I have been trying to write this blog for a while, at the request of a friend. I just keep...not liking it. I can tell I'm coming across not as I mean to. So in order to get my point across easily, I'm cutting it down significantly. I'm just going to make a few key points and raise a few key questions and not go into a lot of detail.

I do not agree with the cry it out method of sleep training, as anyone who knows me probably knows. It has been clinically shown that children raised on cry it out are less trusting of their parents as teenagers. Really, that only makes sense. An infant can't talk to you, or make any sort of meaningful communication besides crying. Crying is not manipulative to an infant. It's not a game or a contest. You aren't "letting your child win" when you go to pick them up. This isn't a competition between you and your child, it's a cooperation. There is no winner and loser. An infant is not crying to get on your nerves, or to be disobedient. An infant cries because she's trying to tell you something. And when you ignore them, they learn that they don't get listened to. A child who repeatedly tries to communicate and is ignored will eventually stop trying to communicate. I know I don't rest well after crying myself to sleep.

When Ari was a few weeks old she was sleeping in the bed next to me and starting crying. I tried to comfort her, feed her. I couldn't get her to stop. This was unusual, but I tried everything. She wasn't crying like she was in pain. I finally realized, when I turned the nightlight on, that she has gotten her leg stuck inside her pajamas and couldn't move. I'm so glad I didn't let her cry it out! My poor child was not being disobedient or manipulative or "bad." She was saying, "Mom! This really hurts, can you fix it please?" If I had ignored her, I would have taught her a valuable lesson - Mom doesn't listen.

Infants learn. Even fetuses learn. A psychologist can recognize a cry it out infant by the time the child is 1 year old.

Cry it out babies, on top of being less trustful, more fearful and more clingy, also cry more. When a child is allowed to sit and cry, they are being taught not how to soothe themselves, but how to cry. They are perfecting the art of crying, and crying is becoming their comfort. (A quick note: letting a child cry it out is an entirely different thing from a child who cries no matter when you do, like colic.)

So there's why I don't like cry it out, in a nutshell. Now some food for thought:

Why do we make our kids grow up so fast? When your kid is 18 they simply aren't going to be coming to you to be rocked to sleep. They aren't going to need to nurse to comfort themselves. You will miss those times. It is only a few short months or years when your infant needs you this desperately, when they are learning to trust you and that the world is basically a good place. Formative doesn't begin to describe the impact of these years on your child, and yet we want to throw them away? Why? Why do we rush things in this country?

At the end of a long day, when we've had fun and laughed and been fussy and met new people and all of life's "stuff," I know that I can sit in our glider in Ari's bedroom and rock her to sleep. I can watch that magical bundle of joy nurse herself contented and slowly become limp with exhaustion in my arms. How long will I get to do this? How long will she be so tiny that I can hold her in my lap, watch her eyes close in perfect contentment and trust, lean down and kiss her tiny forehead before I set her in her bed? How long? A year? Two years? I have a whole lifetime ahead of me to enjoy sleeping through the night. I just really don't feel like rushing this short time that I've been given.