Should You Let Your Baby Cry It Out?

How do you and your baby get a good night’s sleep?

When you hear your baby cry, letting him or her cry it out is one of the hardest things to do. Your instincts tell you to go and soothe your baby.

A study out of Temple University says that parents should let their baby cry it out.

Psychology Professor Marsha Weinraub says in an article on the Temple
website that babies need to learn to self-soothe, which they don’t learn if a parent is doing the soothing for them, such as nursing the baby back to sleep.

"The best advice is to put infants to bed at a regular time every night, allow them to fall asleep on their own and resist the urge to respond right away to awakenings."

There are many critics of the cry it out method, who will hopefully give their opinions in the comments area below, but the current science points to that as the best method, which is why we chose to use it with our son.

When we decided it was time to start, there were several nights that were absolute torture for us. In the morning, our son seemed to have suffered no harm, and he soon got it and he started self-soothing and falling asleep on his own.

Sometimes, he’s not happy to be put to bed and he cries a little, but it doesn’t last long, because he knows it will have no effect. Instead, he jumps up and down on his mattress to entertain himself and eventually goes to sleep. There are rare times when he cries at night, but when it happens the cries are different. There’s the little cry that means he woke up and didn’t want to and it sort of tapers off and he’s asleep again, just like magic. Very unusually, we get the real cry and now we know it means something’s wrong and we as parents can respond and fix whatever problem he has. 

How have you dealt with getting your child to sleep through the night? Do you let your child cry it out? Share your thoughts in the comment area below.