I cant deal with the crying anymore!!!

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Forum -> Parenting our children -> Infants

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WriterMom

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 8:20 pm

Barbara wrote:

[
Investigate other methods as well. Some people have mentioned the No Cry Sleep Solution, but there are others as well. Google. Go to the library. Read. Learn. Decide what is best for you.

But OP, if you're going to use the *cry it out* method, please, PLEASE actually go to the library and read Ferber's book. Ferber would NEVER advocate allowing a baby to simply cry for 4 hours straight. Ferber advocates establishing night time rituals. Then you can leave the baby crying for 3 MINUTES -- not hours, MINUTES. Go in, comfort baby (without picking up or feeding), leave. The intervals lengthen over the next week or so, to 5 MINUTES, then 10 MINUTES. Not HOURS. If baby is crying for hours, there's something else going on. Or your baby is immune to the Ferber method (and Ferber admits that some babies are).

ITA. Letting a child cry for four hours is borderline sadistic. Letting ANYBODY cry for four hours would be. Would you ignore 7 year old, or a teenager? How about an elderly parent? Under what circumstances is it ok to let anyone, let alone your tiny helpless infant, stay so distressed for so long when it's in your power to comfort them?

When I say I don't mind CIO, I'm thinking of 15 - 20 minutes max.

OP, I understand exhaustion and frustration caused by a baby. There are lots of things to investigate - nap schedules, possible sources of pain, experimenting with night lights vs total dark, noise machine to block out traffic or other sounds (and some people/babies find white noise comforting in its own right), vibrations, etc. But if the thought of leaving a baby to shriek for hours makes you feel queasy, maybe that's an instinct you should listen to.

marina

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 8:26 pm

Barbara wrote:

marina wrote:

Most people who resort to cio, have already tried everything listed here. they have routines, they have taken the baby to bed, they have tried ferber, etc. You are speaking to parents who have spent months desperately figuring out what to do. Ferber, btw, just teaches many kids that all they have to do is cry longer and you will come and hold them.

It is not cruel to leave a baby to cry for 3-4 hours, no more than it is cruel to put a toddler in time out or forbidding your teenager from wearing what everyone else is wearing or establishing any other form of discipline.

If a child cries that long, it DOES NOT necessarily mean anything is wrong. Assuming that you already checked with your doctor, a child could just be crying because that is how they communicate "pick me up." The only reason most toddlers don't cry for hours to be picked up is because they have learned that their parents will not oblige.

What is wrong is making a very tired and stressed parent feel guilty for handling this situation in the same effective way that it has been handled for years. Millions of kids all around the world learn to self soothe the old fashioned way
.
As an aside, a stressed, tired and strung-out parent is much more of a danger to a baby's well being than being left to cry for a few hours. No one ever shakes a peaceful, quiet infant. Enough said.

Well, we'll disagree on the definition of cruelty. To me, leaving a baby to cry for 4 hours is cruel.

I find your equation of infants with teenagers or even toddlers to be incomprehensible. If I tell me almost-teen *no* he understands what I'm saying. We can discuss it. He understands my explanation, even if he doesn't agree. Even a toddler has sufficient receptive language abilities to understand *bedtime* and *no* That toddler also has sufficient language ability to say *hurt* *hungry* or *scared* The toddler doesn't cry for hours to be picked up because the toddler *understands* The infant lacks all of those abilities. [I'll add that my toddler was never left to cry alone -- and he was a frequent night waker and cryer -- and he certainly didn't cry endlessly to be picked up as a toddler. From my perspective, his needs were met when he was a baby. He knew we were there when he needed us. He got past that stage and became an independent little person.]

I also find your equation of infants crying with wrongdoing by older children to be puzzling. Infant crying isn't wrong or bad. its their only way of communicating. One wouldn't discipline an infant for crying. It wouldn't make sense. The only comparison I can think of is locking your child in a dark room for hours on end with no food, and refusing to answer or explain what is going on.

I also have to say that your experience with parents who allow their children to cry for prolonged periods of time is quite different from mine. Those I meet generally don't try other methods; I've never met one who used a family bed, baby cried for hours in family bed, parent moved baby to crib to cry alone for hours. The OP said that her baby had slept well until recently. Other ideas may well be welcome by her.

Barbara, I am happy to disagree with you as we can both can do it respectfully.

Of course infant crying isn't wrong or bad. Discipline does not mean punishment- it means teaching. When you leave an infant to cry it out, you are teaching him that it is time to fend for himself in the big scary world of How-to-Fall-Asleep-on-Your-Own.

