According to pediatrician and author Richard Ferber, allowing a baby to cry to sleep can help her learn that it is not rewarding to cry hard. His book, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, advocates letting a newborn cry for short periods before parents offer comfort. This tactic used for sleep training does not mean letting the baby cry indefinitely as some parents might think, but only for a short, specified period until he learns to fall asleep on his own.
Is It OK to Let a Newborn Cry to Sleep?
Child experts agree that newborn babies are too young to train to sleep on their own. Although many pediatricians and other experts have their own opinions on how to sleep-train a baby, everyone agrees that this process should start when the baby is a little older. Sleep-training is a process where the parent or care giver either allows a baby to cry it out or a parent to sit it out until the baby is asleep. The baby is being trained in these methods to put herself to sleep and to sleep longer at night. However, babies who are below three months old are not able to stop crying or soothe themselves to sleep unless their needs are met. These include the need for feeding and frequent change of diapers, which occur more often compared to older babies.
When Can You Let a Newborn Cry to Sleep?
Starting Signs
Between the ages of four to seven months, babies may show starting signs that they are ready for sleep-training. Parents who want to use the cry it out method of sleep training can teach their babies to soothe themselves to sleep at this age as long as they exhibit some signs that they are sleepy, such as yawning, eye rubbing, slowing of movements, or staring. They must show some pattern or schedule of sleeping and waking during daytime...
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...ing on her own in no time.
Watch your baby’s response time:
It is quite natural for babies to whimper once in a while in their sleep. Babies sometimes make noises while sleeping, especially during the light stages of sleep. Sometimes they do cry, but do not rush to her side immediately. They may just be whimpering regularly to comfort themselves. If you rush by her side, you may wake her up just before she falls asleep. So just listen and wait until she is really crying longer than allowed before you go to her. Otherwise, let her go to sleep by herself as planned.
Summary
Child experts do not advocate letting a newborn cry to sleep as a method of sleep training. Instead, they urge parents to comfort their newborns when they cry at night, until they are ready to sleep train at an older age.
Works Cited
http://www.whattoexpect.com/first-year/crying-it-out.aspx
Karp, Harvey. The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Baby Sleep Longer. New York, NY: Bantam, 2002. Print.
Second, “A tired child is almost not a child but a monster waiting to spoil your plans,” says Lori Bulloch of North Salt Lake, Utah, mother of a four year old, two year old, and a four month old. “It’s worth it for me to arrange my schedule around nap times. a rested child is simply a different child.” Bulloch adds. Children who get a satisfying nap sometime throughout the day will be happier than a child who doesn’t take or receive one.
When/if I have a baby, I will not have him/her sleep with my husband and I in the same bed. I probably would be the same as my mother and not get any sleep and become paranoid with the risk of my husband or I rolling over our baby. When he/she gets older and has nightmares and needs that security I will let him/her sleep with my husband and I. In addition, I feel like the child needs to be able to be independent and sleep on their own. In my sources, I have learned many things. I was very surprised with the study of how early co-sleepers show more independence and self-reliance than children who sleep in the crib by themselves. I also learned that there could be some advantages to co-sleeping, like it is easier for the mother to breastfeed since the child is right next to the parents. If you feel like co-sleeping is the best choice, then that is your choice. You, do
Emotionally the infant will need love, warmth & care. The baby will need to feel safe and have healthy emotion responses. When the baby is hungry or tired, they cry to express themselves.
Cosleeping and Biological Imperatives: Why Human Babies Do Not and Should Not Sleep Alone." Neuroanthropology.net. n.p. 21 December 2008. Web. The Web.
Dieter J. N. I., Field T., Hernandez-Reif M., et al, Stable preterm infants gain more weight and sleep less after five days of massage therapy. J Pediatr Psychol, 2003; 28, 403-411.
Infant attachment is the first relationship a child experiences and is crucial to the child’s survival (BOOK). A mother’s response to her child will yield either a secure bond or insecurity with the infant. Parents who respond “more sensitively and responsively to the child’s distress” establish a secure bond faster than “parents of insecure children”. (Attachment and Emotion, page 475) The quality of the attachment has “profound implications for the child’s feelings of security and capacity to form trusting relationships” (Book). Simply stated, a positive early attachment will likely yield positive physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development for the child. (BOOK)
Often frustrated parents or other persons responsible for a child’s care feel that shaking a baby is a harmless way to make a child stop crying. The number one reason why a baby is shaken is because of inconsolable crying. (National Exchange Club Foundation, 1998) An infant may spend two to three hours a day crying. (The Epilepsy Association of Central Florida) A caregiver momentarily gives in to the frustration of responding to a crying baby by shaking. Caregivers may be inadequately prepared for children.
