Letting babies 'cry it out' may be dangerous for their health. A psychologist has said that new developments in neuroscience show that letting babies "cry it out" is dangerous for their longterm health.
Caregivers who respond promptly to a baby's need are more likely to have children who are independent. According to the Psychologist Darcia Narvaez, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Collaborative for Ethical Education at the University of Notre Dame, writing on Psychology Today, studies on rats with high and low nurturing mothers show there is a critical period of development in which genes for controlling anxiety are turned on for lifelong use.
If in the first 10 days of life (equivalent to six months in a human being) a rat is exposed to a low nurturing mother, the genes controlling anxiety never get turned on and the rat lives the rest of its life anxious in new situations unless drugs are administered to alleviate anxiety. The researchers say similar genes exist in humans which are turned on by nurturing. The Dangers of Crying It Out. By Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D. © 2011 Letting babies "cry it out" is an idea that has been around since at least the 1880s when the field of medicine was in a hullaballoo about germs and transmitting infection and so took to the notion that babies should rarely be touched (see Blum, 2002, for a great review of this time period and attitudes towards childrearing).
In the 20th century, behaviorist John Watson (1928), interested in making psychology a hard science, took up the crusade against affection as president of the American Psychological Association. He applied the mechanistic paradigm of behaviorism to child rearing, warning about the dangers of too much mother love. The 20th century was the time when "men of science" were assumed to know better than mothers, grandmothers and families about how to raise a child. Too much kindness to a baby would result in a whiney, dependent, failed human being. Don't these attitudes sound familiar? Neurons die. Self-regulation is undermined. No. U.S. Study: Cry-It-Out Harmful to Babies. 23Apr2010 by Summer+ in Baby's health, Parenting Recent scientific tests have revealed that babies left to cry-it-out have been found to have higher levels of stress hormones in their brains.
This hormone becomes toxic at high levels, causing damage to the developing infants. Dr Penelope Leach says that when left to cry an infant produces the stress hormone cortisol. The longer they are left to cry, the higher the level of cortisol is in their brains. Sleep Training: A Review of Research. The Unconnected Child. Detached from the start Suppose parents, for fear of spoiling their baby or letting her manipulate them, restrain themselves from responding to her cries and develop a more distant, low-touch style of parenting.
What happens then? The baby must either cry harder and more disturbingly to get her needs met or give up and withdraw. In either case, she finds that her caregiving world is not responsive. Eventually, since her cues are not responded to, she learns not to give cues. The detached look You can tell the unconnected baby by his expression – or lack of one. As the unconnected child gets older, much of his time is spent in misbehavior, and he is on the receiving end of constant reprimands; or he tunes out and seems to live in his own separate world. The unjoyful child. Cry it Out (CIO) - Atachment Parenting - Leave Baby to Cry. Among parents of infants these days, there is constant debate about how to respond to a baby’s cries.
On one hand, there are proponents of the “cry it out” method, where the baby is left alone to cry in the hopes that he or she will eventually stop. On the other hand, there are the “attachment parents” who respond immediately to their crying babies and attempt to soothe them using various methods including holding and cuddling. Denene Millner: Cry It Out: The Method That Kills Baby Brain Cells. I know.
A dramatic headline. Made you look. But it's not fiction. Wp-content/uploads/2010/04/3133729_s-200x300. Ask Dr. Sears: Cry It Out? Cry-It-Out (CIO) Sleeping Training. Has cry-it-out been scientifically proven harmful to babies?
Dr. Darcia Narvaez, a Psychology professor at Notre Dame, published a piece in Psychology Today making a case that the cry-it-out method of sleep training damages babies, making them less intelligent, more anxious, and less connected to their parents. The myth of controlled crying - Parenting Australia. The Myth of Controlled Crying About the Author: Pinky McKayAn International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) and a Certified Infant Massage Instructor, Pinky McKay is a Melbourne based writer and editor specialising in health, education and family issues.This is an edited extract from Sleeping Like A Baby by Pinky McKay (Penguin $24.95) Despite the popularity of controlled crying it is not an evidence-based practice.
Professor James McKenna, director of the Mother-Baby Behavioural Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana and acclaimed SIDS expert describes controlled crying as ‘social ideology masquerading as science’. The Con of Controlled Crying. After a week of controlled crying he slept, but he stopped talking (he was saying single words).
For the past year, he has refused all physical contact from me. If he hurts himself, he goes to his older brother (a preschooler) for comfort. Cry It Out: The Method That Kills Baby Brain Cells. I know.
A dramatic headline. Made you look. But it’s not fiction. It turns out that the “Cry It Out” method of baby sleep training, where you ignore that your kid is screaming, crying and turning 40 shades of purple so that she can break herself out of the habit of being spoiled and cuddled to sleep, does more harm—way more—than good. In her recent piece for Psychology Today, Darcia Narvaez, an associate professor of psychology at Notre Dame, writes that when babies are stressed, their bodies release cortisol into their systems—a toxic hormone that kills brain cells.
“Babies are built to expect the equivalent of an ‘external womb’ after birth… being held constantly, breastfed on demand, needs met quickly,” Narvaez writes. Um, remember that scene from the True Hollywood Stories: Rick James episode on the Dave Chappelle Show—the one where Rick James is grinding his feet into Eddie Murphy’s couch? But I was. That was Daddy, baby! Yeah. Babies left to cry can suffer brain damage, warns parenting guru - Health News - Health & Families. The long-running argument is set to be reignited this week, when a new book by the childcare expert Penelope Leach is published. Crying It Out Causes Brain Damage. Thought we'd pass along this brief article [first published in 2006] because for a number of years even Ferber himself (the 'father' of sleep training, controlled crying and leaving a baby to 'cry it out') stated he would not repeat this with his own babies given what we now know to be true about the physiological, psychological, and emotional damage that CIO has on infants, children, and human development.
Unfortunately, the 'controlled crying' bandwagon that Ferber started many years ago (maybe even with good intentions?) Has continued to roll out of control and parents are regularly given this very detrimental advice to ignore their baby's only means of communicating that a need has not been met - her cry. We know there are cultures where babies' needs are met 'round the clock, and as a result, they rarely ever cry. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Why shouldn't this be the case for our little ones as well? Let's not do them any more harm. The following by Dr. A Harvard University study by Dr. Dr. Science Says: Excessive Crying Could Be Harmful. Science tells us that when babies cry alone and unattended, they experience panic and anxiety. Their bodies and brains are flooded with adrenaline and cortisol stress hormones.
Science has also found that when developing brain tissue is exposed to these hormones for prolonged periods these nerves won’t form connections to other nerves and will degenerate. Is it therefore possible that infants who endure many nights or weeks of crying-it-out alone are actually suffering harmful neurological effects that may have permanent implications on the development of sections of their brain? Here is how science answers this alarming question: Chemical and hormonal imbalances in the brain Research has shown that infants who are routinely separated from parents in a stressful way have abnormally high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, as well as lower growth hormone levels.
Dr. Dr. Decreased intellectual, emotional, and social development Infant developmental specialist Dr. Dr. Dr. P. Share.