What is your definition of control crying?

[Eugenia]

Oh yes, DD has never been left to go to sleep on her own. She has always had someone with her, mainly me when she was little and used to bf to sleep but DH took over bedtime once she night weaned. Now we get one child each.

And don't get me started on the subject of parenting books written by self-proclaimed "experts". I think they should all be shot (the "experts", not the books LOL).

[Lolli]

I'll leave ds to have a bit of a whinge before he is going to sleep. Now he's older, he often just yells 'mumumumum' and throws his dummy on the floor, and I'll ignore that too if he is just calling me back in so he can giggle at me (cheeky thing!!)

I wouldn't define that as controlled crying, or leaving a child to cry. Tbh, I have tried controlled crying in the past and I don't have the stomach for it, it was such a distressing experience.

Apparently, a lot of places like tresillian and Karitane recommend (for babies over six months) somehting called 'responsive settling'- going in to the baby in times of real distress, but ignoring lower pitched cries, rather than timing it. I think that's in response to numerous studies saying it's bad for babies to be left distressed for increasingly longer periods (duh, you think?!).

[Neenee Jellybeanie]

I agree with what's already been said, that there's crying and there's whinging and they're not the same thing. When Aurelia was a young baby she had horrendous colic and all hours of the day and night. For a period of time, this was coupled with breast refusal and there was just nothing I could do to calm her. I did actually leave her in her basinette in the bedroom and took a few minutes to calm down, and she stopped crying. I felt terrible about it, at the time. I would also rock her to sleep in her pram (with the reversable handle turned so it faced me), which was the only thing that worked but also meant she spent a loooong time crying before eventually falling asleep. In these situations, she was sort of 'left to cry it out' but I still wouldn't call it controlled crying - mostly because I wasn't in control of her crying at all CC is really when you deliberately leave them for increasingly long periods of time so they 'learn to fall asleep on their own'.
FWIW I think you can teach a baby to fall asleep alone without doing CC - I used to calm DD down, put her to bed and leave the room, and come back in as soon as she started crying. It took a number of goes but for a while she was actually falling asleep by herself quite easily. Trouble is as soon as a new tooth started to pop through or she had a growth spurt, it all went out the window

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

Have to agree with everyone here, whinging and crying are different. DS is allowed to whinge on his own - or just sit in his cot "reading" - until he falls asleep. Most of the time he still needs someone with him though.

We recently found out the DS talks in his sleep. So those little "I thought he was screaming" moments were all in his sleep. Scared me last night as I snuck in to tuck him in and he was babbling away about something or other!

I let DS cry if I'm on the loo, or need it. I also let him cry if he was asleep just two minutes ago and I'm freezing... but never for more than a minute. It's more my laziness than a real CC plan.