When parents talk about getting their babies to sleep through the night, crying it out or co-sleeping are the two options that are often mentioned.

A column on Times Online, which is the website for The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers in the United Kingdom, recently delved into this age-old debate. In “How do you get a baby to sleep through the night?” psychologist Tanya Byron acknowledged that “sleep training” can be a controversial topic among parents.

In her article, Byron compared the “cry it out” approach to co-sleeping, which entails comforting the child or sharing the same bed until the he or she can sleep alone.

“Those who subscribe to attachment parenting believe that the primary caregiver should be completely responsive to the child — in tune to every whimper, holding them close and co-sleeping. They argue that co-sleeping is the norm in many cultures and we are unusual in wanting our young to sleep away from us. The ‘cry it out’ lobby varies in the strictness of its approach. There are some who espouse very severe regimes from birth while others offer watered-down versions of this theory.”

Byron also mentioned two other strategies – “controlled checking,” when parents leave the baby in the crib for a few minutes and then return to reassure her or him that mom and dad are nearby; and “gradual withdrawal,” when a parent sits by the crib but doesn’t look or talk to the child until he or she is asleep. Mom or dad is then supposed to move farther away from the crib each night until they are eventually outside the child’s room.

My husband and I tried the “crying it out” method but we fell apart after a few attempts. It just hurt too much to see our baby crying all alone in the crib. As a result, both our kids slept in our bed for a long time. Now that they’re 2 and 5, they still end up in our bed some time before dawn on most nights.

Would I recommend co-sleeping? I think it works for some families. It was the best we could do, even if we sometimes didn’t get a good night’s sleep. (It probably would’ve helped if we had invested in a king size bed.)

Do you have any other strategies to get kids to sleep through the night?  How about strategies to finally get the kids out of our bed?

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