[HN Gopher] What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
___________________________________________________________________
What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
Author : throw0101c
Score : 117 points
Date : 2022-12-29 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| oaktrout wrote:
| I read the primary study and admittedly skimmed the very long
| article. So far as I can tell the takeaway is: after baby is 6
| months old there are no observed downsides to sleep training, is
| that correct?
| number6 wrote:
| Yes. Makes no difference if sleep trained or not.
| malfist wrote:
| So what does happen when babies are left to cry it out? I read
| over a dozen paragraphs and it never told me. Just told me about
| a hypothesis and that some people are shocked at other cultures.
|
| It spent most of that time talking about outrage by online
| communities instead of just giving me information. Terrible
| journalism.
|
| It told me that there were two studies and how many babies were
| involved, but not the findings of the study. Garbage.
| pmg102 wrote:
| My daughter was never sleep trained. At 7, she still requires an
| adult lying in the bed with her or at the very least in a chair
| beside the bed with an arm to cuddle to get to sleep.
|
| Presumably this won't still be the case at age 14 though so it
| doesn't seem like its a problem.
| MWil wrote:
| We use an app called Huckleberry for sleep training our first
| child and I am more than satisfied with the results after 13
| months. Our daughter sleeps between 10-11 hours at night, has a
| daytime routine-ish for naps +- 1hr (until we're down to one),
| she eats great, and yes selfishly - we, the parents, are very
| happy about the overall schedule and predictability.
| jbirer wrote:
| It's just parental selfishness under the guise of "training".
| Babies cry for a reason (to get their needs met).
| leokennis wrote:
| This is a simplistic potshot.
|
| If you go to your baby every time it cries that could mean a
| lot of work, so much it ruins your own rest/health/sanity and
| makes you a worse parent at the times the baby isn't crying.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| A defenseless child wants nothing more than to sleep next to
| their parent. Everyone sleeps better.
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| They also want a steady stream of cookies and iPad games
| and to be able to climb on high dangerous objects but maybe
| we shouldn't indulge every want of a child.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| That's a way older kid than a baby though
| goldenchrome wrote:
| Giving an infant a feeling of safety when they're too
| small to comprehend their environment is not indulgence.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Unless the baby gets caught in the covers or rolled upon
| during the night. Every approach likely has some pros and
| cons, so barring randomized and reproduced trials I take
| all claims as unproven.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| Yes if you're obese or inebriated then you shouldn't
| sleep next to a baby, but in those cases you're better
| off abstaining from food and drink for your own sake
| anyway.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Sure, but even if you're not these things still happen.
| To normal, healthy, reasonable people.
|
| They don't happen to people who don't co-sleep.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Everyone sleeps better.
|
| This is an absolute that is not true. Many people, even
| you, may - great! Others may not.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| Fair--I was being too extreme.
| number6 wrote:
| > Everyone sleeps better.
|
| Did you ever sleep next to an infant?
| goldenchrome wrote:
| Yes
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Yes, got 9 hours of sleep/day (interrupted by diaper
| change, sure) vs the initial 2/week
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Do you have kids yourself?
|
| Just curious.
| agitators1 wrote:
| [dead]
| PeterisP wrote:
| Sometimes the reason a baby cries is literally the unmet need
| for sleep - they are very tired, feel awful because of that,
| and cry. And then they can't fall asleep easily because they're
| cranky about being too tired.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > And then they can't fall asleep easily because they're
| cranky about being too tired.
|
| ... And worse they are tired and don't _know_ how to fall
| asleep. Hence why I 'm a fan of sleep training. You are
| giving your little one the gift of being able to put
| themselves to sleep on their own.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Babies cry for a reason (to get their needs met).
|
| Yep. Including, "I woke up and I don't yet know how to put
| myself back to sleep," which is where "sleep training" helps.
| I, too, would be curious as someone else asked, if you have
| children.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| When we sleep trained our kids, this was exactly our
| interpretation as well. You are literally training them how
| to sleep on their own. Yes they will be uncomfortable for a
| little while and yes they will cry because it is a new
| situation but it's truly for their own good. You are giving
| your kid the gift of being able to know how to sleep and fall
| back asleep.
|
| You can do such training without being a cruel hard ass about
| it either. You know your kid best and know their limits and
| when you should go into their room to comfort them... but you
| have to know why you are doing it--you are teaching them how
| to sleep. The only way they can learn that is by themselves
| (at least at an early age).
|
| Sleep training our daughter was one of the best decisions we
| made early on. But every kid and every parent is different.
| There is no one single way to raise a kid...
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Or co-sleeping, where they don't cry before or after
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I have two boys 9 and 3. Oldest co-slept with us until his
| brother was born so until 6yo, even now sometimes he wants
| to come back to our bed.
|
| The youngest we put in the same room as our oldest after
| about a year, he rarely wants to sleep with us.
|
| When they were co-sleeping with us, they would still wake
| up and cry at night from things other then hunger.
| Including, I rolled over into my parent and it surprised me
| so I woke up and now I can't sleep.
|
| In the case of my oldest, he started getting to the point
| where he would only fall asleep if my wife was next to him
| with her arm under his head like a pillow. It had to be her
| arm, we once switched so my arm was under his head and he
| could tell, got upset about it XD. That is when we decided
| he needed to start sleeping on his own...which took some
| time. It is also why we choose to have the youngest move
| out quicker, we didn't want to have the same protracted
| experience.
|
| Now they will sleep together at the oldest insistence,
| about a third of the time though the youngest will take too
| long to fall asleep and they end up fighting and the
| youngest will go off to sleep on his own.
|
| I don't think any of us in this conversation have any good
| data on what is best, and those of us that are parents have
| way to much bias and way too small sample size to discuss
| this with any degree of confidence.
|
| My personal option is that either way is not going to make
| much of a difference and you should do what ever works best
| for you and your family.
|
| Edit: Added a paragraph(#4)
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I think you are right and I'm just angry at the behavior
| toward co-sleeping.
|
| In the end, every family should do what fits them.
|
| My request is to stop blaming co-sleeping and accept it
| as a valuable option, same value as sleep training.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I understand, it is frustrating seeing people blame and
| reject things are useful just because they are not used
| tho them or are foreign to their culture.
|
| Part of the reason we co-slept is because my wife was
| breastfeeding and it would have been unfair for her to
| have to get up, leave the room to take care of the baby.
| Also, I am good at adapting and quickly learnt to sleep
| through hunger cries...so probably for the best we were
| not doing the swap schedule.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Makes sense. I forgot about the problem with
| breastfeeding, since initially we were all in the same
| room and there was zero sleep, so it didn't matter much.
| By the time breastfeeding would have been annoying (for
| waking up), we were already co-sleeping.
|
| Our first 2 weeks were really, really bad, with the first
| week being at 2 hours in total (that is 2 hours of sleep
| for 168 hours), after a month and a half she started
| sleeping with us.
|
| The second one just slept with us from the beginning
| since knew all the tricks of it and worked really well
| the first time
| voisin wrote:
| But do they cry more or less if they are sleep trained vs co-
| sleeping? Varies I am sure, but in our case at least our
| children slept soundly whenever not nursing while co-sleeping
| but for our ill-fated attempt at sleep training just cried
| and cried and cried (a mistake we tried only with our
| eldest). To each their own - I say do whatever works!
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I don't know how much experience you have with babies, yes they
| cry for a reason. Sometimes that reason is they need/want
| something, sometimes it is because they are gassy and their
| stomach hurts. Sometimes it is because they are tired, in which
| case it may be preferential to help them learn that they should
| sleep when tired and not cry and keep themselves awake.
|
| Also you talk about parental selfishness.
|
| Parents have to be selfish and kids have to learn to wait.
| Parental mental health is important, especially for first time
| parents. Babies will take everything you give them and still
| want more, it is up to the parent to set boundaries.
|
| One of the first pieces of advice I have seen and heard from
| many sources to new parents is that if the baby is crying and
| you can no longer handle the stress, to put the baby in a safe
| place and go for a walk. The reason we have this messaging
| being shared so widely is because new parents have a societal
| expectation that they _MUST_ do everything to take care of the
| baby and if it is crying then you are not doing a good job,
| that expectation and view is what leads to shaken babies and
| infanticide.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Of course, but this is talking about extreme cases. Co-
| sleeping and sleep training are day-to-day instead.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Par of what I am getting at is that stress builds up over
| time but sometimes very quickly. Especially for new
| parents. And you can not predict how the parents will react
| mentally to this stress.
|
| When we label things, such as postpartum depression, we can
| discuss the issue. But I think that sometimes we forget
| that we have to make changes to stop having the same
| outcomes. When a new parent ends up killing their
| child(ren), it is easy for us to say, "Well they had
| postpartum depression" but what have we gained as a society
| except a way to blame or assign the tragedy. Demanding the
| person who is in the midst of postpartum depression to
| identify that and then seek help is absolutely insane. We
| as a society need to look at how and what pressure we put
| on others as well as be able to have open conversation
| about the stresses in order to prevent deaths.
