Second, I want to say I am actually kind of proud to see someone attempting sleep training in the toddler years vs infancy. I am a pre-med student with an interest in infant health, and over the course of years I’ve been convinced by people who study these things for a living that infants (6 months and younger) are not physically capable to sleep longer than 6-8 hours between feedings. Sure, having your 5 month old sleep 12 per night via cry-it-out sounds WONDERFUL, but it really isn’t. I can do into detail, but that’s a little more than I want to type at 1:30 in the middle of the night. Also, I would like to add that crying is not bad for toddlers. It is a form of pressure release that babies and children do from 6 months and beyond. Hell, when I am overwhelmed I cry, and I am 21. Babies are usually physiologically meant to be held when they cry up until emotional self-awareness around the age of 20-30 months. At that point, their brain is capable of releasing calming hormones when fussing or crying instead of flooding the brain with stress chemicals and shutting down.

With our daughter, I was convinced to try Babywise. At the time, she was sleeping in her crib fine for 6 hours at a time. Babywise told me she needed to sleep 8 and to walk away right when she showed the first signs of being tired. 2 20-minute crying fits later and I literally burned the book. She was 9 weeks old at the time. From then until 3 months she cried a solid 12 hours straight through the night. I was exhausted and would have killed someone if they looked at me funny. Then came glorious co-sleeping. Fast forward 7 months of blissful, almost completely uninterrupted 12 hour nights of sleep and we have arrived at our current stage of crib training. Our room is big enough to comfortably have her crib and our bed fairly close ( less than 3 feet away). My daughter knows it’s bed time. She knows that I’m not going to hop in bed with her. She also knows that I will always be there for her. She fusses a little when I don’t pick her up but then she just gives up after I offer my hand where she usually lays her head, and we cuddle until she’s half asleep then I hop in my bed and lay awake for hours and hours. Long story short, I hate sleeping without her, but she actually sleeps better in her crib, there are almost no tears involved, and most importantly she knows she is constantly loved and cared for no matter the time.

As toddlers, they tend to understand story time and understand that when you tell them sleeping in their fort is awesome, babies are different. Good job for finding what works for your family and I hope that this method has continued to work well

Honestly, 2 and a half? She’s still a baby (or was, at the time of writing) If you full expect that she’ll need your help at 18, maybe then you can “talk her down” and reason with her. She won’t need you forever and you’d be a selfish fool to waste the only time she really does, under the misguided belief that you need to teach her anything that she won’t just learn for herself in time.

Don’t buy in to the bullshit, not least because you’re published and are at risk of becoming as bad.

Sweet Dreams!

My husband is in the process of using this technique with our son, but hasn’t progressed mostly because he’s too lazy to change the routine I think! At the moment, he either lays down with our son (if he is tired too!) or he sits next to the bed and reads a book as he drifts off to sleep.

We have decided NEVER to do cry it out. I outlined our reasons here:
http://phdinparenting.wordpress.com/2008/07/05/no-cry-it-out/

my daughter is my world as any parent I love her more that anything. I hate to see her in stress or pain, but I will tell you what, this is my second night of doing this cry it out method,

I have her on infrared camera so I can see what is going on in addidion to the baby monitor, so it helps, I know and can see she is safe, and guess what, it seems to be working,

I dont follow the method exactly, I need to pick her up to comfort her, because she wont calm down, but it works,

the first night was 2 hrs of terror, 3 5 and 10 minutes at a time,

the second night was 1 hour, 3 5 and 10 minutes at a time,

I hope tomorrow is 30 minutes. and less each time,

I am a VERY overprotective worrywart parent, this is VERY hard, but the live see in the dark camera from sams club REALLY helps,

http://www.supernanny.com/Advice/-/Your-child/-/Child-care/Why-you-should-be-strict-about-sleep.aspx

I didn’t know it was called the The Ferber method or Ferberization, but that’s what we did with Sophia at four months and it worked for us. I later learned another method that I may try the next time around (if there is a next time) – “The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night” By Elizabeth Pantly. I heard it takes longer than the method I used, but you don’t have to deal with the crying. I have no idea how effective it is on toddlers, but sounds like doodaddy has found something that works for boo. By the way that is an incredibly cute picture.

We tried letting her sleep with us one night (didn’t work, nobody got any sleep), in her sister’s crib in our room one night (didn’t work, it wasn’t close enough; she wanted to be IN our bed), and then had Daddy sleep in her room with her for a week to prove that it wasn’t “scary” (and she still woke up all night each night wanting to hold Daddy’s hand, sleep RIGHT next to Daddy, etc.).

Finally, we just decided that of all of the “issues” we needed to resolve, sleep was of paramount importance to us. I do not function well on minimal sleep, and I’m just not a very good Mommy when I haven’t had enough sleep! And ditto for Daddy, and Keilani herself is much more prone to accidents when she is tired.

So, we finally put up a gate at the door to her room, mainly at my husband’s urging– I was so worried and didn’t want to, but it WORKED! She cried for less than 5 minutes (I was watching the clock as it seemed like HOURS to me) and then went to sleep and slept all night! Next night, 3 minutes, and the following night, not at all. We also of course explained to her the importance of sleep, that she would sleep best in her own bed, and that it was our job to keep her safe and to make sure that she didn’t get hurt and in order to do that, we needed to get a good night’s sleep and she did, too. It seemed to work…

That is just our experience though and every child is different, but I can’t tell you what a huge difference having enough sleep has made in my life! I hope you get lots of good rest soon!!!