A report on the sleep-training

[nlazarus]

So, we had a big debate about sleep-training, when I started it with Elizabeth a few months ago. We decided to sleep-train her because I found that I was spending the vast majority of the day putting her down for naps or bed, and then getting her up when she cried, letting her play a bit and trying again. Putting her down involved cuddling and

Comments

1/2

[nlazarus]

Well, maybe Josh does sleep when he's tired. Elizabeth wasn't. Now she does. I don't know how or exactly when she lost the simple common sense of going to sleep when you're tired, but she did. Now she goes to sleep. It's not hard and fast. Sometimes she stays up a bit later, sometimes she naps a little longer. Sometimes she plays quietly in her crib for half an hour before going to sleep, and sometimes she conks out right away.

The other night she woke up around 12:30 am, screaming her head off. There was something _wrong_. I could hear it in her voice. I could tell because a) she rarely wakes up completely in the night, b) her cries were panicked and hysterical, instead of bored and cranky (which is what they were when we were sleep training her). We _immediately_ went to see what was wrong, got her up, held her, talked to her, tried giving her a bottle, tried burping her, tried gripe water, eventually tried infant Motrin. It took less than an hour to get her back to sleep, although it seemed like longer. Once the gas bubbles? headache? whatever-it-was passed, she took her bottle and went straight to bed, and to sleep.

She knows we will come if there's a real problem. I know my baby, and I know her responses. What she learned from sleep training is not "Nobody will come when I'm in distress" but, rather, "Now is the time for going to sleep, and there's no point in making a fuss about it because it won't work".

As for the dislike of schedules, well, I dislike them, too. But they do happen. Even if you don't have a set schedule at home, the rest of the world is pretty heavily scheduled. And, frankly, I'm concerned about what I've seen of children who grow up without schedules. Aside from their complete disregard for other people's time, they also suffer from a lack of structure in their lives. Children DESPERATELY need structure. They need to know that they can count on certain things happening at certain times. Which isn't to say we run our house like a Nazi military base. She does miss naps. She is fed when she's hungry. But, we definitely have a pattern. We wake up, I feed her, I feed myself (she eats much more slowly than I do). She plays around the house for about two hours, then takes a nap. She wakes up, I feed us again, and then we go out on some adventure. We get home, she takes another nap. Jason gets home, she wakes up, she has a snack, plays with her dad. Then we all have dinner together, he gives her a bath and I put her to bed. Sometimes a nap gets lost in the shuffle. Sometimes Jason works late. But, we try and get the pattern back as quickly as possible, because when we don't, she gets very confused and unhappy. She's a baby. Her world's stability is created by us, and she needs to be able to count on that world.

The point is, she hasn't lost her _trust_. She _trusts_ us to be consistent. To be there when she really needs us, and to provide what she needs when she needs it. She _trusts_ us to keep her world in order. She's fourteen months old. She's not able to order her own world, and she needs us to do it for her.

Re: 1/2

[fruitkakechevy]

Hey, I know that our kids are different, and I know that you are doing what you think is necessary. I can't really comment on what you're doing, or not doing, because I don't hover over your shoulder every minute of every day :) I assume that you are a loving mom, and sensible human being.

I wanted to say, not necessarily for you but for any other people that might be reading that are new moms and are considering letting their baby cry, that it's not a panacea. There are some very valid concerns with this technique, and I (apparently!) can't let this pass without mentioning them.

Re: 1/2

[nlazarus]

Sorry, by non-sketchy, I meant not a mom who disagrees with it blogging about it. I read her bona fides, and she's not a researcher, not a psychologist, not an expert of any kind. She may have read the research, and may even be accurately summarizing it, but it's still secondary documentation.

And, her rebuttal basically says, "Nobody really knows if this is actually harmful", which, counteracting a visible and tangible improvement in my baby's life and relationship with me, doesn't really hold water.

Re: 1/2

[fruitkakechevy]

True! That was unclear. I posted her blog because it seemed like a good roundup of reputable sources, not because of the actual content of the post. And her assertion that no one really knows if this is harmful compares (as I remember?) crying to drinking while you're pregnant.. it has been shown to be harmful in some cases (perhaps they were extreme cases, perhaps not), but not as a strict rule in scientific tests because any test that proved it would be unethical. Perhaps not in your case, but I still wouldn't recommend that glass of wine, and in fact would recommend against it whenever the topic came up.