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| kcplate wrote:
| My grandson was sleep trained and I was a skeptic _at first_.
| But it basically took less than 48 hours before he learned to
| self soothe and was on a schedule with never more than about 15
| mins of fussing in that initial training phase.
|
| After he was trained and got on his sleep schedule he was the
| happiest baby I have ever been around and I raised 3 kids
| myself and have 3 other grandchildren. He never has issues with
| overtiredness and basically will only fuss if diaper needs
| changed or was hungry. Now he just flat out tells you when he
| is tired ("nigh-nigh") at 18 months and it's almost always
| nearly to the minute of when it is his bed or nap time and
| within a minute or two of being in bed...he is zonked.
|
| Everyone I know who has done it sings it's praises and in our
| own observation it's simply amazing. I am no longer a skeptic.
| Also I will say this, if the crying is the stressful and
| damaging situation to babies, then in our experience the net
| result is less stress for the child with sleep training.
| scheme271 wrote:
| There have also been studies that show that babies will cry to
| manipulate their caregivers[1]. They are pretty smart and over
| time can learn to fake crying to get something that they want.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23732624/
| impostervt wrote:
| Did this with both my kids. The first one, probably not until 8
| months old. The second we did earlier, at like 6 months.
|
| Prior to sleep training the first one, I'd have to carry her
| around and sing to her for almost an hour before she'd go to
| sleep. It was rough sleep training her. Took less than a week,
| with the first 2 days being the worst (probably 3+ hours of
| repeatedly checking in).
|
| Anyway, both kids adapted and turned out fine, and we got a lot
| of peace of mind and time back.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Did your kids get sick a lot? Mine went to daycare, and picked
| up a virus literally every other week. We could not continue
| sleep training while she was sick and crying from
| congestions/fever/etc so we just coslept.
|
| With the second, we decided beforehand not to bother with sleep
| training, since he is our last and we liked the feeling of
| sleeping with them.
|
| They both sleep alone now, although we put them to sleep by
| cosleeping and then leave.
| impostervt wrote:
| No, they didn't attend day care until later.
| justapassenger wrote:
| To people bringing anecdotes of their neighbors/friends kids
| crying forever and calling it an abuse, just one very important
| note.
|
| Sleep training is lasting 1-2 weeks. If kid is crying forever,
| what you hear is not a sleep training.
| snordgren wrote:
| The article also quoted one researcher who said that if the
| baby was crying for more than 5 minutes, then it is probably
| not yet at a stage of development where it can learn to self-
| soothe. I think that is a good rule of thumb.
| darrmit wrote:
| I'm more interested in the long-term psychological effects of
| sleep training and how it affects a child's perception of "secure
| attachment" [1]. We sleep trained our oldest and did not our
| youngest and their personalities couldn't be more different. Of
| course, this may be entirely unrelated, but it's still something
| my wife and I have wondered about as we've learned more about it.
|
| [1] https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/psychologists/what-is-
| secu...
| sanderjd wrote:
| Oh come, there's like a billion variables in kids'
| personalities. My kids couldn't be more different from one
| another and we pretty much did all the same stuff with them.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The OP overview did mention some studies. (The OP overview is a
| really good model for a popularly-accessible summary of
| research on a complex topic! it lists so much stuff!)
|
| I'm not saying this necessarily should eliminate all worry you
| have about attachment (personally sleep-training seems like a
| bad idea to me too; I'm not a parent however), but as far as
| what research is available, from the OP:
|
| > Of the few studies that have looked at the short- to longer-
| term outcomes of sleep training, none have found an effect on a
| baby's attachment or mental health. Hiscock's study, for
| example, the largest and longest longitudinal study done on
| sleep training, found sleep-trained children were no more
| likely to be insecurely attached to their caregiver at six
| years of age than their peers. (Experts like Hiscock say they
| aren't aware of any studies that look at potential long-term
| effects of cold-turkey cry-it-out, just at modified extinction.
| They also examined healthy babies at least six months old. So
| these findings aren't necessarily applicable to infants trained
| at younger ages, or in other ways.)
|
| > Like other longitudinal studies, Hiscock's lost touch with a
| number of families when it was time for the final follow-up:
| 101 of the original 326. That means it is theoretically
| possible that the sleep training did affect some children in
| either a negative or positive way long-term, but that their
| experiences weren't captured. It's more likely, though, that
| any effects of a single intervention simply "washed out" after
| six years, says Hiscock.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230830539_Five-Year...
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| I am also interested. Buried in the article is a note that by
| age 6 there was no appreciable difference in children with
| sleep interventions and without.
|
| While this article shreds a lot of studies on sleep training,
| it goes on to cite a lot of others without evidence of equally
| scrutiny, so who knows.
| [deleted]
| sjducb wrote:
| It's important to understand that the attachment theory was
| developed to explain why children of drug addicts are so messed
| up. It was then expanded to children who suffered other kinds
| of abuse.
|
| When you try to expand attachment theory to try to understand
| healthy kids in non abusive situations the effect size is
| usually smaller than the experimental noise.
| getpost wrote:
| >attachment theory was developed to explain why children of
| drug addicts are so messed up
|
| Citation? As far as I know, the roots of Attachment Theory
| are in the World War II work of John Bowlby, investigating
| the effects of children separated from their parents when
| major cities were evacuated during the Blitz.
|
| It is much later that the association of insecure attachment
| and addiction was scrutinized.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby
| lazide wrote:
| The same happens regularly without sleep training too, so ymmv
| obviously.
|
| One thing I will note - if the kid doesn't sleep and wakes up
| the adults for years, _that_ impact pretty clearly ruins the
| adults, and has severe impacts on the kids too.
| ramijames wrote:
| Haven't slept in ten years, can confirm: am ruined.
| [deleted]
| anthonypasq wrote:
| this is the classic delusion that most parents have about the
| actual power they have to shape their children's behavior.
|
| I think you'll find out you've had much less of an effect than
| you think.
| mfer wrote:
| We sleep trained both our kids and their personalities are so
| different.
| phalangion wrote:
| We didn't sleep train our oldest, but we did our other three.
| All of them are very different people (ages 5-13). Every kid is
| different, and I don't think you can attribute it exclusively
| (or even primarily) to any one thing most of the time.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Even cats have wildly different personalities so I don't think
| sleep training human babies have anything to do with their
| personalities.
| rspoerri wrote:
| Did you sleep train the cats?
| paganel wrote:
| Not the OP and not sleep training, no need for that, but I
| did manage to poopy-train our cat, meaning he only takes a
| poo when we are awake. The same goes for when we are
| eating, he's not taking any poo during those times, either.
|
| Pretty smart cat, if you ask me, he also managed to teach
| our dog to play certain kind of games between the two of
| them.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| That's not necessary. Cats are expert sleepers!
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I think the point the previous poster was trying to make is
| that people have wildly different personalities, and that
| any observation with a sample size of 2 is basically
| useless to draw any conclusions from.
|
| I'll also add that different people respond very different
| to things; maybe for some babies sleep training might have
| long-term effects, and for some it doesn't. Certainly if I
| look at my own shitty childhood, me and my brother
| responded quite differently. He was affected much less than
| I was.
| agitators1 wrote:
| [dead]
| yawnr wrote:
| Which kid do you like more..? ;)
| beaned wrote:
| I wish that when they included this line:
|
| "Modern Mayan mothers, for example, expressed shock when they
| heard that in the US, babies were put to sleep in a separate
| room."
|
| That they followed it up with _why_ Mayan mothers prefer to sleep
| with the baby. Is it just a default cultural expectation or do
| they have their own reason for it?
| mlboss wrote:
| As mentioned multiple times in the article. Most of the world
| co-sleeps with their kids. Sleep training is only a norm in US
| and some other western countries.
| smallstepforman wrote:
| From Darwins point of view, klingy children slept besides their
| parents, were not eaten by sabre tooth tigers, and passed on the
| klingy gene. Babies that slept alone were eaten by Sabre tooth
| tigers, and did not pass their "can sleep in isolation" gene
| across.
|
| So why fight nature, accept it as part of life. Sleeping together
| bonds parents and children.
| joshribakoff wrote:
| Because were not at risk of being eaten by saber tooth tigers?
| By the same logic, we should just give in to our sweet tooth
| that evolved naturally and ignore our "unnatural" scientific
| knowledge of diabetes and obesity
| number6 wrote:
| Weak crying baby's get thrown down the pit. Makes tribe
| stronger. Crush other tribe from cave 19. /s
| greggarious wrote:
| I had an intense reaction to this story.
|
| I knew someone who was born in a Romanian orphanage who was "left
| to cry it out"... she was forever traumatized in ways just as
| damaging as one terrible moment, but not discussed since no one
| ever made a hit lifetime television series about those who abuse
| via _inaction_.
|
| There are people who made it through the fall of both the Nazis
| _and_ the Berlin Wall who should not have access to so much as a
| houseplant who continue to influence young minds to this day, and
| it will forever keep me up at night that I can 't just turn off
| my phone and correct that error like I'd like to.
| loteck wrote:
| _What we were trying to do was help the parents to teach the kids
| to self-soothe. So in effect, we weren 't saying that they
| wouldn't wake. We were saying that they would wake, but they
| wouldn't have to signal their parents. They could go back down
| into the next sleep cycle._
|
| The conversations around sleep training are always rife with
| folks focusing on their own perceived risks, and the emotional
| guilt, that come with making trade-off decisions. While we over-
| focus on the noisy crying, we miss focusing on the skill building
| part of sleep training: training kids _and parents_ the skill of
| soothing themselves in the absence of the other. Skill building
| with kids can sometimes be super hard on both kids and parents;
| welcome to Parenting.
| kqr wrote:
| This is one thing I learned only in my third year as a parent.
| If I tell an adult "I'm worried you'll break that when you poke
| it so hard" I expect them to either argue to the contrary or
| stop poking it so hard.
|
| For my children, they don't register what I've said until a few
| days (and attempts) later. It's virtually impossible to teach
| them something in the moment, it all falls into place later.
| Super frustrating and super fascinating.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Human infants are not meant to sleep alone, and human parents are
| not meant to care for babies all by themselves- especially not
| one exhausted mother all on her own. Evolutionarily speaking we
| are supposed to be surrounded by extended family, who can _hold
| the baby and give mom and dad a chance to sleep_. It 's just the
| cruelty of modern industrial society that makes people resort to
| such things as leaving a baby all alone. Future generations are
| going to see these practices as tragic and the fact that we don't
| support new parents leads to stressed out, insecure babies, or
| worse.
