Letting babies cry themselves to sleep will not cause the little ones long-term emotional problems, a new study suggests. The same goes for the parents who might feel a little guilty for doing so.
Sometimes, crying yourself to sleep works, even for babies. In fact, the study on babies found that "graduated extinction," which is the technical term for the process of "crying it out," is a good sleep training method.
A research group in Australia enrolled 43 sets of parents whose babies have sleeping problems. The babies were between 6 and 16 months old.
One-third of the parents practiced graduated extinction. In this technique, they were told to leave the room after putting their child to bed.
If the baby cries, they need to wait awhile before entering the room to comfort the crying child. Within the study period, the parents were asked to gradually extend their waiting periods.
The other third practiced "bedtime fading." In this new sleep training method, the parents were told to put the child in bed close to the actual time the baby typically falls asleep.
Unlike the first group, the parents weren't asked to leave the room. The remaining third acted as controls.
After the three-month study, the babies in the first group — the ones who "cried it out" — slept an average of 13 minutes faster than the controls. The number of times these babies woke up in the middle of the night were also significantly less.
As for the second group, they slept 10 minutes faster compared to the ones who didn't try new sleep training methods. However, these kids and the ones in controls shared the same frequency rates of waking up in the middle of the night.
"A combination of using bedtime fading first, then moving on to graduated extinction could be another good approach," said Sleep Expert and Psychologist Michael Gradisar, who is also an associate professor at Flinders University.
For some people, 13 and 10 minutes may not be as impressive as a full hour, but for new parents, these are very important improvements.
These can be especially important to single parents, particularly single moms, who are the most sleep-deprived people in the United States as per survey.
"When you are waiting for your baby to go to sleep, every minute counts," commented Psychology Professor Marsha Weinraub from Temple University. Weinraub was not part of the study.
The findings were published in the journal Pediatrics on May 24.
