parents whos kids are used to being rocked to sleep...

i still rock my LOs to sleep. as annoying as it is, lol i am wondering if they grow out of it.
in your experience, do they eventually grow out of it or do i need to train them to fall asleep on their own?

 

We are in the same boat and I wish we would have never gotten in to that habit! Don't get me wrong, I love cuddling with them for those 20-30 minutes (DH and I alternate nightly who rocks which baby) but its going to be really hard when DH has to go on a business trip next month. In fact, that spurred me to find a babysitter to help then because putting them to bed is currently a 2 person job. But I would LOVE to be able to get out of this habit. We just can't imagine being able to put our awake babies in the crib and walk away without them pitching a fit...sure would love to be able to do that though! So I'll be interested in how other people handled this situation. After all they won't be drinking bottles forever so we need to be coming up with a game plan.

 

We have gone through a variety of methods to get our girls to sleep without being rocked...we started doing CIO around 7 months. I put them in the bed with a bottle of WATER, so they could suck on it to soothe themselves, too. Then we went from bottle to sippy cups...then we finally cut that out when we pottytrained. Now they watch a movie in their room till they fall asleep, lol. And they start Pre-K in August so sometime before then I have to cut the movie out, too. ALL my methods are probably major no-no's but I've gotten a full nights rest for 3.5 years, so I'm ok with it.

 

I had the same problem and I finally did my own version of CIO. I started with naps. When it was time to go down I would hold them for a minute or two. Pat their backs and then put them down. They would both fuss for a few minutes and sometimes cry for a minute or so but pretty quickly they got used to it. They still fuss but unless they are all out crying I leave them alone and they fall alseep. Once they seemed to be getting it at nap time I started doing it at night. They are pretty good then too. Its hard hearing them cry but as long as they stop quickly they are ok. The real trouble is that I have a lot of help that comes during the dsay and not everyone agrees with my method. They want to hold the babies till they fall asleep. I have to kick the helpers out of the room sometimes. Good Luck

 

My DH rocked my DD to sleep and he & I had a difference of opinion as to when he should stop doing this and let her learn to sleep on her own. I thought it should have stopped around 6 months and he did not stop until she was a year old. It got to the point where she would go to sleep fine for me, my Mom, my SILs but would not for him unless he rocked her. What we did to break the habit was letting her CIO and also doing a new bedtime routine with her. DH will read to her before bedtime, they count all the Snoopys on her wall, they look at the moon and stars before bedtime. I would say within 2 weeks, she was doing pretty decent sleeping on her own for him. Good luck!

 

Our boys fight naps terribly as it is right now!! They can be sooo sleepy rubbing eyes, yawning, etc but when we take them and rock them with a bottle many times they will fuss then, because they know a nap is in the works and they want no part of it. And we anticipate when they should be getting tired (about 1.5 - 2 hours after they wake) because we don't want them getting overtired, but these little stinkers are at a stage where they fight naps pretty bad. And regarding your helpers wanting to hold them until they fall asleep, this is exactly what my mom does and one of the biggest reasons why we haven't worked too hard yet on sleep training during nap time. We figure why bother if she is just going to reverse any progress we make :girl_devil: She watches them during the week while we are at work, and she NEVER lets them fuss in the crib for any length of time. Drives me nuts! Which is one of the reasons why I am somewhat looking forward to putting them in day care this May. I think they'll get that nap habit broken pretty quickly because its not like the boys will get rocked there!

 

I rocked my oldest one to sleep every night, and while I loved every minute of it, I also knew it was a habit I was not willing to start with any other child.

I finally had to do CIO to break him of the habit, it was a combination of rocking him to sleep, and if he woke in the middle of the night I would just take him to bed with me. So, when we decided to break the middle of the night habit I figured I might as well break the rocking habit too. It was several nights of awful crying, but within a week I could take him to bed and lay him down and he would fall asleep fairly quickly. I ended up using white noise (a small fan) and lullabies to help the transition. We've continued the lullabies and fan with the other kids, it works fantastic and it's an easy "habit" to take with us when we travel!

 

We did CIO and stopped rocking to sleep at 5 months, so I'm probably not the best person to answer...