|
| Here's the truth: nothing works. They just eventually grow out of
| it. When they are a year or two old, you can start transitioning
| to having them sleep by themselves.
|
| I really did try to sleep train my youngest.. I would set a timer
| and not let her go too long. I really tried. Once I went and
| picked her up after 15 minutes, and her little voice had grown
| hoarse. She was covered in sweat and shaking and she just
| collapsed against me when I picked her up. Her tiny body, just
| limp against me. She had nothing left. And she whimpered softly.
| Babies aren't meant to sleep alone. I wish I had someone I could
| call. One hour of sleep would have meant everything.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| This line of reasoning is absurd. We do a lot of things we
| aren't "meant" to do evolutionarily. Babies can and do sleep
| alone just fine. Sorry it didn't work out in your case, but
| don't try to appeal to Evolution to rationalize it to yourself.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Is it absurd? I think your statement is a bit too strong
| given what the OP has described: that seems a really painful
| experience for a parent.
|
| There is the possibility that it is an evolutionary trait of
| some subset of the population: some children might not be
| able to sustain sleep training and others might be. So your
| statement is extreme too: it's entirely possible that some
| human beings are not made for that and others are. The only
| certainty we have is that humans _need physical contact_ when
| they are babies, we don 't know how much is enough from a
| scientific point though (and I doubt we would be able to do
| any experiment related to that ever again)
| pcurve wrote:
| Summary: There are many studies done, but they all have data
| quality issues to different degrees.
|
| In general... (my conclusion)
|
| > Leaving your baby to cry it out is helpful for most babies.
|
| > But it's not recommended for babies younger than 6 months.
|
| > Some experts recommend even waiting until 12 months, because
| month 6-12 is critical for developing emotional regulation that
| occur with help of parent intervention.
|
| > Benefit of letting baby cry it out isn't permanent. It needs to
| be repeated.
|
| > By the time they're 6 years old, there was no difference.
|
| > individual personality/temperament play large role in how the
| baby responds to the training.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| I'd add:
|
| > When babies are sleep-trained (with the "cry it out" method),
| they don't actually sleep (much) longer; they wake up as often
| but have learned to not signal their parents.
| klyrs wrote:
| Parents getting more sleep has knock-on benefits for the kid.
| It's hard not to be grumpy under the influence of a sleep
| deficit. I wake up several times a night. So does my kid. So
| if I wake up every time he wakes up, and every time I'd
| naturally wake up, then I don't get enough sleep. Self-care
| is crucial for caretakers, and I was a bit disappointed to
| not find any mention of that in the article.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| There is a mention of it in the article. Starts about 3/4
| of the way through with the heading of "Family Fatigue":
|
| "Researchers tend to focus on sleep training's potential
| impact on babies - which makes sense, since they're the
| most vulnerable, helpless members of the family unit. But
| sleep training obviously affects the rest of the family,
| too..."
| klyrs wrote:
| ah, good, I guess I missed that.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Have they learned not to signal their parents? Or that their
| parents aren't interested in being there when they need them?
|
| For me I suspect most of this is regression to mean. People
| mostly try sleep training in a bad patch, meaning things are
| likely gonna get better anyways.
| conqueso wrote:
| The fact that this is so commonplace in my culture (USA) is
| frustrating and enrages me. As a parent, it is your evolutionary
| instinct to comfort a crying infant. They are quite literally
| helpless and look to caretakers for all their needs. There's a
| deep seated biological reason it feels bad to ignore it. The fact
| that it is so uncommon in other cultures should make this
| obvious. What are the odds that the rest of the world and entire
| history of humankind were mistaken the whole time, until some
| behaviorists came along and figured it all out in the last
| century? Talk about infants having "attachment issues" makes my
| blood boil. They are _supposed_ to be attached to you. It is very
| much possible to co-sleep and then gradually transition them to
| their own bed. Yes, it is frustrating and will interfere with
| your sleep. This is one of the many sacrifices of parenthood.
| GatorD42 wrote:
| The article states no long term negative effects have been
| found, compared to positive short term findings. There's been a
| wide range of child-rearing practices across cultures and
| history, including infanticide. Probably no culture has gotten
| it exactly right, but this practice is not that far outside the
| norm as other practices from other cultures.
| paganel wrote:
| > They are supposed to be attached to you. It is very much
| possible to co-sleep and then gradually transition them to
| their own bed.
|
| I strongly believe that forcing kids to sleep in their own bed
| and in their own room all by themselves as soon as possible is
| a 5D chess move by the real estate industry to sell as much of
| their inventory as possible.
|
| No, kids won't be traumatised or become serial killers if they
| don't have their own bed or their own room as soon as possible,
| in fact bed-sharing and room-sharing (or even hut-sharing) has
| been the norm for our species for thousands and thousands of
| years.
|
| Heck, I shared a bed with my dad until I left for uni, when I
| was 18, mum was sleeping in the other room our apartment had.
| In the winters I used to sleep with both of my parents until I
| was 8 or 9, the three of us had to share to bedroom bed thanks
| to central heating having stopped working (which was thanks to
| Ceausescu and then to the shell-shock therapy imposed by the
| Washington consensus in my country in the 1990s). When I was
| visiting my grand-parents as a 8-9-year old kid, in the winter,
| I was sharing a bed with my grandad, and my brother (who was
| being raised by my grand-parents) was sharing a bed with my
| grandma, all four of us sharing the same 3x4 meters room. Can't
| say I developed any long-lasting "attachment" issues.
|
| Again, forcing small kids to have their own rooms and their own
| beds is a quite recent Western thing.
|
| Later edit: Opinion piece that supports my view (not a
| difficult view to support, because it's prevalent throughout
| most of the world):
|
| > This system of sleeping -- adults in one room, each child
| walled off in another -- was common practice exactly nowhere
| before the late 19th century, when it took hold in Europe and
| North America. (...)
|
| > Indeed, solitary childhood sleep seems cruel in those parts
| of the world where co-sleeping is still practiced, including
| developed countries such as Japan.
|
| > But as industrial wealth spread through the Western
| economies, so did a sense that individual privacy -- felt most
| intently at night -- was a hallmark of "civilization."
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-reiss-sleep-
| alon...
| ipaddr wrote:
| Back in the day travellers men/women/kids/strangers would all
| sleep in the same bed in the medieval western world. Things
| have changed.
| paganel wrote:
| I've slept in the same bed with a work-colleague of mine a
| few years ago during a team-building trip, we're both
| males. We were quite on good terms but I wouldn't say we
| were sharing our deepest emotional thingies, things were ok
| (other then his snoring).
|
| My dad often tells me how he used to do the same thing some
| years ago during company trips. Sure as hell the company
| wouldn't have paid for two separate hotel rooms when
| sending a team of 2 guys out to some remote town/city, and
| if it so happened that that room had one matrimonial bed
| instead of two separate beds then bed-sharing was the norm.
|
| On a more general note, strangers share beds and rooms
| while sleeping without thinking about the sex stuff, they
| just want to have a good night's sleep.
| agumonkey wrote:
| After suffering extreme trauma, I have a different view on
| babies crying. Being heard and responded to is one
| existentially low level mental need. Touched too.
| naasking wrote:
| > What are the odds that the rest of the world and entire
| history of humankind were mistaken the whole time, until some
| behaviorists came along and figured it all out in the last
| century?
|
| There are many cases where all of humanity has been doing
| something that we only recently decided was wrong. For
| instance, slavery.
|
| Certainly the odds aren't good that this is true of
| _everything_ humans do, but the odds that some of the things we
| do fall into this category is 100%.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Hypothesis: the parent, by forcing themselves to sleep train,
| conditions themselves to ignore more of the infant's emotions;
| and the infant, observing no reaction to their emotions, learns
| the same behavior, leading to higher incidence of autism.
|
| Typically (aside from some neurological disorders), there is an
| underlying reason for the infant to be crying. They could be
| hungry or wanting to urinate or defecate (many cultures begin
| potty training shortly after birth). This is frequent because
| their stomachs, intestines, and bladders are small. Figuring
| out what they want and responding is normal and has a long
| history of working, not just among humans but among all mammals
| with dependent young.
|
| It's astonishing that some pop-parenting guide came along and
| said, "You don't have to figure out what the baby is crying
| about _if they happen to be crying at night_ or if you are
| sleepy, " and nobody stopped to wonder what night time had to
| do with it.
| remote_phone wrote:
| The fact that you are getting enraged is a huge part of the
| problem. Keep your own morality to yourself and your own
| family. If you don't want to use cry it out, then that's your
| decision. The fact you project onto others is the problem and
| it's none of your business.
|
| Cry it out is effective and works wonders for families and it
| has no side effects, as mentioned in the article itself.
| scotty79 wrote:
| On the other hand if infants were this fragile to be long term
| affected by something like that humanity would survive 3
| generation tops.
|
| At some point synaptic prunning comes and the child is rid of
| nearly all indignities it suffered up to that point.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Plenty of adaptively useful, maybe even optimal behaviors can
| negatively affect _enjoyment of life_. The world we live in
| isn 't the one we evolved for, and behaviors and adaptations
| useful in our evolutionary past can be painful or detrimental
| to individuals and society _now_.
|
| Selective pressure is no longer meaningfully applied to our
| species, so we won't further adapt to our situation except
| intentionally and at our own hands.
|
| Also btw just because people forget their memories before a
| certain point doesn't mean they are rid of all the effects.
