‘Does letting my baby cry himself to sleep actually teach him to sleep?’

“I feel like crying-it-out is one of those parenting techniques we’ll one day look back at with horror,” the mum-of-one says.

Sarah’s son is seven months old, and for much of the baby’s short life, Sarah has been lying next to his bed, patting and shushing him to sleep.

“My husband said I’m not really teaching him to fall asleep by himself, and I thought he had a good point,” the mom-of-one said on Reddit.

So she decided to try controlled crying, where she let her son cry for set periods of time, “repeat until he passes out”.

But the baby wasn’t having it. He would scream until his mum came in to soothe him, and when she left, “cue the screaming”.

As many parents do, Sarah found the technique unbearable.

“I do make sure that when I return to soothe him, I am composed – he has no idea I’m sitting on the stairs silently sobbing as much as he is.”

She began to doubt whether crying it out was helpful or effective.

“I can’t stand the idea that he’s crying for me and is feeling ignored. He’s seven months old, popular theory says that until six months he didn’t even realise he was a separate entity from me, and I’m expecting him to settle himself alone in the dark??”

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Mum questions controlled crying

Sarah wondered about all the old parenting advice that’s been debunked, like not cuddling babies to avoid spoiling them.

“I can’t help but feel like crying-it-out is going to be another parenting tip we look back on in horror,” she said.

Her husband disagreed and worried that if she kept patting his back and staying with him until he slept, the baby wouldn’t be able to sleep as a toddler.

“He would prefer to properly do the cry-it-out method, so leaving our son to cry for five minutes is our compromise.

“I keep having this very morbid thought that something could happen to him overnight and the last conscious thoughts he had were of abandonment and I can’t bear it.”

She also wondered, is leaving a baby to scream until he passed out really teaching him to fall asleep on his own?

RELATED: ‘Controlled crying really worked for us, but it took a piece of me with it’

RELATED: ‘I’m a mum of three and controlled crying saved my sleep’

The mum doubted controlled crying for her seven-month-old son. Photo: iStock

Reddit weighs in on controlled crying

The community was supportive, commenting that Sarah seemed to have a technique that worked, and that every family and child was different.

“It seems like OP has a solution that works,” one person said. “The whole ‘teaching the baby to sleep on their own’ thing… the baby is seven months! I don’t understand why we expect babies to just soothe themselves so young.”

“Sounds like your current system is working,” said another. “He falls asleep in 10 to 15 minutes quietly with some back stroking. What’s wrong with that?”

RELATED: ‘The research is wrong – here’s the truth about controlled crying’

One parent whose daughter is older than Sarah’s son said that bedtime always changes.

“His bedtime routine with get indefinitely longer and much more needy as he gets older whether you pat him now or not,” they said. “My daughter was sleep trained, no patting, cry-it-out and all. Now her bedtime routine is a whole hour… with reading books and tucking in and then snuggling. What you have now is the best case scenario. It’s okay to let yourself enjoy it.”

Another mum who sleep trained also weighed in with some balanced advice.

“You have to do what works for your family,” she said. “I was on the verge of a mental breakdown due to lack of sleep. It didn’t matter where my child was, in his crib or in bed with me, he wasn’t sleeping. My child needed a well-rested mum."

Originally published as ‘Does letting my baby cry himself to sleep actually teach him to sleep?’