On June 29, World Happy Dream Day was celebrated and the blogosphere and social networks boiled that day under the motto “Dismantling Estivill”, to give information and opinion about the well-known (loved and hated) Estivill method for babies and children.
What nobody could expect, after a day like that, is that in the end who managed to disassemble the Estivill method was the same Estivill, who in a recent interview open to the public said that its method is intended for children over three years old.
The best age to start the method
A mother asked about the best age to start applying the Estivill method, commenting that she had a newborn who drank breast milk on demand and that she found it difficult to combine this feeding with a method whose purpose is for a baby to sleep through the night .
To the question, Dr. Estivill answered the following:
In the brain of children there is a group of cells that is our biological clock. It is the one that tells us that we have to sleep at night and be awake by day. Like other children's brain structures, this biological clock is immature at birth. This is why children sleep in small pieces and cannot sleep at night at night until they reach six months of age. The rules we explained in 'Sleep as a child' were for children from the age of three who had the so-called 'childhood insomnia due to incorrect habits'. These norms cannot be applied in younger children because of their immaturity of their biological clock. You have to perform other routines respecting breastfeeding on demand to teach this biological clock to synchronize with the environment and arrive six months with an adequate night's sleep of about eleven hours and three daytime naps: one after breakfast, one after the meal and one after the snack. In our book 'To sleep' we explain these new scientific knowledge and give the appropriate guidelines so that the child, following breastfeeding on demand, can properly structure his dream.
However, in the book they were explained after six months
If you have read the book "Fall asleep child" you will know that the method in question it was recommended above all after six months. The book is a bit ambiguous in the book, because it is not clear when the best time to start is clear, but it seems to be interviewed at various times that up to six months may be a bit early to carry out.
Of course, a method that consists in letting the child cry for a little while and go to talk to him and tell him to continue sleeping, so the times it takes until he falls asleep, is totally at odds with breastfeeding, because teta children suck day and night.
As now more and more mothers breastfeed their children and as now they do so for longer, the method was getting outdated, it did not match the recommendations of so many agencies (such as the AEP, UNICEF or WHO) that recommend breastfeeding until both At least years and even sleep near the child so that the baby sucks when required.
In other words, while on the one hand the mothers were told to have their child nearby to do several night shots (the AEP Breastfeeding Committee sees the colecho as an option as valid as any other), by the another, the Estivill method said the opposite, that the child should move away, moving to another room to sleep all night followed and alone, because the opposite was a problem called childhood insomnia.
Now it turns out that the book was for children over three years old
After stoically enduring years of criticism of the method for the lack of scientific evidence and for the lack of updating, because while he recommended a controlled crying other experts spoke of the baby's brain referring to him as an organ that must be cared for between cottons, avoiding stimuli stressful and recommending physical contact to appease the state of alertness that a baby enters when it is known alone, Estivill has now decided to turn its words around, take for granted the money received for the books sold (I guess) and get a little closer to science appeasing the bad conscience that should let you know that thanks to you (or because of you), thousands of children have cried in mucus, have shouted and vomited, with the sole intention of receive the same love they receive during the day.
A love and attention that they also need at night because they are still babies and dependent children who gain independence as they grow and learn to reason. Normal children, the vast majority, who only needed time to mature and who would have ended up sleeping through the night, even alone, without the need to perform a method with which you teach a baby that the night is to be alone (if you are a child , of course, because if you are an adult you can sleep together).
Now the speech changes and to me, who did not follow any of his instructions, I am glad that it has softened and that he has decided to respect the babies. However, I have the doubt about what will the thousands of mothers and fathers who have carried out the method feel, who have cried cuddled, suffering while on the other side of the door her baby was crying, but holding on because in the book it says that the two have to go to one, joining their forces, to achieve the ultimate goal, all because their son suffered insomnia childish.
I do not know how they will feel when they read these words all those parents who say that "I had a worse time than my son", who believed that his son had a problem and now it turns out that the problem was not such, because childhood insomnia in children under Three years seems to be normal, so normal that now it is called "immaturity of its biological clock".
Who knows, maybe Estivill apologize for a good day for having taken so long to rectify (Every year that has passed hundreds of units of his book have been sold, which have served to upset hundreds of babies) and it will be appreciated that he does so because it is never too late if the bliss is good, however the apologies will not work, sure , to erase all the bad nights that many children have taken without being the most advisable, without being the most logical and without really being a problem, as he now states.
UPGRADE: Three weeks after this entry the word "years" was changed to "months" in El País. We commented on the entry "Estivill did not dismount: still recommend letting children cry at three months."
