Is it giving in or just knowing when it's time to win in your own way.

With all of our children, bedtime or nap time has been a struggle. As babies, we would get them to sleep and try to lay them down with a result of them screaming the instant you left the room. So, we learned to use a swing, bouncy chair, sling, rocker, even high chair and even the sucker visitor who wanted to hold the baby. As they get older and you really just can't sit there and hold them or spend the day trying to keep them asleep, you move on to sleep training exercises. You lay them down, they scream, you walk in and reassure them, they scream, you walk in and out and in and out. By the end of it you have officially done nothing. Well that isn't entirely true. Sometimes a kid will learn that if you leave the room and they proceed to nap then when they wake up you'll come and get them. Most of my kids chose and still choose to scream like they are possessed or being painfully tortured in some unspeakable way. You have heard stories and even seen other kids who are playing so nicely, their parents pick them up and say "night, night" and whisk them off to their beds, turn off the light, close the door and all is quiet until the next morning. I personally think these people drug their kids or slip some invisible muzzle over their mouths. As time wears on you realize that no one is being trained in anything and you are loosing what sanity you may have quickly. So now is the time to take it like a man, you've lost. Your child is officially not sleep trained in their bed. But is that such a bad thing? You've been trying for a seemingly endless amount of time to keep the baby asleep in the bed and in the back of your mind you are thinking 'if I just put him in his favorite chair he will fall right asleep and I won't be standing here pleading with him to go to sleep.' So you pick up the baby and put them there in the favorite chair, strap them in safely and in an instant they are out. You sit and think about how stupid you were not to have done that an hour ago. But then you think of all those who would just love to comment on this one. You can hear all of them; "I knew she couldn't get him sleep trained.", "I had my baby sleep trained at 3 months.", "I bet she even lets her kids watch TV.". And then I pour myself a glass of wine and listen to the silence that I so deserve.