CIO and the scientific method
Recently I discovered several scientific articles which claim to support the safety of letting babies cry it out. I’m not going to link to them; if you google, you’ll turn ‘em up. After all, CIO has been practiced for eons, there is tons of evidence about how wonderful it is and very little scientific research showing that it is negative for babies.
I use science a lot in making decisions for my child, most especially with medical issues. Regarding vaccines, I’m quite passionate about the science behind it and have found that research has come out firmly in favor of vaccination, even with the occasional bad reactions. This is a case where the diseases can do so much damage, that a small amount of risk is definitely worthwhile. So I certainly don’t discount science, and I believe that the results of these studies may be quite reliable.
However, I also think it is quite telling; not scientific, mind you, but telling; that most of the moms I’ve encountered who have done CIO with their children, describe it as “The lesser of two evils.” Yes. If you are in a position where you feel like you are a danger to your child or yourself by virtue of those sleepless nights, CIO may be something that would work for you, and ultimately be the “lesser of two evils,” for both you and your child.
For myself, I’ve certainly done a lot of thinking on this subject. My child has been a horrendous sleeper since day one, and I think the only reason I’ve been able to survive it sanity intact is because I have the type of husband I can wake up in the middle of the night and hand my child to, so that I can get a break. I have also had to walk away and take a breather for a few minutes on several occasions. So I’m not saying my baby has never ever ever cried alone for a second, she has.
And in those moments where I was taking my breathers, and calming my self down, I was able to use the first tool in the scientific method; observation. I was able to observe my child and how she behaved when I did not respond to her in the night, and it wasn’t pretty. My child is and always has been the type to just completely panic and freak out if Mama ignored her. Not every child is this way; Ask Moxie has a great article about CIO and the different types of children and how it may affect them. But for my child, I was able to use my skills of observation to see quite quickly that CIO would never work for her, and would in fact damage her. Damage her faith in the world, faith in me, damage our relationship, potentially affect her self-esteem, and her ability to trust. I’m not ok with that.
I am not saying this to demonize moms who CIO; if you have to do that, you have to. If you choose to, well, I disagree with your choice. I’m trying to say (probably not very well), that there are other reasons than “what science has shown,” to make choices for our children. That we as parents have the ultimate power of observation and ability to see if something is harmful to our child, regardless what anyone else says. Attachment parenting is about figuring out what is the best thing for your child, not strict adherence to a list of “rules.” Some babies simply do better if left to fuss for a few minutes; but only the parents, not science, can make that determination.
Generally speaking, I am very very anti-CIO. I find that most parents who use it, tend to be the “never give in” type of parent which winds up in little babies left to cry for hours; I also have seen that many parents who do CIO wind up needing to do it over and over again, and that disturbs me as well. I do think that teaching yourself as a parent to ignore your child when they are in need of you, can have a negative effect on your relationship. Further, the reality is that the sleep of children will change throughout their childhood based on so many things; their growth, teething, developmental leaps. Trying to force those sleep patterns to fit what we would like them to be, usually doesn’t seem to work very well.
Obviously I cannot remember my experiences as a baby; but I do have memories from about three years on, and older, of my mother telling me to “go to sleep,” and ignoring me no matter how I cried. I remember a lot of this as a very painful time for me; I went through phases where my life was quite disrupted (divorce, lots of changes), and would be unable to sleep, and left to cry. I remember how it felt, and on more than one occasion I have found myself saying the same thing to my daughter… and then realizing that I do not ever ever want her to feel what I felt.
But I also recognize that I cannot make decisions for another parent, and my opinion on this topic is just that.
Edited: July 3rd, 2009
