Free Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman Page A

parents.
    Of course,
some French babies miss the four-month window for sleep teaching. When this happens, French experts usually recommend some ver Smeniv heighsion of crying it out.
    Sleep researchers aren’t ambivalent about this either. The meta-study found that letting kids cry it out, either by going cold turkey (known by the unfortunate scientific term “extinction”) or in stages (“graduated extinction”), works extremely well and usually succeeds in just a few days. “The biggest obstacle associated with extinction is lack of parental consistency,” the study says.
    Michel Cohen, the French doctor in Tribeca, recommends a rather extreme version of this for parents who miss the four-month window. He says they should make the baby feel cozy with his usual nighttime bath and songs. Then they should put him in bed at a reasonable hour, preferably while he’s still awake, and come back at seven A.M.
    In Paris, crying it out has a French twist. I start to realize this when I meet Laurence, a nanny from Normandy who’s working for a French family in Montparnasse. Laurence has been looking after babies for two decades. She tells me that before letting a baby cry it out, it’s crucial to explain to him what you’re about to do.
    Laurence walks me through this: “In the evening, you speak to him. You tell him that, if he wakes up once, you’re going to give him his pacifier once. But after that, you’re not going to get up. It’s time to sleep. You’re not far away, and you’re going to come in and reassure him once. But not all night long.”
    Laurence adds that a crucial part of getting a baby to do his nights, at any age, is to truly believe that he’s going to do it. “If you don’t believe it, it’s not going to work,” she says. “Me, I always think that the child is going to sleep better the next night. I always have hope, even if he wakes up three hours later. You have to believe.”
    It does seem possible that French babies rise to meet their parents’ and caregivers’ expectations. Perhaps we all get the sleepers we expect, and the simple fact of believing that babies have a rhythm helps us to find it.
    To believe in The Pause, or in letting an older baby cry it out, you also have to believe that a baby is a person who’s capable of learning things (in this case, how to sleep) and coping with some frustration. Michel Cohen spends a lot of time converting parents to this French idea. To the common worry that a four-month-old is hungry at night, he writes: “She is hungry. But she does not need to eat. You’re hungry in the middle of the night too; it’s just that you learn not to eat because it’s good for your belly to take a rest. Well it’s good for hers too.”
    The French don’t believe that babies should withstand biblical-sized trials. But they also don’t think that a bit of frustration will crush kids. To the contrary, they believe it will make children more secure. According to
Sleep, Dreams and the Child,
“to always respond to his demands, and never tell him ‘no,’ is dangerous for the construction of his personality. Because the child won’t have any barrier to push up against, to know what’s expected of him.”
    For the French, teaching a small baby to sl Sll angereep isn’t a self-serving strategy for lazy parents. It’s a crucial first lesson for children in self-reliance and enjoying one’s own company. A psychologist quoted in
Maman!
magazine says that babies who learn to play by themselves during the day—even in the first few months—are less worried when they’re put into their beds alone at night.
    De Leersnyder writes that even babies need some privacy. “The little baby learns in his cradle that he can be alone from time to time, without being hungry, without being thirsty, without sleeping, just being calmly awake. At a very young age, he needs time alone, and he needs to go to sleep and wake up without being immediately watched by his