CIO

Definitely an interesting story.

The debate of crying it out with your baby is slowly starting to brew on one of my Yahoo Groups and this recent story was posted.

If you read the article closely, most of these Drs. are talking about parents who try to "schedule" a young baby (under 6 months, but often even under 3 months) by using CIO. That's ridiculous and I personally consider those parent's insane, or at the very least lacking in parental "intelligence" (this statement coming from a certified conflict-a-phobe!). There is NO reason in my book to allow a child less than 3 months of age to CIO for "scheduling" purposes for any length of time. Babies create their own unique schedule and being a parent means adapting to that schedule.

I can't even count the number of times on different boards, I would read about a parent letting a child cry to the point that the child vomited or was going on 3 hours of all out, hyperventilating screaming in the belief that they were letting him CIO. WAIT, WHAT? Vomited??!! Um, hello! WAY past CIO, you're into abuse there, in my book! Or parent's of 6 week olds asking if it was time to CIO because their child still woke 2x a night. It’s these parents (and wacked out authors who promote scheduling very young children) that have changed the definition of CIO to these all or nothing terms.

I wonder how a person can be so insecure of their parenting that they
grasp onto CIO concepts such as these so blindly that they can't trust their own instincts. It’s these morons that give CIO such a horrible association. Parenting is all about common sense...People need to get some and use it!

I know plenty of people that would argue saying they followed this book or that book successfully, but almost always you'll hear "but I did this or that different because little Johnny needed or has x,y, &z"  THEN you didn't really follow this book or that!  You created a plan with aspects of a certain book, but USED COMMON PARENTING SENSE to direct you and your child (I still say your insane though if you let a very small child cry from hunger).  The problem is with those parents who apparently lack common sense.

My Ped recommends CIO, but only with certain parents. She has to feel out the "parenting level" of her patients, almost the parenting "intelligence".

She advocated CIO with us, only because she knew:
1.) Ally was 8 months old. She wasn't a 3 week old baby that we were CIO with because we wanted her on some pre-determined feeding or bizarre eat, play, sleep schedule. We just wanted A to go to sleep (at night) when we put her in her crib, knowing that she was clean, full, and TIRED.
2.) We wouldn't put Ally in a room, shut the door, walk away and that's it, never to walk in again until the morning (taking CIO absolutely literally).
3.) We were going to CIO using common sense, OUR OWN common sense. We weren’t following a book with rules that told us exactly what we had to do with no regard to our child’s temperament or personal schedule.
3.) We had lived through COLIC in which, to a degree allowing your child to cry, unattended is absolutely necessary to keep a parent sane and "in control". It is also the most difficult thing you can possibly do. Maybe that gave us another layer of understanding of both A's cries and the true heartbreak of listening to a child cry and not responding. +++ I do not define a parent who is at the end of their rope and NEEDS to put a crying child in a safe location and walk away for the child's safety, as letting a child Crying It Out +++

Like I said, when Ally was about 8 months old, DH and I decided to give CIO a try. At this point A had decided "bedtime,shmedtime, it was PARTY TIME!!" DH and I would stand outside her door, and listen to her cries. There was a definite difference between "GET BACK IN HERE MOM, THIS ISN'T GOING TO WORK" and "I really think I need to whine and cry a little to settle down and heck, maybe as a bonus they'll come get me". We responded immediately to the 1st, and more slowly to the 2nd. I can't comprehend how someone would willingly listen to the 1st and not respond immediately (or by 8 months not be able to tell the difference between the 2).

I really don’t know where I stand on CIO. Have I used it? Yes. Was it successful? Yes. Did I use it blindly following some authors book with clear cut rules and time schedules? NO.

I used CIO, but with common sense, a clear understanding of my child, and only when age and situation appropriate. Would I recommend CIO? Probably not. If a parent needs my opinion on the subject to decide whether or not to CIO, then they probably shouldn’t.

So why did I write all this? I don’t know.  I feel very strongly that CIO has its place, mainly for parents using common sense on when, why and how to use CIO.  But also that apparently, in this day and age, CIO is used for all the wrong reasons.