| Research on this is fraught and delicate, but very young
| children who suffered trauma are known to carry some
| consequences of it across that memory boundary. Which at
| least establishes that it's not a perfect reset and we should
| still be careful about what experiences we expose very young
| children to.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Sure, severe abuse can have lasting impact, but we are
| talking about babies crying for a bit. Kids have a thousand
| innane reasons to cry. Having thousand and one doesn't make
| that much of a difference.
|
| For all concerned, I don't have kids and I don't intend to.
| feet wrote:
| There's a _lot_ more than synaptic pruning going on during
| the neurological development of infants such as migration of
| cells
| scotty79 wrote:
| I meant synaptic prunning that happens much later. At few
| years of age.
| encoderer wrote:
| For my second kid it worked wonderfully. There was one hard
| night. After that he had, for the first time in his young life,
| the ability to put himself back to sleep at night when he woke
| up. That was a gift for him as well as us. We used the Ferber
| method.
| Unbeliever69 wrote:
| Back in the 90s my son REALLY struggled getting to sleep on
| his own. The only way to put him to sleep was to rock him and
| hope he didn't wake up while you were putting him down. This
| lasted for almost a year. At wit's end, a friend loaned us a
| VHS tape about an episode of 60 Minutes that advocated
| "crying it out." It was a life saver! Within a few nights he
| was finally sleeping through the night. I'm not going to lie.
| Those nights were pretty difficult, especially for my wife.
| Luckily, my daughter didn't have that problem!
| afandian wrote:
| My parents' generation (in the UK) were physically beaten as
| children. It was a normal part of parenting and part of school.
|
| My hope is that one day we will consider this emotionally
| abusive behaviour as seriously as we we now look at physical
| abuse. Though I don't hold out much hope. Especially as there
| are still some people holding out for the right to hit their
| children even now.
| vmilner wrote:
| My Uk school was still doing collective punishment beatings
| ("Who spoke?" (No-one replies) (30 boys get caned) ) in the
| early 80s.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Physical punishment is still legal in school & home in ton
| of US states.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Well has it worked? Have you knifed anyone?
| DieAgainAli wrote:
| You act like 'back in my day' there wasn't any crime. If
| you look at murder rates in the UK they peaked in the
| early 2000's. Maybe those abused boys were taught
| violence is the answer?
|
| Letting your baby 'cry it out' is abuse in my eyes and
| you can sleep train them without doing this. With my
| daughter we soothed her in her cot instead of picking her
| up.
|
| She will now link her sleep cycles and only cry when
| there is something wrong
| wolpoli wrote:
| > If you look at murder rates in the UK they peaked in
| the early 2000's. Maybe those abused boys were taught
| violence is the answer?
|
| There were earlier HN posts attributing the decline in
| the rate of murder rate/violence crime to countries
| phasing out lead-gasoline. Now we might never know unless
| we do a properly controlled experiment.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Glad to see the UK is past their murder rate peak -
| what's the rate now, merely double what it was in 50s or
| the Edwardian Era?
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| You cannot say "well you probably haven't done this one,
| specific, highly unlikely thing for someone in the UK to
| do. So yeah caning probably worked, right!"
|
| I haven't knived anyone. I was never caned at school.
|
| The absence of someone doing a thing is not proof of a
| thing doing what you believe it does.
| pc86 wrote:
| Abuse in a school setting 40+ years ago is not all that
| surprising.
| vmilner wrote:
| I think early 80s is when it becomes tricky to _legally_
| beat kids in schools in the uk. I suspect collective
| punishment was actually illegal long before that but it
| wasn't tested in courts.
| somrand0 wrote:
| well yea, because your parents were essentially slaves, the
| property of higher elite classes. I'm pointing to the class
| relationship, nothing specific to your parents.
|
| I wonder if such practices were used in schools reserved for
| royalty and other nobles in the UK
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| It's well known that "elite" schools such as Eton also used
| physical punishment in a similar manner.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Comparing a 9-month-old spending 15 minutes calming
| themselves down before falling asleep to physical abuse is
| laughably absurd.
|
| A big problem with this "debate" is that people conjure
| images of newborn babies being left to cry for hours, when
| what is actually predominantly practiced is older infants
| 6-12 months old being allowed to cry for less than half an
| hour.
|
| After being fed and given a clean diaper and a safe place to
| sleep, being rocked to sleep just isn't a "need" for an older
| infant; they are crying because they _want_ to be soothed to
| sleep. And it 's fine to do that if you want to as a parent
| (which pretty much all parents do!), but it's also fine for
| them to learn to soothe themselves instead. It isn't
| "emotional abuse".
| aaomidi wrote:
| Yeah...cause they're human and as the parent you're their
| only human interaction.
|
| Why is them wanting to be soothed seen as a bad thing?
| Like, what the fuck do we think these babies are actively
| scheming to find ways to get soothed?
|
| I swear our brains are looking for adversaries in infants
| now.
|
| Your infant child can not manipulate you. The brains barely
| understand action and consequence. Your infant child is
| trying to communicate its needs, and having it unmet with
| indifference is honestly hilariously sad.
| sanderjd wrote:
| It's not a bad thing, just like it's not bad for a baby
| to want to be spoon-fed. But part of growing up is
| learning new skills, like eating by themselves and
| soothing themselves to sleep. And a big part of parenting
| is figuring out the right times and ways to encourage
| this.
|
| You know what has been a far more traumatic growing
| experience for every kid I've known than learning to
| sleep independently? Learning to use a toilet. Way more
| tears, way more "emotional trauma", but it's all part of
| growing up.
|
| > I swear our brains are looking for adversaries in
| infants now.
|
| Also, sleep training is not some new-agey thing that
| we've just concocted out of a recent adversarial
| parenting trend; if anything it's exactly the opposite,
| it is the focus on "attachment" and concern over the
| impact of things like sleep training that is the newer
| trend.
| mirsadm wrote:
| One thing that has always bothered me is parents trying
| to justify sleep training as a positive for the child.
| The reason parents do it is for their own benefit.
| gregoriol wrote:
| What if it is part of learning?
| afandian wrote:
| "A little rap on the knuckles" is less severe than full on
| beating, but it's on the gradient of physical violence.
|
| Teaching a child that their call for help will not be
| answered is unkind and damaging. And I'm not sure a baby
| has the same perspective on 15 minutes as the average
| adult.
|
| I'm pretty sure most adults are walking around with
| unresolved emotional trauma issues that do not serve them,
| or those around them, well.
|
| Again, on my opinion as a human. Opinions clearly vary
| wildly.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This is not that at all, and it is a diminishment of
| actual abuse to compare the two things.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Teaching a child that their call for help will not be
| answered is unkind and damaging.
|
| I just commented elsewhere and asked you what your
| understanding of "sleep training" or "crying it out"
| entails, but I think this answers it for me - you're
| ignorant to what actually happens.
|
| You do not teach a child that their call for help will be
| unanswered. You observe them closely as they wake up,
| listen to how they're crying (each parent knows what
| their child's cries mean), listen for the highs and the
| lows of the crying, watch them as they try to learn how
| to put themselves back to sleep. _But you ABSOLUTELY DO
| NOT abandon them_. You go in frequently at first, and
| slowly extend the amount of time you give them before
| going in as "sleep training" progresses. You slowly give
| them more and more space to figure it out, but you still
| always go in _at some point_ , when they need it. You are
| giving them the space to learn something while still
| being there for them.
|
| To suggest otherwise, and judge others as abusive you
| have been doing repeatedly in this thread, is ignorant
| and uncalled for. It's not constructive, and it's rude.
| mlboss wrote:
| I think the articles talks about this: the child still
| wakes up in the middle of night but does not cry.
| Scientists are not sure what is happening, are they able
| to sooth themselves to sleep or are they still stressed
| out but are not crying. Because they know nobody will
| come for help if they cry.
| afandian wrote:
| I apologise, I've not read literature on it, or the
| particular methodology you describe. I'm not judging you.
|
| That said, whatever the merits of a structured approach,
| for every parent that diligently follows them, there are
| others that are less careful. And I've met them.
|
| I'm responding to sentiments like "I just ignore them and
| they go to sleep eventually", "don't go and check, he
| only wants attention" from other parents, and other
| reports from someone I know who is a midwife.
|
| The model we followed was "Hand in hand", which resonated
| for us. And we were saddened that that philosophy does
| not seem to be very mainstream amongst parents I have
| met.
| sanderjd wrote:
| You shouldn't call people abusive in one breath and then
| try to say "I'm not judging you" in the next. It isn't
| credible.
| oskarpearson wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > For others, it can be hours of crying, even to the point
| of vomiting (common enough to be a frequent topic of
| conversation on sleep-training forums and addressed by baby
| sleep books including Ferber's
|
| The article also includes a reference to 2-3 hours.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| It's a spectrum between "spend 24/7 attached to a baby"
| and "ignore them all night".
|
| Everyone thinks that the position even 1% different from
| what they adopted is abhorrent.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Fair enough. I'm not supportive of letting kids cry for
| 2-3 hours even to the point of vomiting. But even then,
| I'm sympathetic to it if the parents have tried
| everything else and they have a kid that just won't
| sleep. I'm not like an absolutist or anything, I just
| think parents should have space to try to figure out what
| works for their own families without random strangers
| calling them abusive.
| mike1o1 wrote:
| Agreed 100%. I feel like sleep training is for the parents, not
| necessarily for the babies. Most parents in the USA need to
| work, so they are the ones that need the sleep.
| christophilus wrote:
| > As a parent, it is your evolutionary instinct to comfort a
| crying infant.
