Anyway, what I’ve come to suspect is that there really are approximately 6,124 ways to skin a cat, and I’m not as maternally superior to my grandma as I thought I was back when I was 23. Which, that’s kind of a bummer, eh?

My oldest would ONLY sleep in his carseat for awhile, and now I suspect this is because we’d inadvertently trained him to know that the carseat was nonnegotiable. Like, from birth. (even newborns have moms who have to buy groceries.)

Is that “learned helplessness?” and if so, is learned helplessness always such an awful thing for a kiddo?

And it took less than a week, and less than three hours of crying, to get here. The “cost” is almost entirely theoretical, and not particularly well-argued-for, in my opinion. (well, and there’s the hassle of having to listen to a really angry toddler holler for awhile, but honestly, that was the least of our problems by the time I hit that wall)

But the benefit? Priceless and obvious. Chronic sleep deprivation is nothing to casually screw around with, and I think that actually goes double for the primary caretakers of small children and our charges.

Anyway, I thought this whole Attachment Parenting thing was a dying fashion. Do you still meet youngish AP moms? I don’t believe at this point you could pay me to read anything by Dr. Sears. lol

I don’t know what every parent has gone through, but I have talked to a lot of parents and read the stories of a lot of parents who did decide to go the CIO route (as well as many who didn’t). I do know plenty of people who were dealing with less frustrating sleep situations that I was and who did turn to CIO. But I’m not making a judgment that all parents who use CIO have a lower threshold for frustration than I do. I’m just making an allowance for the fact that that may be the case.

*Definition of judgment: a: the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing b : an opinion or estimate so formed

The reason that I don’t judge is that I know everyone has limits. I think CIO is wrong. Period. But I don’t judge parents who use it, because I know that some people may hit the wall earlier than I do when it comes to the frustration caused by an infant who doesn’t sleep. That doesn’t make CIO good or right, but I can understand why some people are driven to that point. I wish that they could find a way to get better support, rather than having to resort to CIO, but unless I’m living there in their house with them and am there to provide that support, I don’t feel that I can judge their choice. That said, people who go hold opinions that babies cries are not meant to be answered, that they just have to toughen up and that say “ha ha….we can’t hear you….LOL” as their baby screams for over an hour every night. Yeah…I judge that. That sucks. More on the difference between saying “I don’t agree with that” and “I judge you for that” in this post: “Don’t Judge Me”.

I also don’t want you to back down in your beliefs – I just don’t like that you say you aren’t judging anyone in one breath and then in the next you say that if they do this, they could harm their children. Because really, if you saw someone beating their child, would you be able to say “I am not judging you, but I don’t think that beating your child is right and you should stop, but I recognize that you have a right to parent the way you want to”? I would definitely judge someone who I thought was hurting their child. What you are doing here is basically saying that if you use CIO, you are guilty of child abuse. Gee, I wonder why people get upset about that?

The only thing you are doing “wrong” in my book is that you are presenting your OPINION as FACT and backing it up with fallacious data.

I think letting a child cry for a couple of hours a night for a week has the potential to harm their relationship with their parents, make them fearful of going to sleep, etc. I also think that we don’t know how much is too much and there is no definitive way to say that every human will be okay with being neglected for X number of minutes and every human will be damaged after being neglected for Y number of minutes. Each person is different and I’d rather err on the side of caution and would prefer that others do too. But obviously I cannot make that decision for them and although I think CIO is wrong, I recognize that other parents have the right to make their own choices.

Obviously I’m not going to convince you of anything, but I’m also not going to back down and say “OMG because she accused me of researching instead of spending time with my children I obviously need to shut up”. Give me a break. I have plenty of other posts I could point you to on my blog that outline the reasons why I write about how we can become better parents, how I feel about the “don’t judge me” requests, and so on. I would point you to them if I thought that you were actually listening and interested, but I don’t get the sense that you are. You’re obviously here just to tell me that I’m wrong and I’m not going to change my mind on this issue, so I’m going to go hang out with my kids instead of arguing with you.