Having sleep-trained a baby, I get what you're saying here. There are so many recommended methods, some that seem much more gradual. But some of them didn't work with my daughter. We ended up having to do the often-maligned "Ferber method," which some refer to as "cry it out." But it's really not that, it's going in to reassure the child in increasing intervals. Like, go in at 3 minutes, then at 7 minutes, then at 12, something like that. So the baby isn't just in there screaming for an hour with no comfort. I was reluctant to do that, but within a few days, it worked!

Of course, now she's 4 and often wants me to lay in bed with her till she falls asleep, and I feel like I want to be there to reassure her and make her feel safe. But I probably need to gradually stop doing that to sort of retrain her.

Sorry, that went way off-topic, but I guess I was trying to say that even with sleep training, there should be a gradual easing off of reassurance, not like cold turkey. But I get the sense that maybe I misunderstood MC a bit, since in yesterday's session, he didn't seem totally against my getting any reassurance. I think he may realize he went a bit too far in the "give reassurance" direction (like the equivalent of lying in bed next to me--which would be nice!), and to correct that, he went too far in the "cry it out" direction. And yesterday it seemed more like he was closer to a middle ground.

Hm, and I guess this all particularly applies since it's mostly paternal transference. And his background is in developmental psychology, so he knows a lot about infant and childhood development (though his main work is with teens). However, I'm also not a kid (far from it!). So the same theories may not apply to me.

Eek, that ended up much longer than I intended! (I think I need to make that my signature for posts!)