|
| My genes didn't get the memo. My instinct is to say, "He'll be
| fine, but if I don't sleep, no one will be fine."
| amriksohata wrote:
| So very true, I feel this is why adults are becoming more and
| more hardened and emotionless from childhood rejection issues
| ineptech wrote:
| That evolutionary instinct came from a time when humans lived
| in communal support networks and new parents had help from
| extended family, and does not translate well to a world where
| Mom has to work 9-5 in an office a few months after birth. You
| might as well express shock that suburbanites don't supplement
| their diets by foraging for fruit and mushrooms.
|
| Besides, it's not like parents 10K years ago had the option to
| let their babies cry it out in a separate room with a noise
| machine, and evolution selected against it because co-sleeping
| babies reproduced more. "Babies cry because they need to co-
| sleep or they will suffer some serious problem" sounds
| reasonable to me, but so does "Babies cry because it gets them
| more nutrition by keeping Mom so sleep-deprived that she delays
| her next pregnancy." Making just-so stories about behavioral
| evolution is dubious, the bar needs to be higher than just
| sounding plausible.
| omnibrain wrote:
| > a world where Mom has to work 9-5 in an office a few months
| after birth
|
| That's a cultural problem itself.
| standardUser wrote:
| Putting a very young child to sleep in a different bed in a
| different room seems like one of those modern Western
| civilization things that makes no sense when scrutinized even a
| little. Like hiding nipples or cutting off bits of penises.
|
| Is it really still the norm to place the baby in another room and
| then go tend to them when they cry?
| yosito wrote:
| My parents let me "cry it out" when I was a kid. I cried so much
| I got a mild hernia. Mild enough that it has never caused any
| problems. But it left a bump in my abdomen that I can still feel
| as a man in my late 30s.
| voisin wrote:
| I also know someone who has a hernia from being sleep trained
| as a baby.
| chinabot wrote:
| I find this interesting that human infants are the only ones to
| cry out and make lots of noise, it must have been recent
| historically as making yourself known to predators is generally
| not a good idea evolution wise.
| mlboss wrote:
| Its mentioned in the article. Human brain at birth is not as
| mature as compared to other animals. Most of the animals can
| start walking after birth.
| standardUser wrote:
| Chimpanzee and gorilla babies can take 4-8 months to walk.
| Baby chimpanzees don't cry but gorillas do (though apparently
| not often like human babies).
| deniscepko2 wrote:
| Human infants were not left alone to go hunt for food, i
| believe the modern concept of family is at play here. People
| used to live with their parents so, much more help - much less
| crying.
| standardUser wrote:
| Other primates don't cry like humans, so maybe by the time
| human crying became common, humans were already established as
| dominant predators not to be fucked with. Human babies are
| never left alone so a crying baby probably signaled the
| presence of 5-10 adult humans or more. Not exactly an easy
| meal.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > "Because early experiences of stress may program the HPA
| (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis to be more stress reactive,
| increasing risk of physical and mental health problems in later
| life, our results suggest that parenting in infant sleep contexts
| may play an important role in shaping how the child responds to
| stress across childhood,"
|
| I never liked the "cry it out". suspecting something like that.
| It was hard waking up at night but we did it anyway. It felt it
| was the right thing to do. I understand some might say it's
| evolutionary and just a way for kids to tug at our heart strings,
| and they may be fine otherwise. However, I sure wasn't going to
| experiment with that on my children.
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| My wife and I did not sleep trained our kids. They co-slept with
| us, they were happy we were able to sleep through the night.
| Eventually they transitioned into their own bed no problem. Our
| neighbors will let their baby cry like forever, it was
| excruciating and imo pointless.
| tptacek wrote:
| Not our experience with co-sleeping at all: our sleep quality
| was terrible and the transition was extremely tough and
| prolonged. Congrats on getting lucky! :)
| sublinear wrote:
| Sometimes a solution is so obvious it's sure to get ignored.
| lazide wrote:
| As with all things, if it is applicable or not requires a
| comprehensive understanding of the actual situation, the people
| involved, and fair and balanced judgment and reasonable plan of
| action that adjusts to circumstances.
|
| It is extremely difficult doing so in a high stress
| environment.
|
| No 'cry it out' plan I've ever seen or heard of would recommend
| them crying for a very long time. It's really easy to just give
| up, at the point many parents find themselves doing sleep
| training, as it's not something folks want to talk about, and
| the sleep disruption is likely already been going on for a very
| long time and they're already exhausted.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| What do you mean? Hard to understand what you're describing.
| lars512 wrote:
| My brother and his wife did not sleep train their boy and co-
| slept with him. They had endless issues with sleep that
| continued past 2y old, were constantly exhausted, and
| eventually alternated who slept with him. We sleep trained our
| boy, same age, had very few issues even from very young.
|
| Children are so different, from so early, it's not at all
| obvious what outcome for a particular kid is because of
| different strategies taken and what comes from their individual
| natures, or other aspects of their environment.
|
| Co-sleeping's known to increase the SIDS risk, so it's another
| reason people are sometimes reluctant to do it, even if it
| would make the baby more comfortable.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| The SIDS risk being parents rolling on top of and crushing /
| asphyxiating the baby. We just gloss over most of this sort
| of death by calling it SIDS to avoid having to charge the
| parents with a crime.
| sfpotter wrote:
| Do you have children?
| temporary22 wrote:
| parents ARE charged with a crime when they crush /
| axphyxiate the baby to death.
|
| SIDS happens also when baby is alone in bed. You relating
| it to parents rolling on baby tell me you don't know much
| about the argument.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I'm convinced most of the issues with rolling on babies is
| people who take medication or drink. Maybe I'm wrong.
|
| SIDS is totally different.
| weakfortress wrote:
| You would be wrong. I suppose it's anecdata but a member
| of my family who works in pedatrics sees this regularly
| unfortunately. Usually it's these new-age parents that
| think co-sleeping is somehow beneficial. You fall into a
| deep enough sleep, it takes almost no time at all to
| seriously injure or kill your child.
|
| Frankly, co-sleeping with a baby is irresponsibility of
| the highest form. It may have worked for the GP but for
| every one that it works, another 100 show up to my family
| member's office or to the morgue. There's no conspiracy
| in why part of the "how to handle a baby" guidelines they
| give new parents is "never, ever, EVER co-sleep". Its far
| safer to assume that the new parent is not in the less-
| risky population and will in fact eventually cause their
| child's death.
| m-ee wrote:
| I believe those cases are included in SIDS statistics. I
| can't find it but NPR had a long informative show with a
| doctor talking about SIDS, she mentioned that if you take
| out overweight/drunk parents the risk of SIDS from co
| sleeping is actually very low
|
| EDIT: Another important factor is where the sleeping
| occurs. A bed is very safe, a couch is not. She pointed
| out that an exhausted parent lying down with the child
| for an intentional nap is much better than them falling
| asleep sitting up on the couch.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| LOL, every parent has a different set of anecdotes! We had
| sleeptime issues as well as a number of our friends. We did a
| gradual approach where we sat in a chair nearby the bed, then
| gradually moved the chair away, over about a week. Everything
| was fine after that.
| relaytheurgency wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're arguing for or against it, but for
| those who don't know, this is at its core sleep training.
| It doesn't require a parent to just throw their child into
| a crib, slam the door, and put in ear plugs. Anyone who
| ignores the needs of their child is cruel. That said,
| sometimes a child's needs are met and they just need to
| learn to go to sleep without someone patting their back.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I think parenting is the worst possible space for N=1
| anecdotes. I have two sets of friends who did what you did and
| have never slept alone or through the night for coming up on
| five years. For our oldest, also coming up on five years, we
| did like one night of sleep training at 18 months and
| immediately started sleeping through the night like magic. For
| our youngest, we never had to do anything, he just always slept
| through the night no problem. All of these anecdotes mean
| _nothing_ , just like yours. Parents need to experiment and
| figure out what works best for them and their kids, and
| everyone who isn't them needs to butt. out.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Yep, the thing I always tell new parents when asked about
| kids is that every single kid is different. Your kid might be
| a good eater and a bad sleeper. Maybe the reverse. They might
| be extremely needy or be completely chill and independent.
| This is especially obvious when you have multiple kids of
| your own. Some knowledge generalizes, but a lot of the
| personalized experience is different (e.g. what they respond
| to in terms of incentives or "training"). I was always about
| 10/90 in my opinions of nature vs nurture (90% nurture, 10%
| nature) but after having kids its so obvious nature is much
| higher than I thought. Not sure what the end ratio is, but
| I'd say at least 50% nature.
| tmtvl wrote:
| You make a good point, each child is different. It's almost
| as though children are people. Maybe there's some kind of a
| lesson in that, but I can't see it.
| doublesocket wrote:
| This resonated with me. The only two bits of advice I ever
| give to any new parent are:
|
| -everyone has an opinion about parenting, and many are not
| afraid to share it
|
| -don't compare yourself to someone with an older child. You
| will start out a level zero parent, but you get a level zero
| baby. You'll level up with them. No one starts out a level 20
| parent.
| sfpotter wrote:
| This is the only good comment in this entire thread.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _everyone who isn 't them needs to butt. out._
|
| Exceptions:
|
| * if somebody asks for advice.
|
| * if somebody mentions they're about to try an arsenic-,
| lead- and powdered asbestos-based nasal spray on their kid.
|
| The capacity of the parents is also a bottleneck: time spent
| paying attention to your uninformed advice is time spent
| _not_ paying attention to the child(ren). Unsolicited advice
| is not relaxing, and doesn 't help put food on the table; it
| probably doesn't help.
|
| Though, I think posting on an internet forum might fall into
| the "if they're asking for advice"; most people visiting such
| websites are there because they've looked something up, and
| they expect to be wading through anecdotes.
