The Cry It Out Argument

Recently a study was published by pediatricians about the effects of letting our children cry themselves to sleep at night.  In this study, five year olds who were allowed to cry it out were compared with five year olds whose parents had 'camped out' to help them sleep at night.  The study showed that there were no detectable differences between the children who had cried and the ones who hadn't.

Now that made my husband look over at me with a smug grin on his face because he's been telling me for about a year now that 2.0 can cry himself to sleep without any emotional damage done to his psyche.

Yet here we are with an 18 month old who doesn't always sleep through the night and I still go in and soothe him.  I haven't done cry it out and don't plan to.

When you have a newborn baby in your house, you don't want to let that baby cry his or herself to sleep.  Newborn babies need to be held and cuddled and comforted.  They're probably crying because they are either hungry or wet anyway.  Newborn babies are incapable of emotional manipulation.

I understand that I don't have a newborn in my house right now.  I also understand that my 18 month old little boy just might be manipulating me to come when he cries.  I just don't think that's the case.

2.0 goes to bed at night awake.  We have an established bedtime routine that we follow at roughly the same time every single night.  When that routine is finished, he goes to bed and he falls asleep within fifteen minutes to half an hour at the longest.  He takes two naps per day when possible (and when he'll take the second one since he likes to fight it for the last few days) to prevent him from being overtired.

Yet just about every night for the last two weeks, he's woke up in the middle of the night.  Sometimes two or three times even.  Do I let him cry?  No.

However, the speed of my reaction to his cries depends on what kind of cry it is.  If he screams in the middle of the night like he's having a panic attack, then I'm up and moving right away.  If it's a whiny cry...well Mama may stay in bed for a little while longer to see if he'll put himself back to sleep.

I don't think there's anything wrong with comforting your child when he cries in the middle of the night, no matter what his age is.  I don't mind the lack of sleep, in fact I'm used to it by now.  I get up for five minutes even when 2.0 doesn't wake in the middle of the night.  While it's good to know that letting him cry won't hurt him emotionally or psychologically, I still prefer to answer his cries and comfort him.

But I do miss sleep every now and then.