Conflicting Feelings

Everyone, or at least everyone in my parent's generation tells me that I have to put my kid in her crib and allow her to cry herself to sleep at night. This is done because otherwise "she'll never learn to sleep on her own". That to me sounds like bullshit.

Before I had my own kid, I just took this advice as something that needed to be followed. We let our kids cry themselves to sleep because that's what they need. They need to learn that they have to sleep alone in their beds. They have to be able to put themselves to sleep.

I don't know everything about this stuff so I have some questions. If you think about it, how is letting our baby's cry themselves to sleep teaching them that they have to sleep alone? Is it maybe instead teaching them that no one will come and comfort them in the night? And why are we teaching them to sleep alone any way, when later on in life we want them to sleep in the same bed as someone else.

There has been some research done that says letting your child cry themselves to sleep actually causes trust issues, and intimacy issues. I don't know if that is true either. I'm pretty normal *shifty*.

What I think needs to start happening more, is for people letting other people decide what is needed for their own children. Or at least supporting some of the parenting choices that are being made. I can't count how many times I have been told by people who haven't spent much of any time around Bean, what is best for her. The sleeping thing comes to mind the most.

I decided early, that night time was going to be Bean and mommy time, and that's the way it has always been. This means that I snuggle her to sleep on the couch and then put her in her crib. This works most nights rather well. Some nights though, she doesn't get the hint that it's bed time until 11. Then I get told that I need routine, and that she should go in her crib to cry and blah blah blah. She has a routine, and I am very uncomfortable letting her cry in her crib as a way of putting her to sleep. She can just as easily cry in my arms, where I can kiss her and try and get her to understand that I'm not angry, she just needs to sleep.

I also realize that this doesn't work for everyone. I'm not saying that anyone else but me needs to do this, and in fact it doesn't work all that well for her father when he does it. There has also been times when I have put her in her crib, but she spend the time chatting to herself, and is content, not screaming and mad and tired. I also realize that the biggest criticism is the fact that babies cry when they don't get their own way. True. But who really wants to be put in a cage at night and left alone in the dark?

Yeah. Think about that.