Speaking as a behaviorist, as soon as the cognitive & memory capacity is there, anyone can learn to engage or not engage in a certain behavior. A dog can be trained not to dirty the floor and a man can learn to quit smoking. A woman can train herself to relax around spiders and a dophin can learn to jump to catch fish. That is why the infant-teenager comparison is fine. It is not a matter of "understanding" - it is simply a way to be trained. The principles of operant conditioning apply to babies as soon as they develop the required memory skills, just like these principles apply to anyone else, teenagers included. A teenager who learns that dressing in certain clothing will not be reinforced positively is essentially learning the same lesson as a baby who learns that crying after being put in her crib will not be reinforced positively.

I speak from my own personal experience more than the Department of Children and Family Services experience. I know that there are neglectful parents, who leave their kids to cry and go out to party at nightclubs.

And then there are parents like me, many many many of us. We sat there with our first infant, patting her on her back, night after night, and trying to sneak out when she finally settled down and then she would start wailing again as soon as the door opened. I would get a chair and read next to her crib. I would finish whole novels at night while I sat there patting her at 3 in the morning. Of course, she was clean, fed, not sick. Sometimes I tried to bring her into bed- that didn't always work and wasn't safe. I finally gave up at 8 months and had her cry it out. She screamed for at least 3-4 hours the first few nights. It was incredibly painful and I thought I was the worst parent. OMG, I thought I was going to be arrested. And then, after a week- peace. I would put her down at 9 or 10 and she would whimper and fall asleep within a few minutes and then wake up around 5. 7 hours of sleep for me! And I never looked back. We did this with all four of my kids and they're all very well rounded kids, happy, academically fine, independent.

As an aside- crying for 3-4 hours happens only the first and maybe 2nd night of cio. Not for months on end.

marina

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 8:30 pm

Quote:

Would I ignore a tantruming toddler or sulky teenager? Yep. I sure would.

chavs

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 8:44 pm

Quote:

It is not cruel to leave a baby to cry for 3-4 hours, no more than it is cruel to put a toddler in time out or forbidding your teenager from wearing what everyone else is wearing or establishing any other form of discipline.

A)How can you compare a baby to a toddler?
b)Most parents whether they do time out or not do NOT give their toddler a 3-4 hour time out. The parents who do time out generally have a rule (from what I've seen) that they give a 3 year old 3 minutes a 4 year old 4 minutes etc, basically as many minutes as the kid is old.

If you did this in Denmark your children would be taken away from you. Why in the world would you have a child to abandon them like this? How do you expect your kids to grow up and trust you or count on you when you prove yourself to not be a comfort to them from such early an age? From infanthood you are saying to ignore their cry for so long. What exactly do you think they learn? They learn to be quiet and not cry because mummy wont come and no one will, they are alone and have no one but themselves to give them comfort. Is that what you want your child to learn? That they have no one? How can you do that to such a small child? I fail to understand why you have children? Dont you think the rest of us also have kids who wake up at night? Do we resort to ignoring our baby's basic need so we can sleep? no! You are not alone in having kids who wake up at night, but most of us parents who give a (expletive) wouldnt ignore their children for hours so we could catch up on some zzz. IF you are so overwhelmed maybe you need to ask a Rav for a heter and seriously rethink how wise it is to have kids when you are already ignoring their need at so young an age.

AlwaysGrateful

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 8:49 pm

Barbara wrote:

I also have to say that your experience with parents who allow their children to cry for prolonged periods of time is quite different from mine. Those I meet generally don't try other methods; I've never met one who used a family bed, baby cried for hours in family bed, parent moved baby to crib to cry alone for hours. The OP said that her baby had slept well until recently. Other ideas may well be welcome by her.

I don't disagree with the second part of this paragraph. It's definitely worth trying other techniques to see if they work first. If they don't, though, you may want to consider CIO.

When a relative of mine tried CIO before I had kids, I said to myself, "I will NEVER do that." Well guess what? I did. I did not try a family bed, as I did not feel comfortable with it for several reasons (including safety, my inability to sleep with the baby in my bed, and dh's comfort with it). Other than that, yes, I tried everything. I read, I believe, all of the books mentioned in this thread. I had a bedtime routine, a calming time before bed, kept all the lights out, everything in those books. I tried the "drowsy but awake" thing...everything. No sleep, for me or for baby. Then it started becoming no naps either, which made for a miserable baby and a very tired mommy.

