All Communities > non-extreme attatchment parenting/natural parenting mommas > Cry It Out Research. I use the term loosely.

Cry It Out Research. I use the term loosely.

Brenda - posted on 01/18/2009 ( 3 moms have responded )

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Being into psychology like I am, I decided to take the scientific approach to things and see exactly what I could dig up on current research.

Not only did I not find any "proof" that CIO does no harm to infants, I found that there is virtually no research involved in it. Some of the studies I ran across noted that the only CIO research involved babies age 4 months and over (like one or two), or six months and older for the most part. And a lot of it involved children over the age of 12 months. What I want to know is if there is no "proof" out there that letting newborns/small infants CIO, why do so many parenting books say that it causes no psychological harm? I do not understand how they can make that sort of statement with nothing to back it up.

I guess what I'm wondering is do these parenting book writers have any standards to go by? Or can they just fill in the facts as they see fit without any substantiation? As a person trained in psychology, I am well aware of the standards called for on studies about human behavior, and the procedures involved. Do these writers not have to follow guidelines like this? This is why psychologists/counselors/psychiatrists get such a bad reputation. These people that call themselves professionals who are not really professionals in my field make us all look bad. I guess it is no different than these wannabe tv psychologists that get up there and make the evidence say whatever they want it to say.

Bending a psychological study is unethical, but easy to do. And the way we do our statistics can be confusing to laymen at best. I mean, I can take a study on Ice cream consumption and one on murder rates and make a correlation between the two so I can say that ice cream causes murder. (The reality of this example is that both ice cream consumption and murder rates go up in the summer because of a third variable: heat.)

CIO is against the grain of what mothers have been doing for generations since the beginning of civilization, yet modern women in our society believe that it is a superior way of raising children. One of the arguments against Dr. Sears and other AP parenting books is the way they site other cultures as being AP, and that our advanced culture is beyond that. That is like those crazy people that say that since there are breast pumps there is no reason to nurse because it harming the child and technology is better than nature. (Those people are nuts btw.)

So yeah, was just putting this out there because it really grates on my nerves to see people do this sort of stuff.

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Heather - posted on 01/20/2009

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thanks for this information, so sad, some things we can learn from by the way humans instinctual;ly have done parenting like co-sleeping and baby wearing.It's funny that people argue the technology thing..there's just so many things that contradict that argument!

Elizabeth - posted on 01/20/2009

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We have successfully used Ferber's techniques in our house starting when our son was about 7 months. I agree that the term "cry it out" has been misapplied to Ferber (and probably lots of other people)-- he simply advocates progressively longer waiting periods before you go back in to check on your child (but no more than 20 minutes or so), in an effort to get kids to learn how to sleep on their own. I can't speak for anyone else, but my son LOVES going to bed and has not cried for more than 2 minutes since we "Ferberized" him. Of course, Ferber insisted that babies have to be at least 4 months old before it is reasonable to expect them to be on any kind of a schedule, and that schedule is very loose. He doesn't get "tough" on kids until they are much older (into the toddler years, when sleep issues have often become a battle).

I also agree that it is difficult to do any kind of psychological research on kids, or, rather, it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions from any research you might do. I guess if they are sleeping, eating, growing, and socializing well, what you're doing is working! ;-)

Emily - posted on 01/19/2009

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As I understand it... even Ferber doesn't believe in cry-it-out. His whole purpose of telling parents to leave their kids alone was for those times when they whimper in their sleep and aren't really awake, or when you put them down in a crib and they take a minute or two to settle... the idea was never to have infants alone in a dark room screaming until they fall asleep from pure exhaustion. And he certainly didn't want newborns or 3 week old babies left to CIO. I don't believe Ferber was a bad guy... I just think he was a bit misinformed on some of the results of his studies, and he was HORRIBLE at explaining what he meant.

The problem is that some people have taken that "research" way too far and recognized that leaving an infant to CIO was less work for them and therefore easier (selfish, lazy, etc....). Our whole society is concerned with instant gratification. Parents want their infants to sleep on a schedule so they can get back to their own lives faster, they don't want to take the time and energy to teach a child to sleep properly over a period of 3-4 years even if that does provide better sleep habits in the long run. :)

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