Toddler tamer’s technique

Press, 16 January 1986, Page 13

Toddler tamer’s technique

James never slept for more than a couple of hours without waking. When he was 13 months old, Joey and Stan Darling prepared to follow the week-long programme Dr Christopher Green recommends in “Toddler Taming.”

“It worked within a night,” Stan recollects.

Dr Green describes it as a “controlled-crying method” which employs short, individually-tailored periods of crying calculated to give the maximum message, while at the same time making the child aware of what is going on. He suggests letting the child cry for up to ten minutes, depending on the parent’s determination, and then giving strictly limited comfort, cuddling the child only until the crying is under control. The child should then be put down firmly, and left alone. Once you have put the child back in bed, he will

probably start crying again, Dr Green warns. This time he should be left for five minutes longer than the previous occasion. He should then be attended to in the same way as before, giving adequate, but inferior, comfort. The next time he cries, an additional five minutes is added, and so on.

If the child wakes again, you have to be 100 per cent firm, starting again with the ten minute crying period and following the regime without faltering, Dr Green says. In most children the fuss is over by the third night, he says. When James cried, Stan did the comforting. He admits he and Joey found the crying hard to take. “I almost had to tie Joey down,” he says. But James soon got the message: no feed, no big cuddles. “It was wonderful to find a method that worked so quickly.”