When Brenden first started sleeping through the night about 3 months ago, he was really good about being put down in his crib and he would go to sleep on his own. For some reason, about a month or so ago, Brenden decided this wasn’t acceptable. As soon as we put him in the crib, he would start crying at full blast. We would pick him up and console him. He quickly learned that crying = get picked up, and we fell for it.

About 3 weeks ago, Maggie was at the pediatrician’s office and asked how we could break this habit now that we’d formed it with him. And the advice we got wasn’t pleasant… “Sit in the room, don’t look at him, and let him cry to sleep…he will eventually learn that he won’t get picked up. It will probably take 3 painful nights.”

Maggie tried the first night, but wore down and sent me in to finish the job. It was painful at first. But eventually, I actually got to where I was drowning out his cries and whimpers. In fact, I almost fell asleep before he did.

We repeated this process for about 5 nights and Maggie even got to where she could outlast him. And I am happy to say that now, Brenden barely makes a fuss, if any at all, when we put him down in his crib for the night. Now to get him working on his nap times, which are still a battle zone.