But we have many, many friends who practiced more attachment-type parenting than we did, and all of them bemoaned the fact that they were still rocking their kids to sleep (or somehow otherwise helping them to fall asleep -- sitting in the room, patting backs, etc.) at 2 and 3 years old. They never said "I wish I'd done CIO," because I don't think they would ever have considered it, but they did wish that their toddlers could put themselves to sleep. It seems like kids do eventually learn that on their own, without any form of sleep training, but it's not till they're much older.

That said, you can do sleep training without doing CIO, if you want. Try the Sleep Lady or the No Cry Sleep Solution for starters.

 

We still rock our babies to sleep, we did it with our older two as well, i can't remember when we stopped exactly with the older two, probably 10-11 months, i just know that we gradually reduced the rocking time, we would feed, rock, then sit down with them in our arms without rocking, just stroking their hair, face, arms, legs, let them fall asleep in our arms then put them down. When they were really good at falling asleep in the arms with just the stroking, no rocking, then we started putting them in their beds after the bottle and just stroke them like before but in their sleep, then gradually reduced the amount of stroking, until they went to sleep on their own. It worked really well (and they both have very different personnalities), probably longer than CIO, maybe a month or so, but we didn't mind. Worked for us, this is what we will start to do with the twinks in a month or two
By the way they all listen(ed) to lullabies going to sleep as well.

 

My twins are only 6 months old, so I can't speak from direct experience. But I think it's safe to say that they will grow out of it at some point on their own. But as the pp noted, it will possibly be when the child is older. I would think it would be different for each child.

We still hold our babies until they fall asleep, co-sleep (we go to bed later than they do, so we help them get to sleep and they sleep on their own for a few hours before we go to bed) and are of the attachment parenting philosophy and CIO is not an option for us. I second the recommendation of the No Cry Sleep Solution. It's not a quick fix, but does offer many ideas of ways to get your kids to sleep without having to do CIO. It is sleep training, but it offers a gradual and gentle approach. So rather than all of a sudden asking your child to go to sleep on their own, you implement gradual changes and help them get used to each change so that they learn to fall asleep without all their familiar cues such as rocking, holding, etc. There may be some crying involved but it is different from CIO because the child is not left alone while crying. We have used some of the methods for naps, and I have found it to work really well. We have not used it for nighttime because we really like our routine of holding them to sleep and co-sleeping. But there are a lot of great suggestions in there for night time sleep.

I know I will get some backlash for saying this, but I can't really understand using CIO to help a child get used to all of a sudden going to sleep on their own after being used to being rocked/held each night for all of their lives. It seems like such a drastic and sudden change and must feel so jarring and scary for the child who has no idea why all of a sudden things are changing so much and has no language to communicate about it. I know that comment will probably read as offensive to some people, and I don't mean to be purposefully argumentative, inflammatory or attacking those who do CIO. It it just something that is hard for me to understand.

 

I totally agree with you and feel the exact same way
I don't think you'll get backlash though, you aren't judging, just giving your opinion, i think you said it very well.
Lots of my friends, and also my sister do CIO, and it works fine for them and their babies, it just isn't for me and mine. Like everyhting else, it isn't for everyone

 

We didn't just stick our kids in a room and let them scream when we did CIO. We patted their backs and soothed them and helped them adjust to soothing themselves. It was a process over time...not just "hey kid, sorry but we are tired of rocking you, so scream till you go to sleep" I'm not being a jerk...just rocking a baby and typed it one handed, lol, hence being short.

 

I also don't do a true "CIO" where you leave them alone completely. I consider it a modified CIO, where I constantly go back in there to pat them, hug them, reassure them I am still here, until they fall asleep. The first few nights can be up to several hours of crying and sometimes I go back in every 5 mins, sometimes I can wait a bit longer. By about night 3-5 they are pretty settled down and go to sleep much easier, with only a few mins crying, and by a week or so they are going right to sleep

 

Do your kids wake in the middle of the night and need you to come in the room so they can go back to sleep? If not, I wouldn't worry about it, but if they do, you should probably do sleep training so that they will learn to put themselves back to sleep when they wake up in the middle of the night...

 

no its just naps.