Why parents should let baby carry on crying

IT MIGHT tear at your heart strings and induce unbearable feelings of guilt.

But parents should not automatically rush to the cotside when their baby is screaming rather than sleeping soundly.

Allowing infants to cry for a short time rather than immediately going to comfort them does no harm, say scientists.

In fact, both babies and parents will end up sleeping longer – and be far less stressed.

Researchers said that, rather than always going to comfort babies, mothers and fathers should follow certain techniques that teach them to settle themselves.

These include ‘controlled crying’,

‘It can be hard to do’

where the parent waits a certain length of time before soothing the child. Initially, it may be two minutes on the first night, increasing to five minutes for the second, and so on, until the baby learns to settle itself.

Another method the researchers found effective was ‘camping out’, where the parent sits in the child’s room while they ‘teach’ themselves to fall back to sleep.

The University of Melbourne team found that, eventually, both parents and babies end up sleeping longer.

This means parents are less stressed and, in particular, reduces the mother’s chance of post-natal depression.

The researchers said leaving babies to cry for a short time does no longterm damage to their mental health or behaviour, despite other evidence that babies left to cry become stressed.

But the research only involved babies who were at least seven months old.

Some experts believe very young infants should not be left to cry. Lead author Dr Anna Price said: ‘For parents who are looking for help, techniques like controlled comforting and camping out work and are safe to use.’

But she made it clear parents should not simply shut the bedroom door and let babies cry through the night. ‘It’s very distressing to parents,’ she added. ‘It’s hard to do. We don’t recommend it.’

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, followed 326 Australian children from the ages of seven months to six years old.

When the children were six, the researchers tested their behaviour, their sleeping patterns and relationship with their parents.

Those who had been left to cry were less likely to have behavioural problems, with some 12 per cent having issues compared with 16 per cent of those who had been comforted.