What is your definition of control crying?

[Eugenia]

I think the official definition of controlled crying is when you're trying to teach your child to fall asleep by themselves so you leave them alone in their cot for increasingly longer periods of time eg you start at 1 minute then go in and settle, then leave them for two minutes before going back in, then leave for 3 minutes, etc. (I'm not sure of the times since I've never used it but it's something like that).

I have let both my kids whinge as they're fallling asleep since they do it when they're overtired. Whinging is not crying and if at any time they started crying I'd pick them up immediately. But you get good at identifying sounds, with DD both DH and I would look at each other and say, "Aha! She's going to sleep" when we heard her pre-sleep whinge, which incidentally never lasted more than a few seconds. DS did it a couple of times when he was brand new but hasn't done it for a long time now.

Some people confuse controlled crying with cry-it-out which is basically just walking away and letting the child cry till they fall asleep from exhaustion. I don't understand how anyone could possibly do that. It must be a horrible way to fall asleep. And I don't believe it would teach children anything except that life is cruel.