From: dlin@weber.ucsd.edu (Diane Lin)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Sleep Question (Please no Ferber)
Date: 12 Jan 1993 00:23:20 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu
Summary: long-term trust issue

In article <1993Jan11.192312.25339@cbnews.cb.att.com> klj@cbnews.cb.att.com (karen.l.carr) writes:
>[...]
>My method assures her that I will go into her when she cries.  She can
>trust in that steadfast rule.  Ferber wants to keep this, but it is hard
>for ME to determine if my child will interprete my actions in this way.
>(Yes, I know that many many people experienced no change in their child's
>behaviour right away -- but what about their relationship later on, any
>long-lasting effects in terms of trust then?).  Alison stops crying now
>when I hold her, whether it is in the middle of the night or after getting
>a shot at the doctors.  I don't know if its because I go to her in the
>night, but it is one part of my OVERALL parenting scheme -- which is
>successful in my opinion.
[...]

From our experience, once our baby was "Ferberized", any cries
in the middle of the night definitely signal that something is wrong
(either illness, nightmares, or whatever).  In those cases, I go
into my son's room almost immediately (after I've figured out that
he's not just having a loud dream) and reassure him.  We are
currently going through a crib-to-bed transition and I definitely
think that having Ferberized Dylan when he was a younger baby has
made the transition to a bed easier on him.  He knows how to fall
asleep on his own, and how to calm himself back to sleep.  And, he
knows that his parents are there for him at any time.  He just
doesn't need to rely on us in order to get to sleep or to stay
asleep.  

As for questions about long-lasting effects in terms of trusting
one's parents, I can only say that we've not noticed one iota of
difference.  And, as others have noted, being able to get an
uninterrupted night's sleep makes all the difference to the parent's
state of mind and parenting abilities.  Being an at-home mother, I
found myself short-tempered and easily irritated when I
didn't/don't get a good night's sleep.  As for attending every
nighttime waking quickly, do you also attend to every daytime cry as
well?  As babies get older, I think it does them good to try to
persist on their own rather than having the parent step in at every
whimper of frustration, else they're less likely to learn to be
self-reliant.  So, unless your overall parenting philosophy is
internally consistent such that you attend to every little whimper
regardless of whether it's daytime or nighttime, I don't see the
point in focusing on how allowing some nighttime crying will lead to 
diminished trust in one's parents.

>I suspect I'll see a number of
>comments now on my philosophy and my comments about disagreeing with
>Ferber's comments (besides, I don't know him from Joe Blow from Idaho, why
>should I instantly take what he says as gospel -- even if it works.  

Well, Ferber, unlike Joe Blow from Idaho, is the Director of the
Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children's Hospital in
Boston, so he has *some* credentials on sleep problems.  That
doesn't mean, of course, that you should take any expert's words as
gospel--but, Ferber has seen countless cases of pediatric sleep disorders
which counts for something, no?  
-- 
Diane C. Lin			"Live now; make *now* always the
dlin@weber.ucsd.edu	         most precious time.  Now will 
(Dylan's mom, 2 years)	 	 never come again." (ST:TNG)