New research suggests letting infants cry for short periods until they settle can help both parent and child sleep better. But is it emotionally harmful?
I am confident that one day our six-year-old will sleep through the night. It may not be this week; it may take until secondary school. If we had sleep trained her, it might have been different, but I just couldn’t bear the tears. This makes me eligible to join the latest guilt trip after research in pediatrics showed that delaying bedtime and letting infants cry for short periods until they settle may be an act of kindness. Rather than causing emotional harm, it can help both parent and child sleep better.
It’s a debate that gets incredibly heated. Nearly half of mothers with babies over six months say their child has sleeping problems. Dr Michael Gradisar, lead author of a recent Australian study, says opponents tried to get the ethics committee to shut it down. The researchers randomized 43 infants with sleep problems between the ages of six and 16 months to either a usual routine, graduated extinction (allowing babies to cry for short periods over several nights) or fading (where the baby is put to bed a quarter of an hour later).
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