to think of other ways that can “teach” him to self-sooth. Like putting his thumb in his mouth — he resisted my moving his arm. But so far, getting him to self-sooth via his blanket has had one success as an hour later, I saw him rouse, clutch, go back to sleep.
Attachment Parents in Denver, frustrated at all the bullsh1t that’s being sold.
Thanks for the blog above and the outlet to vent.
Yup
No teaching going on
Wish you could talk to my Mum…I was a Fussy Baby and would not sleep!!!
Just like Ara if left to self soothe would scream for hours.
Mum taught me to suck my thumb…and my Dad used a method like what Elizabeth Pantley suggests…move slowly away as Bub gets used to sleeping alone.
Good work on the blanket…we use a toy
Love and thinking of you
M
Dear Kimberly…I’m sorry for the late reply.
I remember reading back when I first started using my cry it out book (and I love my child too) I found a blog (and wish I was blog savvy back then to realize what a blog was and how to save the address) and in this blog the man wrote about Cry it out.
I only remember small bits of it because it upset me and I felt that it was a load of crap and just left to find something else which I felt more comfortable reading.
This man believed that Cry it out caused Brain Damage and that in the future this idea of child care would be illegal. He did not back up his words with anything…but mind you I didn’t stick around to read much more I just felt that it was a bold personal statement and left it at that.
I’ll bring a quote that I’ve used before in my other blog
“The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement”
(Karl R. Popper, 1902-1994)
A few weeks later after using some of the Sears ideas for sleep and I had more energy I came back to start looking at more information….I was becoming intrigued with other peoples ideas and findings.
I found a blog (I think it was a blog as I said before I was not really up with the net yet) which as talking about how they thought there was a link between SIDS and Cry it out.
Wow I thought that’s trying to marry two grey areas together. Interesting.
A few days later I really started getting into looking, reading and discovering. I found a blog which wrote about circumcision and how it affected men through their life emotionally.
This was where I started to become fascinated and wanted to know more….People emotionally scarred for life because of something which happened before they could even begin to remember (so they say).
That next week I listened to a mother talk about how there was Whooping Cough around but for all of thoughts parents who have vaccinated their children…not to worry and good on them.
That night I read about a father who is sure that his child now has Autism because he choice to vaccinate his child. How this baby had been affected for life because of a choice that her parents had made…they felt that they made it in good faith but now are not too sure.
This is where I learnt that you can change your mind and ideals depending on the affects of your choices and the impact on your life.
I have a friend whose mother slept with her hand on her chest for the first year of her life…for fear? I do not know. SIDS or the lost of a child has not touched my life so I’ve never felt that I’ve needed to sleep touching my child at all times.
That loss has not touched my life….it is sad but it’s not what I’m thinking about in my blog.
You feel that Google answers have the answer…maybe for you it has. I personally feel that much of the research that is done on cry it out and infants does not go on into adult life and the affects to our emotional intelligence and our interaction with others our ability to express our feeling and deal with our feelings constructively.
Mental issues such as depression, anxiety, family violence, manipulation and control may not of touched your life…so maybe it’s not an issue for you… maybe it’s not your thing to think about or worry about.
But it has touched my life and I want to find answers I want to learn about why.
Every person has a right to read to learn and to think and to make up their own mind. I suppose that it why we have Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Baha’i, Confucianism, Jainism, and Shinto…and on to for all the peoples of the world to make up their own minds.
Thank you for your comment and I hope that you find the support you are looking for…possibly not here at my blog for that I’m sorry
Best of luck in you’re searching
M
BTW.
Ara has always slept her naps alone (unless I’m sick and need the sleep too). We have always put her down for her bed time early and then had time to our selves after.
