Parenting: much ado about sleeping
September 22, 2008 8:42 pm
Look at that face — Could you possibly resist it if it were crying?
Because that’s precisely what pretty much every “parental guide”, other parents (including our own!), and advice column has advised us to do at night, when he wakes up. “Just let them cry it out,” they say, “they’ll get over it after a few nights.”
I just can’t do it though — we’ve tried it. For about 2 or 3 days, when he would wake up, I would callously make him wait before we went in. First wait-period was 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 — every time he wakes up (which is a bit of a mis-statement, as he never really goes back to sleep) the duration of the delay increases.
The problem is, it doesn’t work. One night he cried for 2 and a half hours solid. Seriously. He’s done this in the car too. The kid’s got lungs like the Three Tenors.
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