New Study on "Cry it Out" Sleep Training

By JustMommies

A new study recently published in the journal Pediatrics says that it’s okay for parents to use “cry it out” methods to get their babies to sleep at night. The debate has been out on whether or not “cry it out” sleep training methods cause psychological damage to children. This study found that children had no long-term damage from being left to “cry it out” at night.

Researchers looked at two popular sleep training methods, controlled comforting and camping out. Controlled comforting is a sleep training method where parents allow their babies to cry for periods of time, but check on them. Each time they leave the baby in the crib for a longer period of time until they fall asleep. Camping out is a similar method, but instead parents stay in the room comforting baby periodically as he cries himself to sleep.

The study compared babies who were put to sleep using these two sleep training methods with parents who did not use sleep training with their babies. They found that there were no significant differences in the two groups and that “cry it out” sleep methods did not cause emotional problems or sleep issues in the future.

For more on this study see:
Parents Can Let Sleepless Babies Cry It Out: Study

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2 comments

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By Lorrainium on 09/16/12 at 9:15 pm

I still don't believe it. Babies cry out of instinctual need. They're trying, desperately, to tell us, I shouldn't be sleeping alone, it's not natural. ...

By alittlelost on 09/16/12 at 5:14 am

Great article! I don't personally believe in cry it out but I'm glad to see that they are saying if you do it to still be comforting your baby. I hope p ...

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