‘Cry It Out’ sleep method doesn’t harm babies, study finds

A news research says letting babies cry themselves to sleep helps reduce nighttime waking without causing emotional or behavioral issues.

Scientists found “crying it out” helped babies fall asleep about 13 minutes sooner with fewer overnight awakenings compared to other infants.

The scientists found that babies left to ‘cry it out’ did not produce any more signs of stress in the infants than ‘gentler’ methods.

In fact, the babies in the ‘cry it out’ group went to sleep faster and woke up in the middle of the night fewer times than the children put to bed with other methods.

The study’s lead author, Michael Gradisar, said the ‘cry it out’ method makes parents and children less likely to fall into a ‘coercive behavior trap,’ where babies are rewarded by parents’ attention to their cries.

“This is especially true if the parent responds quickly after the child cried,” Gradisar told Today. “The result being the child is more likely to cry more often thus disrupting the sleep of both themselves and their parents.”

Agencies/Canadajournal