Re: 1/2

[nlazarus]

That's not entirely an accurate analogy. Drinking wine has no benefit for the baby to counter the risk. Try vaccinations. There are lots of websites out there linking vaccinations with autism (despite it having been proved to have no connection), and every once in a while I child has a bad reaction to a vaccination (that actually is true). So, did I choose to put my child at risk, while doing something that FELT HORRIBLY WRONG (believe me, holding my baby still while a stranger repeatedly stabbed her was MUCH worse than sitting outside her room listening to her cry for an hour)?

Yes. I did. Because it was the lesser of evils. Because the risk of a bad reaction was significantly lower than the risk of her catching something truly nasty if I didn't vaccinate her.

(Now, that's actually false logic. There is such a high percentage of parents who do get vaccinations for their kids, those diseases actually can't get very far, so, chances are good that, if I didn't vaccinate Elizabeth, she'd probably not catch Typhus or German Measles or Polio. But, if enough parents stopped vaccinating, we'd be looking at another epidemic in the next generation, and I'm not interested in contributing to that.)

I didn't sleep train Elizabeth for my own convenience. I sleep trained her because she was suffering. She wasn't getting enough sleep, and it was affecting her. We were spending so much of the day dealing with the problem that she wasn't getting the stimulus she needed to develop properly.

Also, a friend of mine (whose grown kids are now in their twenties, and are all exceptionally bright and have no sign of fetal alchohol damage) was prescribed a glass of red wine a day while she was pregnant, by her doctor. I can't remember why. Anemia or something. Anyway, they knew drinking while pregnant was bad by the late 80's, but studies have shown that a glass of wine a day gets metabolised by the mother's body before it can affect the baby. It's when you start getting into 5, 6, 17 glasses that it becomes a serious problem. Which isn't to say that I drank when I was pregnant (ok, I had half a glass of champagne on New Year's Eve), but the doctor, again, felt that it was the lesser of risks.

The keyword to my parenting style is moderation. Not too much coddling, not too much neglect. Find the balance. Find the comfort zone for us both. Know my limitations. Know her limitations.

There is a philosophy of parenting (which I'm not saying you are following) which was first tried in the 60's and 70's. It's child-directed parenting. The children make the decisions. They decide what they eat, when they sleep, what their activities are, what their discipline is. They're never forced to do anything. The parents trust them to know what's best.

It's a style of parenting that has been, frankly, found wanting. Now that these kids (and I grew up with a lot of them, and suffered from the influence of their parents on mine) are grown, they are foundering. They have no self-discipline, low self-esteems, poor track records with jobs and relationships. They're narcissistic and lazy and unfocused. I attribute all my tendencies in that direction to this lack of direction from my parents, growing up. But, again, the nazi military base approach doesn't work, either. It creates terrified, self-ignoring drones. I'm hoping for somewhere in the middle. I'm the grown-up. I make the decisions. I am a benevolent dictator, however, and have decided that she needs to express herself, articulate her needs and be heard, learn to negotiate, learn to argue, learn to take chances, to fail, and to recover. So, within the bounds of my benevolent dictatorship, I'm going to let her. But, when I see a problem (like her not getting enough sleep), I'm going to be the one who decides how we fix it.

2/3

[nlazarus]

And, I disagree about doing what's best for your child always feeling right. The only other mother who posted an objection when I announced I was deciding to sleep train was on my Facebook page and she said, "Listen to your heart, Rose!" Well, my heart isn't in charge here. My feelings aren't in charge. My heart and my feelings want to hold her close, never let her go anywhere without me, never let her fall down, never let her cry or be disappointed or lose. My heart is a sucker. My _brain_ tells me that she has to venture forth, she has to lose, she has to fall, she has to fail. She has to learn the lessons that come with these unpleasant experiences. She had to learn to go to sleep at bedtime. And she did. And she is better off for it. She's also ahead of the development curve, the social curve and the physical size curve (although I attribute that last to having a klingon for a father ;).