| [deleted]
| lazide wrote:
| Sometimes? Yeah. And random advice spamming doesn't help, and
| just makes it worse. MDs tend to be the worst at this, but
| there are exceptions.
|
| However, sometimes the parents are doing things that are
| unintentionally dangerous, or are so sleep deprived and
| exhausted they're being abusive and can't process that and
| get themselves to a better place on their own.
|
| It's more common than not, from what I've seen. As is denial
| and avoidance on the topic.
|
| Ideally, they would have experienced parents who know them
| (grandparents) who would be intimately involved and give
| breaks, intervene in important situations, help them with
| known working parenting techniques in the situation, etc.
|
| But 1) a lot of folks don't have grandparents who could
| positively contribute here no matter what anyway, and 2)
| socioeconomics means it's nearly impossible for this setup to
| coincide with HN demographics except for certain specific
| ethnicities, and 3) a lot of boomer parents - the
| demographics involved - are explicitly not interested in that
| kind of thing, and a lot of current folks in the child
| rearing age range have been left adrift with nothing but pop-
| sci articles to guide them.
|
| It's a shitshow, but I guess that's always been the case.
| tylerchurch wrote:
| Agreed! Kids vary significantly, and much advice I've read
| about sleep doesn't apply to our kid.
|
| You've just gotta do what is best for your family, not what
| is best for some internet stranger's child.
| jeeeb wrote:
| We co-slept with both of ours as well. We still do with my
| youngest who's just shy of two.
|
| He's having eczema problems currently. Having him in the same
| bed as us means I can notice if he's scratching and intervene,
| otherwise he'd keep scratching until he's bleeding.
| varjag wrote:
| _The silence overwhelmed Mary Carlson when she visited row upon
| row of swaddled babies in a Romanian orphanage. No babbling, no
| crying, not even a whimper.
|
| ``The children are just lying there. You don't hear crying, even
| in a room full of infants,'' Carlson said.
|
| The orphanages are terribly overcrowded and understaffed, leaving
| little chance for the attention babies need. Not even mealtime
| offers a chance to cuddle: bottles are propped in the cribs._
|
| https://apnews.com/article/a6cec231a453aa20429cef7f8694beb6
| nicolas_t wrote:
| The problem with citing the Romanian orphanage is that it's too
| extreme to be in any way relevant to sleep training. There's a
| huge difference between gradual extinction (with parents coming
| back regularly in the room), with a loving relationship during
| the day and children in the Romanian orphanage who were left
| with no warm human contact whatsoever.
| trilbyglens wrote:
| Didn't sleep train and now our 9yo expects to come to our bed
| every damned night. Big regret.
| frereubu wrote:
| We didn't sleep train our daughter - our organisation was
| pretty messy to be honest - and although she did sleep in
| another room from a reasonable age, sleep was incredibly patchy
| and broken for years. Which broke us too! Something clicked
| when she was around 7.5 years old, and her sleep has been
| pretty fine since then. I know you say yours is 9, but I write
| this to hopefully offer some solace that things do change, even
| if you don't feel like you didn't do the right things. (And
| which 12-year-old wants to sleep in their parents' bed?! So
| although it may feel a long way off, it won't last forever...)
| partiallypro wrote:
| This is going to sound harsh but I think some bad habits like
| this are gotten rid of when their friend group finds out and
| makes fun of them for it.
| marliechiller wrote:
| I do sometimes wonder on the effects of "positive" bullying
| in social circles. Not physical violence, but teasing etc.
| One boy in our childhood friendship group was constantly
| teased for his weight and bad eating habits. Eventually, he
| had had enough and one summer, hit the gym and got in shape.
| I suppose it easily could have gone the other way and this is
| all anecdotal but there must be other instances of such
| social effects
| scruple wrote:
| A former manager remarked to me one day that my one year old
| twins slept better than his 8 year old son. We've sleep trained
| all 3 of our children and I can't imagine our lives otherwise.
| I think we'd just manage to survive if they didn't sleep well
| and on their own.
| rr808 wrote:
| 9 is nothing, my daughter is 14 and still expects her mother to
| join her most nights.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| This is my fear as well. Coworkers have mentioned similar where
| their wives co-sleep well into elementary school. I've met some
| of those kids, and they just don't seem well adjusted -- as in,
| during the day they don't play by themselves unless a parent is
| nearby. My wife is in the same camp and just cannot bear our
| kids (1 and 3) crying, so it sabotages any attempt at training
| them to be independent at night. I finally had to banish her to
| a remote bedroom while I sleep train them.
|
| I trained both of them at 1 and it only took a few days in a
| crib. The older one now has his own bed, so that's been more
| challenging.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There are billions of children/people around the world that
| cosleep/coslept simply because having your own bed/sleeping
| mat/space is a luxury most do not have.
|
| Kids cosleep in my parents' villages in their home country
| because most families are living in a single room, but those
| kids are out playing all day while their parents work the
| fields or wherever.
|
| I imagine a relatively recent luxury (by itself) available to
| relatively few people in the world is not a causal factor in
| people being "well adjusted".
| warrenmiller wrote:
| Have a read what Gabor Mate has to say about sleep training
|
| " The implicit message an infant receives from having her cries
| ignored is that the world -- as represented by her caregivers --
| is indifferent to her feelings. That is not at all what loving
| parents intend."
|
| https://drgabormate.com/no-longer-believe-babies-cry-sleep/
| gwnywg wrote:
| When my wife was pregnant we purchased very nice bed with eco
| matress in it and all sort of development toys attached to it.
| When our child reached a few months we tried to get him sleep
| over there but after a few days resigned (damn british floors
| making noises when you walk on them...) Plus I'm a sleep walker
| (very mild but still) so when we had our first child I opted to
| sleep in living room while my wife had our child with her at
| night. Kids have no problems sleeping in their beds now, though
| it requires discipline in applying daily routine, otherwise sleep
| time can slip a lot...
| wffurr wrote:
| What a disaster this thread is. So much projecting, very little
| actual reading and thinking.
| [deleted]
| agitators1 wrote:
| [dead]
| anon291 wrote:
| Part of this is that Americans have an obsession with babies
| sleeping in another room and in another bed.
|
| My family immigrated here and no one ever did that. Children
| sleep with their parents.
| leokennis wrote:
| I slept with both my babies for maybe two nights. Nights where
| I slept an hour or less because I would wake with every little
| sound they made. Then I put them in their own rooms, with a
| baby monitor set to a reasonable threshold.
|
| I got a solid 3-4 hours a night. The babies got fed, cleaned,
| cuddled etc. Win-win.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| This goes away after a few days, it's explained in the Co-
| sleeping section of the course they should give you: your
| body is attuning to the baby. That's also how you don't roll
| over them and how they wake up if it's too hot
| voisin wrote:
| > Nights where I slept an hour or less because I would wake
| with every little sound they made.
|
| This is a feature, not a bug. That attunement is what allows
| caregivers to avoid suffocating their child. It works when
| the caregiver is not under the influence or so exhausted they
| don't wake up (which it sounds like in your case you were on
| the verge of that by only sleeping an hour or less, but I
| promise you after a week or so you adjust and sleep fine if
| not more a bit less deeply so you will react if anything is
| happening to the baby.
| brink wrote:
| > have an obsession
|
| I'm so tired of the condescending tone that is usually taken
| for granted when talking about traditional American culture.
| Can we please stop this? It's just a cultural difference.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| This is what you get when you treat everybody else in the
| same way, by telling them cosleeping is evil. I'm very bitter
| of the opposite, we have been taught it's wrong to co-sleep
| the entire time. Lucky, mother nature gave us some help.
|
| After we co-slept for 3 years with our baby, on the second
| one they wanted to take the baby off my wife the night in the
| hospital (baby sleeps on mom's chest). I understand the
| concern, but this is the second baby, we know the drill.
| trgn wrote:
| It's something I find very commendable of americans actually.
| Americans generally take unsolicited criticism and brash
| antagonizing language from foreigners quite well. Every
| american traveling abroad can attest (remember the post 9/11
| years?!), and generally have dealt with civilly and with head
| raised.
| jjulius wrote:
| What does it matter how a family sleeps as long as it works
| well for the family?
|
| Edit: And is it an "obsession" or simply a cultural difference?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > as long as it works well for the family?
|
| It's easier for the family when the child is in the room with
| the parents. At least in the same way it is easier to have a
| master bathroom rather than one on the other side of the
| house.
|
| > is it an "obsession" or simply a cultural difference?
|
| It was an _imposed_ cultural difference. American parents
| were told they would hurt their children if they slept in the
| same room with them, or attended to them too quickly when
| they cried. So they changed their behavior in order to
| conform.
| lazide wrote:
| SIDS data shows a (relatively) high occurrence of kids
| dying by having parents roll over on them, or them getting
| entrapped/suffocated in bedding. In traditional cultures,
| this usually gets covered up.
|
| Additionally, it's _much_ harder for the parents or kids to
| get consistent sleep (often already causing a lot of
| difficulties during this time), when toddler age kids are
| in the same area, due to differing schedules.
|
| In the US, due to mainly socio-economic issues (need to
| migrate for work often results in families separated over
| long distances), it is relatively uncommon to have
| relatives living in the same household able to help with
| childcare too, especially late at night. So it puts a lot
| more load on the parents.
|
| If not managed effectively, this can break the parents in
| ways no one likes to talk about in polite company.
| voisin wrote:
| > SIDS data shows a (relatively) high occurrence of kids
| dying by having parents roll over on them, or them
| getting entrapped/suffocated in bedding
|
| Source?
