"Cry it out" is not a well-defined term

[rockhopper72]

I've noticed that people on this sub are often talking past each other because of terminology. Try Googling "Cry it out". Here are quotes from the first 5 hits, with my emphasis added...

1. The goal of the CIO method is to let baby fuss and cry on her own until she eventually wears herself out and falls asleep on her own. In the beginning, you may end up having to let baby cry it out for 45 minutes to an hour before she goes to sleep, though it varies from baby to baby.

2. The cry it out method, also known as CIO or extinction sleep training, involves putting your baby to bed drowsy but awake at a set time every night and not responding to crying until the next morning.

4. “Cry it out” (CIO) — or sometimes “controlled crying” — is an umbrella term used to describe several different methods that involve letting a baby cry as they learn to fall asleep on their own. You may be familiar with the Ferber Method, for example, which has parents set specific time increments to check on baby if they’re crying — but there are several other sleep training programs that involve varying degrees of CIO.

5. To put it simply, “cry it out” (CIO) is a sleep training method (sometimes dubbed “controlled crying” or “extinction”) that requires you to let your baby shed some tears and be fussy for a set period of time, so that they can learn to self-soothe and fall asleep on their own. Typically, you let your child “cry it out” for gradually increasing intervals of time before intervening by either consoling your baby or feeding them.

As you can see, there's no consistent usage. I'd advocate for not using the term CIO at all. When referencing studies, it would be good to use alternative, specific terms to cut down on needless arguments. E.g. Graduated extinction and unmodified extinction are clear, unambiguous terms.

BTW, if you're curious about link 3, it's more complex (but well worth reading):

In 1892, the "father of paediatrics", Emmett Holt, went so far as to argue that crying alone was good for children: "in the newly born infant, the cry expands the lungs", he wrote in his popular parenting manual The Care and Feeding of Children. A baby "should simply be allowed to 'cry it out'. This often requires an hour, and in extreme cases, two or three hours. A second struggle will seldom last more than 10 or 15 minutes and a third will rarely be necessary."

It wasn't until the 1980s, however, that the first official cry-it-out "programmes" were introduced. In 1985, Richard Ferber advocated what he called the "controlled crying" or "graduated extinction" method, letting a child cry for longer and longer periods. (He later said he'd been misunderstood and, contrary to popular belief, that he wouldn't suggest this approach for every child that doesn't sleep well.) In 1987, Marc Weissbluth advised simply putting the infant in his crib and closing the door – dubbed "unmodified extinction".

(And now I'm going to run before I get caught in the sleep training wars!)

ETA: it's depressing to see the number of comments below that refer to 'CIO'...

 

[faith33]

@rockhopper72 While we're at it can we also stop using the term "self-soothe" as a "skill" that can be "learned". The term self-soothe comes from sleep researcher Dr. Thomas Anders who simply used it as a term to distinguish babies that kept crying (signalers) from the ones that settled on their own (self-soothers). It's a temperament, not a skill.

https://selfregulationinstitute.org...e-most-misapplied-terms-in-child-development/

 

[alexus711]

@faith33 Thanks for sharing this! My oldest and one of my twins are very good “self-soothers”, but my other twin can’t seem to figure it out. We’ve been trying so hard to teach him to self-soothe, but the only way to get him to sleep without screaming himself to sleep is if we hold him or rub his back. It’s really helpful to know that some babies just can’t “learn” to self-soothe. I’m going to read this link right now!

 

[fender57]

@faith33 Love this. People don't seem to make a distinction between temperament and parenting and it makes for frustrating interactions.

 

[john185]

@faith33 Interesting! I haven’t read about that before.

 

[aeworld]

@faith33 Thanks!

 

[trekdad99]

@rockhopper72 I did sleep training and it absolutely wasn’t the kind you see in sitcoms where baby cries for hours without comfort. My baby was never in distress for a long period of time. If baby was crying, I was in there providing comfort.