And, while she knows generally when things are supposed to happen, she doesn't freak out if they don't. If she's hungry, she lets me know. If she's thirsty, she lets me know. If I put her in her highchair when she's not hungry, she carefully and meticulously drops each piece of food on the floor (I'm learning that, like her father, she's not particularly hungry first thing in the morning) until I get the message. If she's obviously tired an hour earlier than usual, she naps an hour earlier than usual. If she's doing fine an hour after bedtime, we generally go with it. If we've been out late and it's too late for a bath, she doesn't have one. Sometimes she gets one story, sometimes two. Sometimes she just gets two songs instead. Sometimes we dance, slowly, holding on to her lady bug, which projects stars on the ceiling, and sometimes she goes straight to bed. And, if she cries after we put her to bed (which happens about once a month), we listen for what kind of cry it is, and if it's a pain cry, or even a fear cry, we deal with it right away. If it's an "I'm bored and irritated" cry (which she doesn't, anymore. She plays and talks quietly to herself in her crib until she falls asleep, which is better than any radio play on the monitor), we leave her alone. Like I said, we have a general pattern, which she's used to, and comfortable with, but if it shifts, it shifts, and she shifts quite cheerfully along with it.

What I'm saying is, it worked, it improved things, it was the right thing to do, it did no damage. So, saying that it's always a mistake, is a mistake. In some cases it may be a mistake. But, in our case, it was the right thing to do, and I'm very glad I did it.

I am also fully aware that I have been blessed with the World's Easiest Baby. She's happy, self-entertained, trusting, sociable, brave, obediant (for 14 months), and easily distracted when upset. We are incredibly spoiled. Which does not bode well for her adolescence... ;)

Re: 2/3

[nlazarus]

So, I don't know. I do know that part of our job, as parents, is to figure out the personality of our child, and respond accordingly, doing what is best for her. My baby is happiest with a pattern she can rely on, some active stimulation, and a lot of time each day left along to explore on her own. She likes to play with me and cuddle and tickle, but soon she's squirming to get down so she can chase the cat or eat crayons or play with her toys. She loves books, loves to turn the pages for me, and she always tries to rip open her pop-up and special effects books to see how they work. At 14 months she can accurately identify specific animals on a page or body parts on herself. She likes to sing, loudly, and off-key, with no discernable melody. She likes to clap her hands, and wobble her hand over her mouth while she sings, making an intermittent noise. She likes to put things into other things, and then take them out. She's extremely patient when learning a new skill and has intense concentration. She likes to put her books away on the shelf after we've read them. She likes to put her toys away, too, but then takes them out again right away. She at least tries every kind of food I give her, although she has her preferences. She likes to feed me her half-gnawed food bits. She likes other babies and kids, and leaves, and she _loves_ dogs and other animals. She spends a lot of time staring at things and people, as the tiny gears whir and spin in her head. She loves to dance, and loves music in general. She loves to play with shoes; her shoes, my shoes, doesn't matter. She likes to carry them around the house. I have no idea why. She doesn't pay a lot of attention to the TV, but has one show she really likes, and comes running whenever she hears the theme song to it. Once the theme song is over, she tends to wander off again. She cheerfully waves goodbye when I go out, and all her babysitters rave about how easy she is. She doesn't like having her diaper changed, because she finds it boring to lie on her back while I do it, but if I give her a toy she's patient with me. She's very tolerant of me taking things from her that she's not supposed to have, and doesn't cry when I do, but, the moment I'm distracted, doggedly goes after them again. She likes to lie back against me, her head next to mine on my shoulder. She likes to be upside down. She's spoken ten words; "Hi", "Food", "Good", "Mum", "Dada", "Corwa" (our room mate's name is Corvyn), "Seezie" (our cat's name is Suzie), "Yes", "Up" and "All done". She's started signing "Thank you" and "Please" this week.

And, she goes to sleep cheerfully, sleeps through the night, and wakes up cheerfully, in the morning, all by herself.

That feels far more right to me then letting her cry for a few nights felt wrong. So, I've got to count the score at Brain: 1, Feelings: 0 on this one.