On the nature side of the debate, every baby cried when they were trying to communicate to their caregiver. Crying is universal because it is the only way that babies can alert their caregiver that something is wrong. Furthermore, each baby cooed, babbled, and cried without prompting. Ponijao babbles when her mother pats her on the back because she likes the sound it makes. Bayar’s brother keeps putting a strip of fabric in his face, making him cry out of annoyance. Mari babbles and has a “conversation” with another baby on one of her visits to the park. Hattie also starts saying syllables on her own. However, nurture plays a huge role in language development as well. Each baby was read to, spoken to, sung to, or a mixture of the former. Without prompting from his mother, Bayar would not be able to copy the sounds that she makes to try to get him to speak. Hattie can say “no” and “uh oh”, which are English phrases. Her parents would have taught her how to say those words. In fact, her mother reads to her, and she imitates the sounds her mother makes while reading. This proves that without both heredity and environment, language would never develop in an infant. They need to have an inborn ability to quickly and easily learn vocabulary and grammar during the critical periods, but they also need to hear and interact with language in their
if she can hear it then she'll be able to sleep knowing that her baby
The implanting of electrodes in the pleasure centers of all newly born infants seem almost ideal, at first. I would not volunteer my future children or myself, but I can no say that l am against it. However, crying from a newborn baby is completely natural and it is the only indicator in determining if the baby needs food or is uncomfortable. Some parents do use cold medicine to soothe a crying baby to sleep, but creating a drug just to soothe a crying baby can later be used too often and lead to long-term effects. I personally do not take medication (I do not even go for my flu shot) simply because the business of prescription at times can be unethical and unnecessary. Unless it is a natural simulator, if that.
Crying is important in infant development, as it’s infants’ way of communicating with the world surrounding them. The types of crying an infant does is thus important to understand, to know what the infant needs as he/she cannot explain themselves with the spoken language. Furthermore, crying is important to know whether or not the infants lungs have filled with air, since they couldn’t be crying without that, but also crying infants render signs that, for an example tells whether the newborn baby’s central nervous system works and functions. There are three types of cries: a basic cry, anger cry, and an in pain cry. The basic cry is what some experts
Newborn babies normally feed every few hours throughout the day and night and may therefore sleep a few hours then wake up again. Because of this, parents cannot begin training the newborn or impose a regular schedule for sleeping. One must quickly respond to the child's hungry cries and feed her to comfort her. Although you may also lose sleep because of of this, you can try napping whenever the baby sleeps to catch up with yur own sleep.
The different stages are based on different types of development such as motor skills, speech, social skills and hearing and vision. When a child is about 1 ½ months old they are able to hold up their own head steady. Of course they aren 't able to talk so the baby just does a lot of cooing and babbling. Even though children are very young they are very selective about who they communicate with. The baby usually will focus on the parents when it comes to who they see and hear, although they love to look at new faces and can even smile at their parents. Babies are often startled by any sudden
the sleeper will gradually descend deeper into sleep, becoming more and more detached from the outside world and progressively more difficult to awaken. Stage three is the beginning of deep sleep, occurring about thirty to forty five minutes after you first fall asleep. The deepest sleep occurs in Stage four. Stage three and four has the biggest and slowest brain wave. REM sleep, a mentally active period during which dreaming occurs, provided a biological explanation for this phenomenon. Scientists found that brain activity during REM sleep begins in the pons, a structure in the brainstem, and neighboring midbrain regions. The pons sends signals to the thalamus and to the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for most thought processes. There are several myths about sleep. For one, how much sleep a person should get? According to our text book people should sleep for at least eight hours to maintain sound mental and physical health. But every one doesn’t get the chance to sleep for that amount of time. There is no normal amount of time you should sleep. Everyone is not the same. For one I might sleep for five hours and feel refreshed enough to work another shift. Other hand my cousin might need more then eight hours of sleep to feel refreshed.