We have our ballance too.
yes that’s what we do too. she naps alone and we put her down to bed at first alone, then later on we sleep together.
i’m glad you do what you do–we all need to. but like i said many, many people have been raised without attachment parenting and i honestly believe that much of the mental problems people face as individuals is because of imbalances in the brain that they had a tendency towards already at birth. it has been proven that depression and alcoholism runs in families, etc. so whether or not attachment parenting was practiced i don’t believe has much of a role. if you want to talk about neglect–well that is something else entirely. the kind of neglect (not cio) that messes with people mentally is the kind you see in orphanages in russia where the babies simply don’t cry or respond to loving gestures because they simply do not get enough human touch or one on one time. that kind of thing breaks my heart. and if cio by loving parents caused that i firmly believe that a lot more people would be messed up than they already are.
but there. we have our difference in opinion and i guess that’s where it will stay. as long as our children are healthy and happy and know that they are loved by their mommies is what matters
as for opie, i get that you’re frustrated. but you yourself defined one way to teach someone something: “It’s creating a situation where you encourage (force?)…”
well how did YOU learn, as a small child, to not hit other people? you were forced ( which is also, absolutely NOT allowed to hit) in probably different ways to control your hands when you felt like raising them to strike someone.
we are forced to learn as children that we will have mostly regular baths even if we abhor them, because our parents love us and do not want us to be filthy human beings.
“forced” sounds horrible, but honestly that’s life. we need to learn things. if you don’t like your child learning to get used to not be attached to a parent all of the time by CIO, well then don’t. but i don’t think it’s wise to denounce it as a verifiable method. it works better for some and doesn’t work for some simply because everyone is different –plain and simple. i encourage you to try other methods. but life is hard. we learn by the situations we have to be in, just by way of living. so i have to disagree–it is a teaching tool.
Dear Kimberly
Why go to China if you don’t like it?
Why go if you don’t like Chinese food and eating with chopsticks?
Why visit if you feel that you burger and fries is enough for you?
Is it because you are interested in China and it culture and ideas?
Is it because you feel that maybe you don’t really deep down actually like your burger and fries?
Or do you just want to go to China to say that you don’t like it just to upset the Chinese people?
What ever your reason for visiting China you’ll have to get over the fact that some where along the line there is going to be people eating Chinese food with chopsticks and there will be friends who enjoy eating Chinese food with chopsticks.
I love picking myself apart…looking at how I tick…I feel it helps me put myself back to better;-) I love to observe interactions around me and I love to listen. I have many friends sadly I even have some dead ones who are/were depressed and stressed…I want to know why….and for me I feel with all that I’ve read that maybe I might be.
“we have our difference in opinion and I guess that’s where it will stay. ”
For me while I was letting my daughter cry it out I felt terrible I felt sick, my heart was racing, my brain was a jumble…and after letting her cry it out for anywhere between 30mins to 2 hours for a month…I was starting to become numb and angry…angry at her and I was more determined to get this right….because I had people tell me that it worked and it was the only way and I was being too soft and I would not have an independent child if I carried on parenting her to sleep.
It was not until my nurse said that my daughter was not gaining weight properly that it really shook me and I realized what I was doing.
If you feel happy, you have the biggest smile a pone your face, if you feel like singing to the world, if you body is relaxed, if you have no guilt, if you have no questions about what your doing…then you have no need for any support from me.
Good luck
okay obviously you feel attacked. sorry –that was not what i woke up to do the morning that i first posted. i was rambling along on the internet while my daughter was napping– i don’t even remember exactly what i was looking for!! but it had something to do with CIO/brain damage/sleeping problems…at any rate i came across your site and the study you cited in your post made me upset. so i responded.
i hope you understand, that as a blogger, if you’re going to post in a public forum–then you’re going to get feedback, whether it’s positive or negative. i only responded to your posts not because i liked to rain on your parade, but because i am debating, discussing, however you like to call it–and i’m going to cite the quote that you cited earlier:
“The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement”
(Karl R. Popper, 1902-1994)
so after hashing this issue out after i couple of posts, i realized that we just would never truly agree, or sway the others’ opinion, and stated in my last post to you that i could see that and could accept it as just another part of life (the part of my post to opie was something else entirely).
so it’s not that i can’t get over the fact–and i don’t appreciate you insinuating that not being able to “get over it” is a issue for me.
again, as i showed in my last post, i don’t have a problem with coming across people who abhor CIO. what i didn’t like was how you took a study and skewed the true results in order to be able to apply them to all situations and all family units just so you could wrap your case up into into a neat little package.
that was pretty much my first and only beef with you.
so now that that’s straight, i completely agree with your last paragraph and if you’ll look at my last sentence to you in my last post, you’ll see that i basically said the same thing–only in less words.
so…in a way….we do agree
Dear Kimberly I’m not feeling angry or attacked but sad because our society has lead us to believe that it is safe to use CIO…Just like it was safe to x-ray unborn babies and just like it was safe to use DDT or Agent Orange with out protection, just like formula was superior to breastfeeding.