The thing is, sometimes babies are just TIRED and the only need that’s not being met is their need for sleep. A few days of setting 5-7 minute timers and providing comfort and security so that baby knew I was there, but also allowing him time to figure out how to sleep without stimulation from me… baby was soon falling asleep on his own!

Ultimately, we desperately needed a sleep solution. I was breaking my back carrying a writhing, sobbing baby back and forth in the dark nursery, waiting for him to exhaust himself to sleep. If he was a snuggler who loved contact naps and was very soothed by my presence, I wouldn’t have sought out sleep training. When people say that sleep training is stressful for babies, I automatically think “there’s no way that my baby happily falling asleep on his own now is better than him screaming himself to sleep while thrashing in my arms.”

 

[feelinglostagain]

@trekdad99 Same here. I don't think ppl understand if they have a snuggler! Which I get. Mine thrashes and fights sleep in my arms. Does much better "crying it out" in his crib, with me there, patting butt or etc.

 

[josh88]

@feelinglostagain My first cried a lot (A LOT) less in the crib than in my arms. She needed me to put her down and get out of her way. My second is a snuggler. Babies are different!

 

[mythriilesque]

@trekdad99 It's so often assumed that everyone's baby is a snuggler, with the "baby just wants you mama" talk. No, my baby didn't want me. The first months, yes. And we held her for all her naps and all her overnight sleep when that was the case, doing shifts. It worked fine for us. But then at some point she just changed, got more independent, and when we tried to rock her to sleep and hold her she just screamed bloody murder and pushed us away. It was over 2 hours of screaming and pushing every night and it was doing no one any favors, so we went to a child development specialist who told us we could gently sleep train by doing a bedtime routine including cuddles if she wanted, reassuring in the crib, sometimes leaving the room a bit. It worked. No longer hours of wailing starting as soon as we entered our bedroom with her. Every baby is different.

 

[mikalmo]

@trekdad99 Yeah. I find it would that people think we're throwing a kid into a dark room and locking the door to let them wail.

It's literally making sure all their needs are met, and putting them down to sleep. My daughter gets so tired that she knows that if she stops moving she'll sleep. She has serious FOMO. So she resists sleep. It's a mess. Before sleep training we were doing contact naps and my husband and I were pretty miserable and exhausted. It absolutely sucks to hear my daughter cry, but the only thing that's making her cry is she doesn't want to sleep, and that's what she needs the most. But she won't sleep anywhere but her own bed.

 

[godsgatekeeper]

@mikalmo UGH the FOMO and the sleep sabotage. My LO will be drifting off and a millisecond from fully out, and then yank the paci out of his mouth and start screaming again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sometimes we can cheat the system by putting a paci in his mouth and one in each hand lol

FOMO has also made daycare naps a nightmare.

 

[mikalmo]

@godsgatekeeper We used to do pacifier graveyard in the crib. Solidarity! My father dropped the paci on her own when she sleep trained, but she HAD to have one before that. Sometimes I wish we could go back to the paci. Haha. She'll pay with her feet, or blanket, or her pajamas when we or her down. Or she sings. I'll look back at the monitor and she's passed out mid-something.

 

[caoc24843]

@trekdad99 This was my experience as well.

 

[john185]

@caoc24843 Same. It wasn’t about me being there he was just tired and didn’t know how to make himself feel better.

 

[mikalmo]

@rockhopper72 If cry it out "teaches children that their parents will ignore their needs" then why is my child a perfect mix of needy and independent? Exactly how she was prior to sleep training? When she cries, I tend to her when she's awake. When she goes to bed she protests for 5 minutes and passes out. If I were to run to her everytime she protested sleeping, neither one of us would ever sleep.

It's not cruel, it's not abuse, and there is absolutely zero credible, peer reviewed science that says it is. Orphanages in China or Russia don't count, those studies are based on children that had zero needs met. It is necessary for some families, and for other families it's not.

My child is well adjusted, confident, meeting her milestones, and doing great.

It's such a weird flex when parents feel that they have to be sleep deprived. Despite the fact that being overtired leads to poor cognitive function, depression, and bad life decisions. Driving tired has been shown to be more dangerous at times than driving drunk.

