Babies, self-soothing, and being left to cry

Re: Babies, self-soothing, and being left to cry

feeds@kickapps.com (OneAnt) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:57:55 PST

From what I've read, picking up and giving your baby attention when they cry for the first few months does not foster the "spoiled" child thing you hear so much about. They were used to being soothed 24x7 for 9 months, so soothing them whenever they appear to need it is still at worst a 50% drop.

After 3 months or so, I've read that they can start doing things on purpose to get your attention, and this is when the difficult part starts: knowing when to soothe and when not to.

My guess is that, if your leaving the room is all that causes your child to cry when you put them down for bed, then it's their displeasure of having to miss out on whatever it is that they're not able to be a part of that's the cause, not some terror, and that might be a good time to learn to soothe themselves.

Re: Babies, self-soothing, and being left to cry

feeds@kickapps.com (Capt Tom Bunn MSW LCSW) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:53:40 PST

Hi.

I can't say because Allan Schore didn't specify that kind of circumstance. He was focused on the fact that, at some point - and I don't know how long it takes - the child becomes dissociated. My guess is it wouldn't take long, and the safest approach would be to hold or touch the baby until it is asleep.

Babies, self-soothing, and being left to cry

feeds@kickapps.com (PrincessVespa) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:08:20 PST

I'll be back here next week when I have a round-trip to Vancouver via Minneapolis (16 hours total, half on regional jets) but in the meantime:

I have been sharing what Captain Tom has written about attachment parenting, self-soothing, and babies being left to cry it out with moms on a different (parenting) board, and the question came up: how much crying is too much? To take my own case, with my now-4-month-old daughter, there have been times when we've tried everything and when we put her down in her crib, she howls for three minutes and then falls asleep. I think the longest she's gone crying before falling asleep was 17 minutes (I was counting, because I was going to check in at 20). We've never gone longer than 20 minutes without going back to her.

My assumption would be that there's a difference between just putting the baby in and shutting the door, especially if they're too young to really make it through the night on their own...