Then I tried controlled crying it out, if you want to call it that. The theory is that you start off going in there and patting, soothing, but not taking the baby out, and then slowly wean off of that. Great, except for the fact that the very first step DIDN'T WORK for my baby. If I was in the room, he would NOT fall asleep, unless, of course, I was nursing him to sleep, or rocking him for LONG periods of time (think like an hour, then he would sleep for twenty minutes, then an hour more of rocking). This was NOT working. I was consistent. I stayed right by his bed and patted him, and patted him, and soothed him, and sang to him, and did everything but pick him up. No go. He never fell asleep. Finally, in desperation, I crawled into bed and closed the door behind me (which effectively shut out all noise). I didn't fall asleep, though, and I felt like a miserable mother. Dh woke up a little while later to a wide-awake, utterly exhausted wife who cried to him that she's a horrible, terrible mother because she left her baby crying there, and he's probably still crying. Of course, dh opened the door to go get the baby (and yes, he had done some of the night wakings, had no better luck), and he had fallen asleep.

From that day on, we did CIO. Do I think it's ideal? No. The ideal is that the baby falls asleep and stays asleep on his own, or with a bit of intervention from his mother. But you know what? I did CIO, and I now have a very happy toddler who almost always goes to sleep without a peep. I am a well-rested mother, emotionally a million times better than I was before, and my baby is as well. Yes, I agree that you should try the alternatives before leaving your baby to CIO cold turkey. May you be matzliach. But if all else fails and you feel like a horrible mother for doing what you NEED to for both you and baby to stay sane...please don't. You're doing what all the rest of us are doing, trying to do the best for your baby and for yourself.

There. I said it.

marina

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 8:51 pm

chavs wrote:

Quote:

I do not give my toddler a 3-4 hour time out either Very Happy

Just 5 minutes past the time they finish crying. If they want to tantrum for 30 minutes, that's fine.

Thanks for all the other assumptions. Maybe you forgot to read the part about how my kids were and are fine, happy, healthy kids. They were well rested and learned to fall asleep on their own by about 6-8 months.

Quote:

IF you are so overwhelmed maybe you need to ask a Rav for a heter and seriously rethink how wise it is to have kids when you are already ignoring their need at so young an age

best line ever. Hahahaha.

AlwaysGrateful

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 8:57 pm

WriterMom wrote:

When I say I don't mind CIO, I'm thinking of 15 - 20 minutes max.

OP, I understand exhaustion and frustration caused by a baby. There are lots of things to investigate - nap schedules, possible sources of pain, experimenting with night lights vs total dark, noise machine to block out traffic or other sounds (and some people/babies find white noise comforting in its own right), vibrations, etc. But if the thought of leaving a baby to shriek for hours makes you feel queasy, maybe that's an instinct you should listen to.

So let's say you try it for 15 - 20 minutes. And it doesn't work. Or let's say you try it for a night or two, and it works, and then the next night baby's crying for more than 20 minutes. If you go in, you're essentially teaching the lesson "Cry for long enough, and I'll come." Right? I'm just curious. Again, I don't think that cio is ideal, but once you're doing it, being inconsistent just seems like asking for trouble. Giving up on one night just means the baby will be crying for many, many more nights to come. Unless you're saying you should give up on cio completely if one night the baby goes more than 20 minutes?

As for "listening to your instincts," when my baby needed a medical procedure done as a newborn, my instincts were to say "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and run away screaming, holding my baby close to me. I did not listen to my instincts. Sometimes logic has to rule instincts. Again, I'm not saying that it's logical for every single child to cio for long periods of time. I'm saying that for a mother who has logically decided that this is best for her and her child, listening to her instincts would not be beneficial.

dolphin

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 9:21 pm

the only way is to show him that he cannot get away with this. You have to do the "Ferber Method" let himcry himself to sleep. The first night it will be for 2 hours and he will eventually drop to sleep. Even if you came to fis room once-he will expect you to do it again. so you just have to let him cry himself to sleep and check out "The Ferber Method" online

amother

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 10:22 pm

my sil & I strongly disagree on this topic. I think cio is cruel & a form a abuse & neglect especially after I heard how her son cries hysterically in his crib. Our kids are the same age & BH I have the last laugh! DC goes to sleep like & pro w/o a peep (I do sit in the room sometimes) & her son's still hollering 2 years later. this is for real.

ppl that believe in cio have a whole different mentality than me so I'm not even gonna bother arguing it out. You probably are very emotionally uninvolved in your childrens needs & have the attitude of letting them figure things out themselves. I, on the other hand takes things to the opposite extreme, I run when my baby makes even the tiniest squeak, I nurse on demand & co-sleep so I'm from a different planet than you. I was raised that way & I think that's the "default" of maternal instincts LOL

marina

Wed, Jan 27 2010, 10:50 pm

Quote:

You probably are very emotionally uninvolved in your childrens needs

Judgmental much? Don't tell me, that's how people on your planet were raised, right?

Dolphin- cio is different from ferber. Cio is much more cold turkey than ferber.