Sleep training my child allowed my PPD and PPA to wane, my marriage improved, my daughter got more sleep and was happier during the day, and I got sleep so we could enjoy our days together.

The only downside of sleep training is that my daughter is now pretty conditioned to our sleep routine and she has to sleep in her bed. But it means that her and I are healthy and happy, and I honestly wouldn't do anything different other than probably sleep training earlier.

 

[lamberto]

@mikalmo I can only speak from experience here to address a couple of points.

We had (and continue to have) a child who sleeps poorly. Hard to go down, light sleeper who wakes easily, and she loves to sleep with us. We tried every version of cry it out, sometimes for a couple weeks, before giving up and going with - I don’t know the proper term - ‘attachment’ parenting I suppose. Everyone slept better. We still didn’t always sleep great.

That said, I do take a certain amount of pride in handling the situation as best we can, including the inevitable sleep deprivation for us to help the kiddo sleep better. I don’t think it’s necessarily ‘better’ than sleep training, it’s just different. The reason I say all this is because when we were in the throes of cry it out attempt #3/10/whatever, we were feeling like utter failures as parents. The only resources online that offered an alternative were naturally at least somewhat critical of crying it out. I think that’s the reason for some of your observations about parents who don’t like cry it out. CIO is very much the mainstream nowadays, so if you’re going to buck it, you feel like you have to equip yourself to handle the criticisms you’ll face from… literally everyone about your choices.

Another anecdote but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s common: we have a relative whose child is only a bit older than ours, and took to sleep and sleep-training like a champ. We have felt constantly judged by his mom’s airy pronouncements of sleeping well, the 12 hours he knocks out every night. Over time this has enhanced our defensive posture.

So to summarize - I wish both CIO folks and whatever you’d call non-CIO folks would just chill out and let each other make their own choices. And it would be great if there was a more levelheaded discussion about it all.

 

[mikalmo]

@lamberto The only issue I ever have is when people are adamantly "CIO is not biologically normal" or "I haven't slept in 16 years because I love my child and sleep training is abuse" that kind of sanctimonious BS.

I wholeheartedly agree that sometimes a controlled cry or cry it out method isn't the answer. It might not work for everyone, but the point I'm trying to make is that it's not abuse, it's not denying my child's needs because sleep is an inherent necessity.

 

[quantumcreation]

@mikalmo I had to internally fight the negative stigma associated with CIO. Baby is almost a year and he has to fuss for about ten minutes or so before going down to sleep. I hate hearing him cry, but me swooping in to help doesn’t stop the crying! It almost just resets the clock and he gets even MORE frustrated when I have to leave the room. I feel like me intervening makes it worse (unless he’s legitimately hungry or needs a diaper change) and I’m not sure why.

 

[cutin]

@quantumcreation I think there just needs to be widespread acknowledgement that not all babies have the temperament for sleep training.

There are parents who say "He only cried for 20 minutes in total and now he's totally happy to go to bed" - those babies I find it hard to imagine would be damaged by sleep training. Sometimes you put them in the car and they cry for 20 minutes and then fall asleep, it's life. Same with your situation - you're looking at YOUR baby and observing what he needs and what helps/doesn't help.

Then there are parents who say "I tried but he cried for three hours and vomited and then I gave up" - sleep training (at least that method) was not working, and could be argued to be cruel, but a lot of pro sleep training sources will say things like it's essential not to give in once you've started, because then they will learn that they just need to cry for exactly 2 hours and then you will come - look, now you've made the problem worse. I find this astonishing bullshit and scare tactics, and not seeing the baby as a person but as a problem to be solved.

I did read one source (unfortunately I didn't save it) that said if you find your baby is escalating to a point you're really uncomfortable with, or after 45 minutes there is no sense of improvement, then stop and try again another night or try another technique another time. That's sleep training advice I can get behind. That seems fair and reasonable. But "Don't give up or you're making the problem worse even if you actually fear you are doing harm" is harmful BS IMO.