Does the 'Cry It Out' Strategy Work?

0:00President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. How many discounts does USA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Exploring both interstellar and interpersonal spacetime continuums. The last show with David Cooper. For infants, the debate on whether you should let them cry it out is a loud one. People are divided

1:08on what to do. And it turns out psychologists are also divided on it. Is a baby crying? Them learning how to be independent by you not tending to them? Or is it something your child is going to be complaining about in the therapist chair many years later? I'm here with Dieter Volko, who is a developmental psychology professor at the University of Warwick who has researched this. And I guess engaged in this debate, Dieter, welcome to the show. Hello. Parents have strong opinions on this, don't they? Do they basically fall into two camps that you should let kids cry it out and others saying it's a terrible idea? Well they actually fall in three camps. It's a little bit more complicated. So there's a subgroup who thinks that you should follow a recipe. So a child is an ingredient for the recipe and you should never let them cry out. It's like a law. And then you have got parents and the other two groups who think that children develop over time, you know, baby start off crying because it's a biological need, you know,

2:10because otherwise they can't follow the mum for feats, you know, they need safety and security. But as they get older, crying changes they understand is also to get attention and to get what they want. So they do it intentionally. So early on biological second half of the first year, it becomes intentional. So the parents actually operate intuitively. So what they do is they let them sometimes cry it out. So early on not. But then as they get a bit older, they wait a few times and that's about just about 40% of parents we found in our study. And then another 25% start off that they let them cry out. And then they will be about 35% by about 18 months who let them cry it out often. And they have realized that the important thing is that you do differential responding. So you respond to the child on your individual

3:13child rather than the recipe when they know what the child wants whether does it intentionally like having a temper tantrum by 18 months and you want to take attention away or it has hurt themselves. I think all parents would want to have the eight-year-old or nine-year-old kid, the kid who's too old, they would not want to have the kid who's at the supermarket, sees the candy bar, starts crying and as soon as the parent hands them the candy bar, they immediately stop and it's very clear that they're using crying as a form of manipulation. All parents would want to avoid something like that. How do we end up with a kid who really learns that crying is a means to get what they want? Well, if you all the time respond. So it's very important. The first three to four months, in every country in the world, the babies start off then they cry a little bit more by five, six weeks and then the crying reduces to about four months. So it's about two and a half hours by four to five weeks and then it goes down to 70, 70 minutes and during the early time

4:16you can do whatever you want. You want to respond and you should respond immediately but you still will have about 30% of the crying that you won't be able to console and the babies have no intention to wind you up because they just don't have the cognitive ability. It's biological but when then the second half of the first year they might, for example, cry in the evening to go to bed because they want to keep you for attention or wake up a lot at night and cry to signal to you because they get attention. So you then differentially in those situations withdraw that you react immediately and see whether the baby can learn to self-regulate. That's their first self concept. I can actually stop crying by myself. I can settle myself back. Back to the original question I posed when we started talking, this question of how fast do you respond? Why has this become such a huge like ideological battle for psychologists, for parents who have differing opinions? Why does

5:20this strike such a strong opinion in people? It is very interesting that about some things like in parenting without empirical evidence that you get one group and this is called attachment parenting. There's one study which was done with 26 white middle-class stay-at-home mothers which looked at whether if you intervene immediately and from that study base they've said if you don't immediately respond then your child will not bond properly to it. And three studies including one which we conducted one in Canada and one in the Netherlands did exactly this and found no. If you don't respond immediately it makes no difference to attachment. In a way it's very important that we take away this pressure that parents often have that they influence their child. Rather we say you can do different things and it really doesn't make much of a difference for the child's attachment development as long as you're sensitive towards a child. Is the crux of it all

6:25that parents are just so deeply worried that they'll damage their children with one wrong move? Like this seems like a fear that's there and parents are looking at studies even within consistent results to just confirm that oh no no if I make one mistake I'll damage my child. I think it is because we have got fewer children today than we had a hundred years ago and it is in particular where the attachment parent is the older parent, the wealthier parent who rely very much on parenting books so that they get a recipe and have this strong belief system. So now a study we found the parents who had more children who were actually less well off were more likely using occasion to let the child cry it out or the baby to cry it out. So is the result here that we should just do whatever and both techniques work and that we shouldn't have such strong opinions on it? Is that a valid takeaway or how would you correct me there?

7:26No the really valid takeaway is that most parents if you don't overeat on that have got an intuition of how you should bring up your baby and if you have got two children you realize that even with the same parent these two children are quite different like your sibling and the parents have to react to them differently so my advice is observe your baby because it's better there's no other baby like yours observe what it reacts to best and then intuitively most parents start off to responding immediately because it's a biological need early on and then after time they realize I can wait a little bit it's like with homework you don't do the homework for the child but you see whether it can solve the task first and if it can't you of course assist it so I'm not saying let it cry out the child or respond to immediately but gradually over the first year start waiting a little bit longer to see whether the child or the baby can learn to soos himself or herself.

8:33So trust your instincts as a parent is what I'm hearing exactly go back not listening to your I mean a lot of them middle-class parents we find when they come into the clinic is they they're used to their diary and a baby's don't don't follow a diary they don't have a you can't stop them or they don't fit into this scheme we're used to organize our life and so you have to let go a little bit relax a little bit and believe in your intuition. There are critics of this crying out theory that says that it can increase stress hormone in young babies and that can in turn affect brain development would you take a concern like that seriously it's always important to take it seriously but the empirical studies show that the mothers get more stressed but it's not it's not the babies so there are two studies which have been conducted on it well it sounds like we're creatures of instincts we have strong instincts and we often are told not to trust them but

9:36where would we have stronger instincts than in the in the department of child rearing which is such a I don't know biological imperative for so many people I think that's a good takeaway from this don't stress too much on cry it out don't cry it out tend to the baby as it's needed. Exactly absorb your own baby and see what this baby needs and even true in the same family may need slightly different things and most parents parent them differently. Well Dr. Dieter Volka is a developmental psychology professor at the University of Warwick in the UK Dieter I've enjoyed talking to you thanks for being on the program well thank you very much for having me this episode is brought to you by a athletic brewing company no matter how you do the game day on the couch in the crowd or manning the snack table athletic brewing fits right in with a full line up of non-alcoholic beer styles you can enjoy bold flavors all game long no hangovers no buzz

10:42no subbing out for water in the second half stuck the fridge for tip off with a variety of non-alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at athletic brewing.com near beer fit for all times