But I am tired of being made to feel guilty. All you people who have said in this thread that we cio folks are sadistic or shouldn't have kids or whatever- it's gonna be great hearing your mantras of "live and let live" when it comes to other parenting issues- breastfeeding, daycare, school choice, etc.

I also challenge you all to find one peer-reviewed, researcher-blind, controlled, valid, reliable study with over 100 participants that shows any correlation between cio and any harmful effects. That means cio as in the sleep technique, not colicky babies who cry during the day or whatever those other studies were analyzing. If it is so traumatic and sadistic and evil, I'm sure there is at least one study out there.

chavs

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 7:57 am

marina wrote:

Quote:

You probably are very emotionally uninvolved in your childrens needs

Why would I do that? I am not the one who lets my baby cry for 4 hours (+/-), I dont have the time or the inclination but I cant tell you that if I considered doing what you say you did, I would research it.

imaima

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 8:42 am

chavs wrote:

Quote:

Hello? child taken away from me??? in denmark? LOLOLOL Well knowing, that Europe has to deal with such issues as a parent raping his daughter and hiding her in the cellar for years, I am sure CIO is not what children's services would even care about..
and I live in europe, too.

imaima

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 8:46 am

marina wrote:

Quote:

Would I ignore a tantruming toddler or sulky teenager? Yep. I sure would.

I guess you scared everyone with this 3-4 hours period of crying. My child never cried for longer than an hour and a half. If the child had decent sleep habits before, he might cry for 20 minutes or less..

chavs

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 8:49 am

I am assuming that your geography isnt that bad that you think that all of Europe is the same country? Denmark is a country next to Sweden and Germany, the capital is Copenhagen, and no one locked up their daughter in any basements there. HC Andersen was Danish, as was Niels Bohr, do you need more geography lessons or are we done for the day? Believe me I have friends from other parts of Europe and its the same thing there.
If Fritzel had been from Denamrk (and he isnt), he wouldnt reflect the whole country btw, like kkk doesnt reflect all of America and baby P's parents dont define all of England.

amother

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 8:53 am

OP here-
thank gd my husband encouraged cio and we tried it, baby cried for the most 15 minutes, yes it was traumatic for me, but then he just lied down and slept peacefully, he is only waking up once in the middle of the night, to have a bottle and then rolls over back to sleep, no crying anymore!! bh
last night he cried only THREE minutes, so boruch hashem I have an amazing baby, who cooperated and made this easier for all of us, I hope it last so he, dh and me can have a rested and more energized life.

imaima

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 8:55 am

chavs wrote:

thank you very much. Thast was just an instance of what issues people in children's services are dealing with. Not sleeping training, or potty training, or feeding solids too early, or nursing past 3 yrs. It does not constitute neglect. It constitutes parenting choice.

chavs

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 9:02 am

Actually my sister works in the public sector in Denmark and we have discussed the differences between how different Denmark is to England in that what passes as parent choices in England would be considered abuse in Denmark. I think its interesting that other countries the same goes as it does in Denmark.

imaima

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 9:12 am

chavs wrote:

I really don't think we should discard CIO methid for the sole reason of it being considered abuse in Denmark..
you know, they chop arms off for stealing in some countries out there..

marina

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 10:56 am

Quote:

Yeah, I guess the 3-4 hour thing was too much. That was the outer limits of how much I ever let any kid cry anyway. Most of them stopped, like you said, after an hour or two.

Good to hear OP resolved her situation!

AlwaysGrateful

Thu, Jan 28 2010, 11:28 am

amother wrote:

I'm glad that everything worked out for you. You may not want to read the rest of this thread Wink

As for the mother who said that all cio parents are "emotionally uninvolved with our children's needs" - wow. I don't even know how to respond to that. Do you know me at all? Should I toot my own horn and tell you how attached my toddler is to me? No, I don't run to him at the littlest squeak, but that's intentional, that's for his own good. I've seen parents that do that, and maybe that's what their children need, but that's not for me. My child is very independent, patiently tries to do things over and over again until he gets them right...and with all that, is incredibly loving and knows that if he DOES need help he can ask for it and Mommy will come. No, Mommy may not come right then. She may be cleaning raw chicken or nursing the baby or on an important phone call with a doctor's office. But there is no doubt in my mind that he knows that I am "emotionally involved." I just think that it's best for his own development to let him figure things out himself, rather than come over and "save" him after every squeak. The same would hold true if I were sitting there watching him, with nothing else in the world to do. I still let him figure things out himself for a while before jumping in to save him. Ever heard of the helicopter parent?

All that said, yes, it sounds like we come from different planets. But please understand that we "aliens" are doing the same thing that you are - trying to cater to our family's needs in the best way possible.

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