Let Baby Cry:
How to Let Your Baby Cry
by Josh Day
Forget the term "Crying it out." It's negative and often thrown around by people who have no real understanding of the actual technique it's said to be based on. Also, take "Furber" off your bad words list. Dr. Furber's writings on sleep and young children are just as valuable to scores of parents as are the teachings of Dr. Sears and similar Attachment Parent proponents.
With our son, we've found that sometimes it's best to just let him cry.
Babies cannot express themselves with language. Crying is their only form of verbal communication. Not all crying is bad, and to a degree it's actually good for developing babies. Whether you subscribe to the behaviorist approach to parenting or not, everything you're doing with your baby is conditioning in some way. So if you have a one and a half year old baby, meeting his every demand the very second he opens his mouth to cry is conditioning him to learn that every time he cries, he gets positive attention, and probably he usually gets what he wants.
We had months of horrendous colic, so we're no strangers to chronic crying. Beginning at noon and often going late into the evening, our baby would cry nonstop. This became so hard on my wife and I that we had no choice but to put him in his crib, as he was drawing no comfort from us and we were exhausted from the daily colic bouts.
I was usually the one who put our baby down in his crib during a colic or crying session because it was so hard on my wife at first. Here are three truths that helped her with the process:
1. Our baby is safe in his crib 2. We would check on him if his crying changed pitch or drastically worsened 3. Crying does not hurt babies
As you can imagine, the third "truth" of ours was the hardest for my wife to come to grips with.
Fortunately, after eliminating "Feeding on Demand" and getting our baby on a proper feeding schedule, our colic problem was solved in one day.
But babies still cry, even those not afflicted with colic!
We continued to put our baby down at times when his crying got out of control. We soon learned this is exactly what he wanted as he'd often go right to sleep in less than three minutes!
As parents, you are responsible for your baby, and you are the primary caregivers, not some abstract parenting philosophy. If something is not working for you and you're tired all the time, perhaps what worked for us will work for you too.
Editor's note: Josh Day is a work-at-home dad who enjoys spending time with his son James. He and his wife Leah have written a practical guide to parenting for realistic people called Moderation Parenting. Learn more about their book and parenting method at http://moderationparenting.com
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