This article sums it up... Leaving my child to cry violates my deepest instincts
Arguments against the Ferber method
Although studies show that extinction sleep training can be very effective in eliminating bedtime protests and stalling tactics, many people—parents, pediatricians, and researchers included—worry about potential side effects.
Leaving children alone to cry seems to violate our deepest instincts, and no wonder. For most of human history, our ancestors biggest sleep problem was almost certainly the avoidance of predators.
Like modern-day hunter-gatherers, our ancestors slept communally and shared “watch” duties (Worthman and Melby 2002). Children snuggled up to their parents and siblings. And if children cried out, it was important to soothe them quickly to reduce the chances of attracting predators to the camp.
In this setting--the setting that characterized millions of years of human and pre-human evolution--leaving a child alone at night would have constituted child abandonment, if not attempted infanticide.
Our evolutionary past has left its stamp in our brains. When babies and children are left alone at night, they are likely to experience one of the most primal and powerful stressors known to young animals--separation anxiety (Panksepp 2000). Separation anxiety is a panic response arising from a primitive part of brain that also processes information about physical pain (Panksepp 2000).
Concerns about separation anxiety and stress have led some pediatricians, researchers, and therapists to worry about the adverse effects of the Ferber method on a child’s health and well-being (e.g., Sears and Sears 1996; Commons and Miller 1998; Sunderland 2006).
- See more at: http://www.parentingscience.com/Ferber-method.html#sthash.ozhoz8Xc.dpuf
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