I do believe that science is catching up just like in many other situations and correcting our ideas. We can already see it happening.
I do have hope. Just like me as a child growing up my parents did things that they researched and looked into. Just like your children will when they have their children evolve to the next level because you are looking and thinking and wondering yourself, you will pass this on. They will remember the feelings they had of love and closeness in their co-sleeping and their breastfeeding and want to pass them on….or they will feel the lack of it and look for it. And just like all around us people are moving from CIO to CC and from CC to Parenting to sleep it will happen and it is.
I’ve tried to make my blogs for people who are looking for something different and to support the people like myself who do not feel they have any support because they have so many people telling them that their instincts are wrong …this blog is for the others who feel the change.
I would like to invite you to read again my post and follow the links and read them as well. I do not feel that I have skewed any of the articles but I’m sure you can look at them and get something different… just like I can offend so many people by what I say and I can also make so many others feel happy.
In this post I was looking at the Myth that we seemed to of formed in our culture that Babies need to learn how to ’self soothe’ (a.k.a. CIO) otherwise they will never be good sleepers”.
Which is untrue.
Also in this post I’ve brought up the information about the organization Plunket which is fanning the flames of this myth. Plunket is an old organization which has many personal feelings passed on by its nurses which is conflicting with its modern information and associates it is trying to align its self with like the Brainwave Trust who do not support these CIO actions any more…moving on with new information that has been learnt.
While I do believe many of us have many different levels of tolerance I don’t believe that we can for sure know what genetic make up and temperament our children have to know the out come of the affects. For you as a child your limit to be left alone might be 5 minutes but for me it could be 2 hours who knows and would you like to take that risk.
Parenting is all about risk taking…and for me I would not like to see my child suffer from any mental issues which I might be able to alleviate through my parenting (as mental issues are really important to me… for you it might be some other issue.)
I have left you a few new links at the bottom of this post that you might also like to look at.
The link to the discipline post I feel she answers your ideas on forcing…see diagram for my feelings to the point. This post also I feel touches on the many different aspects of different parenting and different styles…as I see many people who use CIO believe that children must be controlled…as CIO is a form of controlling.
Kimberly may I also recomend this book by Alice Miller…the book is on line…don’t know if your like me I found it a bit hard to read so had to have the hard copy.
I don’t think you’ll like it…I have to say that even I found it a bit hard to take…but the more I read and the more I looked at myself and the people around me the more I became to realise that…there are a lot of myths out there…and they are not good for us as developing caring humans.
The link is also on the bottom of the post
Keep on looking
i had to laugh, i’m sorry. control? bad wording…ugh. we will never agree on bedtime soothing, i know that much. the alice miller book looks interesting. i’m sure it has much good to offer. on the other hand of course, i feel it is very dramatic. i was reading what she was reading and of which she included excerpts in her book …german education of children or something like that, from 1977–how absolutely horrid! whoever wrote that was abused and mistreated in their childhood and only wants to pass it on. whoever this author is, they have real authoritarian complex. and alice miller sees this and you can tell by how many pages of her book are actually….this other book from 1977. mainstream child rearing does applaud those practices anymore and i assure you i never thought that way about raising my children.
all i have to say, is that, do you know that that our generation is one of the most self-absorbed, narcissistic, selfish generations that has ever been? i doubt that that’s because we were neglected/controlled/forced (whatever you want to call it) so often throughout infancy and childhood
here’s a report on the study:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/02/27/study_college_students_more_narcissistic/
it is late and i must get to bed.
correction: “mainstream childrearing DOESN’T applaud…”
Sorry Kimberly that I’ve taken so long to get back to you. With morning sickness, the flu and hay fever as well as my net link down…
I’m very glad I’ve an empathy filled little girl who looks after her Mumma.
I’ve written you a post on your last comment.
Please see “Babies Cry it out over the use of unsustainable parenting methods”