What this means is that despite a plethora of opinions on how long you should leave your baby to cry in order to train her to sleep, nobody has studied exactly how long it is safe to leave a baby to cry, if at all.īabies who are forced to sleep alone (or cry, because many do not sleep) for hours may miss out on both adequate nutrition and sensory stimulation such as touch, which is as important as food for infant development. In a talk at the International Association of Infant Mental Health 9th World Congress held in Melbourne in 2004, Professor James McKenna, Director of the Mother-Baby Behavioural Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, and acclaimed SIDS expert, described controlled crying as ‘social ideology masquerading as science’. Although many baby sleep trainers claim there is no evidence of harm from practices such as controlled crying, it’s worth noting that there is a vast difference between ‘no evidence of harm’ and ‘evidence of no harm’.Ī policy statement on controlled crying issued by the Australian Association of Infant Mental Health (AAIMHI) advises, ‘Controlled crying is not consistent with what infants need for their optimal emotional and psychological health, and may have unintended negative consequences.’Īccording to AAIMHI, ‘There have been no studies, such as sleep laboratory studies, to our knowledge, that assess the physiological stress levels of infants who undergo controlled crying, or its emotional or psychological impact on the developing child.’ĭespite the popularity of controlled crying, it is not an evidence-based practice.
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