Controlled crying

When my wife and I brought our first daughter home from the hospital, I felt that overwhelming sense of responsibility for her well being. In the first few days she was home, I would constantly check on her, making sure she was alright.

As she grew older, she would cry when we put her to bed, and we would always pick her up and cradle her until she settled again, only to cry again when we put her back down. We were desperate to find a solution that could help settle our daughter and allow us to get some rest. Dr Christopher Green’s book, “Toddler Taming”, was top-rated at the time, and he espoused the technique of “controlled crying” as a sure way to get your child to settle and then sleep.

Controlled crying involves putting our daughter to bed, quickly comforting, settling and leaving her, and periodically checking and reassuring her while she is settled. The idea was to help our daughter move away from needing us to feed or cuddle her to sleep. The key to the technique is that when our daughter cried, we would wait for a set amount of time before going back, say two minutes at first. Then we would leave her for a little longer each time – for example, four, six and eight minutes.

It wasn’t easy leaving our daughter to cry when our instinct was to pick her up. However, the controlled crying technique worked a treat for our girl, and she soon became a great sleeper.