| lazide wrote:
| https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/1/e20
| 220...
| anon291 wrote:
| If you and your spouse are of healthy weight and the
| mother breastfeeds all night and the bed is stripped of
| heavy bedding and pillows this is unlikely.
|
| I wish doctors would give parents this advice because
| what happens now is that many American parents will
| cosleep without admitting it and don't know what to do
| when they engage in it.
|
| In many traditional cultures, the baby is breastfed all
| night and the bed is stripped and beds are on the floor.
| If you do these , sids risk is greatly diminished. Some
| of the cosleep studies on sids are flawed. They conflate
| taking a baby onto a couch to sleep with an exhausted
| mother the same as a breastfeeding mother falling asleep
| with her child on a flat surface. But Americans are
| obsessed with cribs so doctors don't give any advice and
| conflate two unlike things.
|
| https://cosleeping.nd.edu/safe-co-sleeping-guidelines/
|
| https://news.nd.edu/news/infant-co-sleeping-expert-sheds-
| lig...
| voisin wrote:
| In British Columbia, Canada, new mothers are given
| material that talks about how to co-sleep in a safe
| manner, just as you say. Ensuring the mother has not had
| alcohol or drugs, covers and pillows are kept away and
| that the mother isn't falling asleep exhausted (easier
| said than done, but going to bed early and not being up
| all night are key).
|
| Source: new baby last month.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| We are in BC but it was still treated poorly: kinda not
| talked about, poorly represented on news (kid died
| because family was Co-sleeping!), in the hospital they
| strictly avoided it. We were lucky with a great prenatal
| course though.
|
| Made a huge difference, since our baby didn't sleep for
| more than 1 hour without a human body until she was age
| 2. Now if she's tired, she naturally fall asleep.
| lazide wrote:
| Considering nearly zero Americans are of healthy weight
| right now (obesity rate over 42%), even if you don't
| consider stress eating that often happens with a new baby
| - just limiting by healthy weight or not is going to bias
| any results towards a pretty small group of people.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Considering nearly zero Americans are of healthy weight
| right now (obesity rate over 42%)
|
| Apparently, "nearly zero" are mathematically literate,
| too.
| lazide wrote:
| Obesity is 'you're going to die an early death because
| you're overweight'. It is the polar opposite of a healthy
| weight, but there is a lot of red in the gap. You might
| not be aware of that? It's one of those uncomfortable
| truths no one likes talking about. Even Dr's won't
| usually mention it to patients.
|
| 73.6% of American Adults over 20 years old are
| overweight. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-
| adult-17-18/obe...
|
| 26.4% of the American population is not overweight. I
| didn't correlate to eating disorders resulting in people
| being under weight - I've seen a decent amount of that
| too. Probably 5 to maybe even 10%.
|
| I'm struggling to see how that isn't a pretty select
| cohort that is a healthy weight, no?
|
| Anecdotally, most Americans consider me lean and athletic
| - I'm a good 20 lbs overweight by reasonable historic
| standards, but not obese. The overton window has shifted
| _a lot_ , but our bodies and what is healthy for us are
| no different.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Obesity is 'you're going to die an early death because
| you're overweight'.
|
| No, its not. Even _morbidly_ obese doesn't mean that,
| though it statistically correlates with a greater
| reduction in expected lifespan.
|
| > 73.6% of American Adults over 20 years old are
| overweight. [...] I didn't correlate to eating disorders
| resulting in people being under weight - I've seen a
| decent amount of that too. Probably 5 to maybe even 10%.
|
| 1.6% of adults over 20, actually, using 2018 numbers. [0]
|
| At any rate, even if it was your 5-10%, not enough to
| make the "at a healthy weight" number close to 0 (even if
| underweight was relevant in context of being more likely
| to suffocate an infant, which I would hazard a guess it
| is not.)
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/underweight-
| adult-17-18...
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, rolling over and suffocating is NOT
| SIDS. With SIDS, the cause is undetermined.
|
| This is also a weird presumption: go to bed when the kids
| go to sleep and wake up early. You get the same amount of
| sleep and a free morning.
|
| > SIDS: A disorder marked by the sudden and unexpected
| death of a healthy child who is younger than one year
| old, usually during sleep. The cause of sudden infant
| death syndrome is not known. Also called crib death and
| SIDS
| lazide wrote:
| 'Unexplained' is a large portion of SIDS deaths. Folks
| trying to protect parents and the family from blame for
| 'preventable' deaths is also a thing.
|
| As SIDS is better understood, and categorization is
| changing (addressed in the paper I linked elsewhere) the
| graph showing proportions of accidental
| suffocation/strangulation during sleep is rising while
| SIDS is dropping - but both numbers are adding up to
| about the same. (see total SUID death rate, Figure 1)
|
| https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/1/e20
| 220...
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Is this basically suggesting that all SIDS are
| essentially suffocation (or close to that?)
| lazide wrote:
| Nope, the paper goes into it.
|
| It's saying some proportion is, but it's unknown (and
| likely unknowable) what the actual proportion really is,
| for a multitude of reasons. It's unlikely to be most.
|
| There are a lot of similar issues with mortality data in
| general, but kids are a particularly sensitive topic. For
| instamce, a large portion of 'gun cleaning accidents' are
| suicides. How many has changed with the times and the
| fashions. It's possible to guesstimate approximately of
| course, but we'll never really know for sure unless we
| somehow plunked an invisible researcher over the shoulder
| of every person all day every day.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Thanks for the summary, so there is still a portion
| that's really unknown.
|
| And yes, I suspected it was hard to get proper data
| jjulius wrote:
| >It's easier for the family when the child is in the room
| with the parents. At least in the same way it is easier to
| have a master bathroom rather than one on the other side of
| the house.
|
| Up to a point, sure. One common scenario is for newborns to
| sleep in their own crib/basinet/whathaveyou in the parent's
| room for a short time, before moving into their own room.
| Many people don't sleep train until their children are at
| least six months, if not much older. Other parents will
| keep them in their beds.
|
| I have two children under the age of three and,
| anecdotally, where and how parents decide to have their
| children sleep is really all over the board because it
| boils down to what works best for the family.
|
| And I think it's really stupid, unfair and short-sighted to
| judge other parents for their decisions in this area.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Also, children are wildly different! My elder slept
| terribly for about 3 months, until we gave up on trying
| to cosleep, and slept for almost 6 hours straight when we
| put him down by himself for the first time. The younger
| liked co-sleeping and transitioning to a separate room
| was much harder.
| voisin wrote:
| > I think it's really stupid, unfair and short-sighted to
| judge other parents for their decisions in this area.
|
| I would expand this to [in any area]. We need to adopt
| more of a "whatever works for the family" attitude rather
| than a one size fits all attitude.
| jjulius wrote:
| Completely agreed. If the children and parents are happy
| and healthy, whatever is happening in their home is
| working for them and it's absolutely not my place to
| question it. Everybody is different.
| alfred_wram wrote:
| > as it works well for the family
|
| I understand the argument to be that it doesn't work well for
| the baby. That they experience a form of abandonment because
| their brains are wired to equate abandonment with the absence
| of close contact. They're very dependent on the proximity of
| a caregiver.
| anon291 wrote:
| It's an obsession because pediatricians insist upon it while
| offering no advice on co sleeping despite that being the most
| common arrangement worldwide. It's also extremely common in
| the United States despite parents not admitting to it.
|
| Unfortunately, being given no information, the American
| parents who cosleep go on blind and don't know what
| precautions to take.
|
| But yeah, it's an obsession because it's pushed despite the
| fact the arrangement is incredibly uncommon worldwide.
|
| As for the last question.... I don't care. In fact I ask the
| same thing when people act as if co sleeping is some great
| evil
| voisin wrote:
| I answered in another comment, but at least in British
| Columbia, Canada, new mothers _are_ given advise as to how
| to co-sleep safely.
| agitators1 wrote:
| [dead]
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Our baby will be 5 months in a few days. My partner and I both
| had kind of harsh upbringings (as in, our parents left us alone
| to cry among other things). So when we found out we were
| expecting, we bought a crib and said we'd be tough parents
| (though maybe less tough than ours).
|
| Turns out we caved. Too hard to leave a crying baby especially
| because, instinctively, we know that it's his only way to
| communicate and he doesn't really know what's going on. This line
| is pretty much the same as what we reasoned:
|
| > no one should ever do that to a three-month-old. They don't
| have object permanence, they don't know that if you're not in the
| room you haven't disappeared from the planet. It's
| psychologically damaging
|
| Anyhow we're pretty happy with the decision. Our baby hardly
| cries, sleeps quite well and no one is stressed out. Not getting
| out of bed to feed is a massive bonus. There's no rocking him to
| sleep, we just go to bed and he falls asleep. And hopefully less
| childhood trauma than we had.
| johndhi wrote:
| Having an 11 month old baby I have a few observations:
|
| 1 - parents have strong feelings on this topic and sleep is
| important.
|
| 2 - different kids/families seem to have majorly different sleep
| experiences in the first year
|
| 3 - I am skeptical of the literature in this field. Infant sleep
| feels measurable so it feels like studying it should be feasible,
| but we're forgetting these are little humans, not plants or
| bacteria cultures. People and psychologies are complicated.
|
| 4 - our baby ate a lot from a young age and was also able to
| sleep long lengths from a young age. Why? Probably genetics. We
| were lucky to not have to do formal sleep training with him; it
| was more a process of aligning his schedule and letting him learn
| how to fall asleep with less and less rocking.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| We have two kids. One is 3, and the other is 1. Our first was
| an amazing sleeper. After the first few months, she would
| mostly sleep in a basinet the entire night. She transitioned to
| a crib easily, and now sleeps in a bed for about 12 hours per
| night without getting up.
