Sleep Training

For the last week, we have been "sleep training" at my house. "Sleep training" is basically a nice way to say, "I'm letting my child cry himself to sleep." Other books coach you to say, "I am letting my son learn how to sooth himself, which is a valuable life lesson and important for his development." Truthfully, I am sleep training him because I got tired of fighting with him to rock him to sleep every night.

I know, I know. There are lots of you out there (including my parents) who are not quite behind the whole crying-to-sleep idea. Some people say, "Oh, but I just LOVE to rock babies." Yeah, well . . . I like to rock babies too, but not when the baby is screaming at me, arching his back, and pinching the back of my arm when I am trying to rock him. It is just not soothing for either one of us. Other people say, "Oh, how can you stand to listen to him cry?" It's not like I enjoy hearing my infant son cry for 25 minutes. There are many, many other sounds I would rather listen to in the evening. I get a host of other questions, but mostly I say, this is what is best for him and me. Most of all, I do want to foster an independence in my child and I do not want to be rocking him to sleep when he is 6 years old (or 3 years old, for that matter).

Anyway, we started on Saturday night. I decided beforehand that I would let him cry for 30 minutes before soothing him (the book I am using says to go for an hour but even a hard-ass like me has limits.) The first night he cried for 25 minutes. But since then, he has cried less every night and tonight he really only moaned for 2 minutes. Needless to say, I am very proud of us. We did it!

So, I was feeling very good about my parenting skills when I took him to day care this morning. I proudly informed them that he can now put himself to sleep (implying that his mother was the most wonderful and competent mother in the world). His teacher looked at me and said, "Oh, yeah, he's been putting himself to sleep here for about a month now. He does so well!" Ugh (mental head slap.) I wanted to say, "You know, that's the sort of thing I would like written on his daily information sheet. Sure, I like to know how much he pooped today too, but the sleeping thing . . . much more important." But I didn't. I just smiled.