Dangers of "Crying It Out"

[fanillier]

Speaks for itself, really.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mor ... ing-it-out

[michael]

Completely agree. But there is a limit.
At some point you find you know better than the baby. They might want to be held all night and refuse to go to sleep in their cot, but such behaviour needs to be stopped at some point. After nine months we allowed crying to continue for up to 30 minutes (it never lasted that long, but that was our agreed limit). After just two nights our baby was no longer expecting to be held to go to sleep and only cried for as long as it took us to walk down stairs. Of course we have ups and downs, but since allowing that 'controlled crying' for a couple of days we have all slept much better.

I wouldn't recommend this with a baby under six months but parents should not be afraid to allow slightly older babies to cry for a few minutes without running to give them attention. It won't kill them.

The key message from the article is:

letting babies get distressed is a practice that can damage children and their relational capacities in many ways for the long term

But keep this in perspective. A small amount of distress is not going to turn your baby into a psychopath.