Do we need to increase our cry tolerance?

March 25, 2025•4 min read

Why I Refused to Increase My Cry Tolerance

Once upon a time I was told that I needed to increase my cry tolerance and got given a list of ways to do that.

What Is "Cry Tolerance"?

Firstly, some context...what is Cry tolerance?

Your Cry tolerance (often discussed in psychology as Parental Cry Tolerance) is a caregiver's ability to remain calm and effectively manage their stress while listening to their baby or child cry. It measures one's emotional threshold for enduring a distressing sound before experiencing feelings of overwhelm, panic, or the urge to react

The Advice I Thought I Needed

I was a first time Mum, doing the best I knew how, and was soaking up all knowledge. I couldn’t make my baby sleep, I felt like a failure, so the sleep experts must know more than me.

Attempting to increase my cry tolerance was traumatic for me, let alone my baby.

Everyone is unique, some people wouldn’t have a problem doing this, but I did.

There Was Never Anything Wrong With Me (And There's Not With You, Either)

There is nothing wrong with me for struggling with this. I am normal. I am a great parent.

Our brains change when we become parents, our brain matter literally shifts to make us hard wired to respond to our baby’s needs to help ensure their survival.

Imagine if parent’s didn’t give a flying donkeys a$$ about their baby crying?

The baby’s needs wouldn’t get met, their life would be put at risk.

Here is what I wish I had said to the person who told me I just needed to increase my cry tolerance so I could give my baby the gift of learning to settle himself.

NO.

FVCKING.

WAY.

Here is what I wished i’d done instead, and have been able to do with baby girl:

said No then, leaned into my instincts and make sleep work from a biological perspective not a behavioral one.

Not Everything Is a Sleep Problem to Be Fixed

We have a problem with infant sleep, because so many people are telling us that it is behavoural, that our little babies that can't cognitively do much yet, have the capacity to manipulate us and do things like protest against things like sleeping alone.

We know that these behavious aren't possible and that these behaviours are innate primal behavious designed to keep a baby safe, literally the only protective mechanism a baby has to keep itself safe, is to ensure a caregiver is in close proximity, so they come out of the womb doing that.

To suggest we need to increase parents tolerance to their baby's crying so we can then leave a baby crying in a room alone to teach them a skill they don't have the brain capacity to learn to then have their nervous system take over and throw them into freeze mode to keep them safe (being quiet will mean they don't attract unwanted attention from predators, is ludicrous).

Parents Are Wired to Respond to Their Babies

You don't need to increase your cry tolerance in order to teach self settling and achieve good sleep. I have not increased my cry tolerance, in fact, I have leaned into every moment I am needed around sleep and sleep has been significantly easier than when I was trying to increase my 'cry tolerance' and teach a skill my baby didn't have brain capacity to learn (self settling I am looking at you). But what I will say is that to truly thrive with sleep, it doesn't just mean you have to lean in, wait it out and suffer, you can thrive and make sleep sustainable while also responding to your baby without making sleep 'worse'. The key to making sleep work for your little one (and you) is:

Knowing what normal infant sleep looks like

Understanding how sleep works in little ones

Knowing how much sleep your child needs in a 24 hour period (spoiler alert, it often doesn’t include a 3 hour lunch nap)

Understanding your child's temperament and tailoring sleep to suit that.

Essentially, you simply need to understand how sleep works in a way that is biologically aligned with what suits your child, easy right?