CIO

In the online forum world for us Moms we use the term CIO to represent the concept of Cry It Out. This is a parenting technique (for those who might not know) where your very bratty child who refuses to sleep is forced to sleep by means of crying them-self exhausted. I am not really much of a CIO type. Sorry if I offend anyone, but I think it seems kind of mean. I am using this technique myself so I sound hypocritical but I am not a huge fan. We tried CIO when the girls were smaller but quickly abandoned ship because I didn't have the fortitude to listen to my child cry endlessly.

Lately Abby has gotten into the habit of going to bed on time only to wake up and hour later and want to get up and play. The holiday got her completely off schedule so we gave in for the past couple weeks. We would let her get up and play for a while and put her back down. The past week or so this would happen two and even three times at night. At 18 months this kid needs to sleep so we had to use "drastic" measures. We decided that last night was the cry it out night. The night before we had let her get up once to play and when we put her down she screamed for an hour before falling asleep. Last night we let them stay up until 9 so they would be adequately tired. Abby went down quietly but a few minutes later she started. She yelled, she screamed, she coughed, she yelled "Mommy" and "Daddy", she generally sounded pathetic. Brian and I both wanted to pull our hair out. After an hour of straight screaming she finally fell asleep and stayed asleep.

So tonight we again will be employing the CIO method. We're really hoping for 45 minutes or less of crying. We are wishfully hoping for immediate sleep but we're not holding our breath.