Grace Community Church, the church where Ezzo started the program, no longer teaches or sells the materials there.

IT WORKS FOR SOME

The obvious question, then, is why does anyone take the course?

Lisa Johnson, a 30-year-old expectant mother of two from Deerpark, Wash., could be the Ezzos' poster mom. When she had her first child four and one half years ago, she tried what all the parenting books told her: respond to your baby immediately and breastfeed on demand.

"I was nursing every hour or every hour-and-a-half" she said. "I got a breast infection. My baby wasn't gaining weight. I was worried sick."

Ignoring the advice of her own mother who had raised 10 children, Johnson tried it the Ezzo way. She put the baby on a feeding schedule. She often let her cry, sometimes up to a hour.

"The crying was very hard" Johnson later said. "Since I had been responding on pure emotion for a month, the switch to emotion, balanced by reason was difficult. Simply put, Bekka's cry ripped my heart out."