|
| Our second on the other hand was a complete nightmare. Crying
| for almost the entire night for months on end. He eventually
| settled down a bit, but we finally caved and let him co-sleep.
| He slept with us for almost the entire first year, and is just
| now moving to a crib.
|
| So I don't even think it's genetic. It's almost purely random.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I've heard similar anecdotes (siblings being very different
| in how they sleep) from many families.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Humans, well life in general, is pretty damn robust.
|
| That said maybe studies haven't picked this up cause the real
| negative effect is when you're old and demented they put you in
| the cheapest home. Where the staff let you cry it out if you
| fall and break your hip in the night.
|
| Who the hell knows? Or will ever know.
| robg wrote:
| Co-sleeping has much more of a basis in human history. The
| challenge is transitioning.
| lazide wrote:
| And SIDS.
| voisin wrote:
| Source? Everything I've read has shown this to be more of an
| urban legend if anything. Most SIDS deaths related to
| cosleeping involved alcohol or drugs. SIDS was actually found
| to be reduced due to breathing regulation matching that of
| the parent.
| lazide wrote:
| https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/1/e2022
| 0...
|
| Not that I saw.
|
| The change in sleeping habits due to public health
| campaigns seems to have cut frequency roughly in half,
| maybe even as much as 75% depending on how much reach you
| give the education credit for. Still the #1 cause of death
| for infants, but a lot less so now.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Co-sleeping and SIDS data is highly mangled.
|
| I will not trust medicine on this. It's just too vague and
| enough babies have been killed because "sleeping face down is
| better".
|
| If one of the strongest parental instinct is sleeping with
| your baby, I'll trust mother nature this time.
|
| Sorry, I'm particularly bitter about this. We have been
| pushed away from Co-sleeping due to poor education and when
| we did, we got from 2 hours of sleep per week to 8 hours per
| day, and a lot more cuddles.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| It's mangled because humans are complex. A lot of the risks
| are from activities or issues that cause sleep problems --
| alcohol, drugs, sleep apnea. What is the likelihood that a
| baby gets smothered? These all factor in. The risk
| decreases with age.
|
| Co-sleeping, generally, is much more dangerous than
| sleeping on their own in a proper crib. If it works for
| you, great. Some people take extraordinary steps to ensure
| it's safe, like removing pillows or fluffy comforters. It
| should not be generally recommended though.
|
| Any parent knows that nothing is entirely binary.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I agree, but I disagree with your statement about being
| way safe.
|
| Research doesn't account for what happens when baby is in
| the crib and it doesn't sleep.
|
| So sure, you might have avoided SIDS, but the baby might
| die because the parent fell asleep while standing with
| the baby in their arms.
|
| P. S. Again sorry for my tone, I'm super angry for how
| the entire medicine treats Co-sleeping like a horrific
| thing
|
| So the research from my perspective is highly
| insufficient to prove anything.
|
| And yes, you can sleep while standing in the subway, by
| the way.
| lazide wrote:
| The issue is that even doing basic summaries of what is
| (actually) happening would require full time attention
| from a researcher 24/7 (so really 3 researchers,
| minimum).
|
| Parents are sleep deprived, under incredible stress, and
| trying to avoid judgement from any number of other
| parties. Asking for survey responses ain't going to help,
| and even if they are trying to be fully transparent, they
| won't be able remember half of what is going on anyway.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > P. S. Again sorry for my tone, I'm super angry for how
| the entire medicine treats Co-sleeping like a horrific
| thing
|
| This is a theme across all kinds of expertise. In my
| opinion a good expert will understand that the world
| isn't black and white. They'll understand that there are
| many, many more variables that go into a decision than
| their particular line of expertise. They'll understand
| their job is to clearly convey the risks and benefits
| that fall into their scope and more important they'll
| clearly state that they alone cannot make a decision for
| you.
|
| Bad medical professionals think their expertise is all
| that should go into a decision. Good medical
| professionals will understand that there are countless
| other factors that go into a person's decision that fall
| well outside of the scope of their expertise.
|
| Based on what I've observed over the last 3 years, there
| are plenty of "experts" out there who seem to think that
| _only_ their line of expertise should go into any
| decision.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I don't think hypotheticals are very useful. A sleep
| deprived parent is a risk in any scenario. It's a moot
| point.
|
| The only point I was making is that it is generally
| agreed upon that a crib is safe for babies to sleep in.
| They can't fall out, get smothered, etc.
|
| Medicine treats co-sleeping horrifically because, by any
| measure, it's less safe. Few medical professionals will
| recommend, generally, anything associated with such risk.
|
| If you choose to co-sleep, I believe you should simply
| accept the risks. We can't pretend there are none. We
| can't reasonably ask the medical community to stop being
| harsh.
|
| Perhaps co-sleeping hasn't had it's "fed is best" moment
| that we've seen with bottle v breast, but I'm not sure it
| ever will. It's simply more risky.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| That's what I'm disagreeing with: there is less risk of
| the baby dying IN THE CRIB, but there isn't less risk of
| the baby dying overall, that's not assessed (and it would
| be very hard to prove), but the reality is just that.
|
| Then again, the risk factors of Co-sleeping are known and
| can be eliminated: put the bed on the floor, remove extra
| pillows, use light covers or no blankets, set the room
| temperature to something you can sleep well while naked,
| no drugs/alcohol.
|
| There is also a whole thing about the skin-to-skin sleep
| providing to the baby regulation for breathing and
| circulation (no idea about the scientific base of it, but
| it was told by doctors, so I assume there is some), which
| seems to help for other issues too, as well as being a
| known way to prevent SIDS.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Sorry, but you're wrong. Not only wrong, but confidently
| and smugly wrong. You think you know best but haven't
| bothered to actually do any real research on this topic.
| lazide wrote:
| Not condoning, but at some point that's a necessary
| survival reflex.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| What does it mean to be "wrong" in this context? Maybe
| they've looked at the information and decided that the
| pros outweigh the risks? Who gets to decide that when
| such a decision is well outside the scope of science or
| facts? Such decisions fall into a persons values and risk
| assessments. No expert can, nor should, make such a
| decision for an individual.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Yes that's what I meant, but I don't think my statement
| reflected that correctly, it came as "this should be what
| you should do" and in a certain way, I'm arguing exactly
| against that behavior.
|
| I apologized in a separate comment.
|
| Yes, we did a risk assessment (we were literally
| terrified of having the baby sleep with us), I read ~5
| books about the topic before the baby was born and talked
| to various professionals. It was a weighted risk: me and
| my wife don't roll while asleep (I sleep tummy down and
| she sleeps tummy up), and I wake up when I have to roll.
|
| We also adopted various strategies to check on any babies
| movement: for example, I had an arm in physical contact
| with baby's body. Later on the baby just slept on mom's
| breasts, in which case she had full control (any movement
| would wake her up) at that point.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Hey, sorry for my tone previously, I'm particularly
| irrational when it comes to co-sleeping due to being
| treated poorly due to my choice. I did research based on
| 5 books and talking to professionals (extensively), my
| research stopped when I assessed that it's not as high
| risk as depicted by the verbiage used by some
| professionals at the hospital.
|
| This is not my field of expertise, so of course my
| knowledge is limited.
|
| I won't give recommendations from the medical
| perspective, but I will strongly suggest to reconsider
| the stance toward co-sleeping.
| derbOac wrote:
| SIDS research is really difficult to interpret because of
| issues with medical records and problems with socioeconomic
| and cultural confounds. So, for example, cosleeping is much
| more common in immigrant populations and there are a lot of
| uncontrolled confounds related to access to healthcare, etc.
| Medical examiners are also hesitant to blame parents often
| and SIDS is frequently used to avoid assignments of
| responsibility.
|
| My spouse and I were really surprised by the actual research
| when we looked closely at it. It's much murkier than is
| commonly believed.
|
| My experiences in research and with pediatrics has led me to
| be deeply skeptical of a lot of common claims about infant
| and child sleep.
|
| I think a healthy dose of caution is warranted but I think a
| lot of this area is not quite what it seems I initially (
| which I think is part of the point of the article).
| lazide wrote:
| For sure! Though might be worth reading https://publication
| s.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/1/e20220...
|
| Covers most of this. And with education campaigns and
| shifts in habits, overall mortality not just 'SIDS' rates
| have dropped a lot.
|
| As to risk/reward, long term implications of things, etc. -
| I don't know, and I don't know anyone who reasonably can
| claim to know, but I also haven't seen any reason to be
| concerned overall.
|
| Plenty of bigger, more concerning issues - like lack of
| healthy socialization among kids, etc. in many
| environments, reduction in exercise, anxiety issues, social
| media, etc.
| mrsubletbot wrote:
| My wife and I co-sleep with our kids (2 & 4). I get just about
| a full sleep every night. If the kids wake up I imagine it's
| much less work to roll over and cuddle with them as opposed to
| getting out of bed, going to a separate room and then
| comforting them. Co-sleeping gets bonus points for giving me
| just a little extra sweet time with my kids, because before I
| know it they will be older and wanting their own space. They
| are only little once.
|
| I would recommend co-sleeping to almost anyone.
| coredog64 wrote:
| We co-slept with all three kids and caught flak for it from
| the pediatrician. She was certain that one or both parents
| were going to roll over onto the kids and squish them. Very
| pleased we did it, but you may have to stand your ground with
| well-meaning but ignorant people.
| giarc wrote:
| My wife looked into this and I think the safety issue is
| mostly a myth. I think the rare cases of child deaths while
| co-sleeping were when the parent was drunk or smoking in
| the bed and caused a fire.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Your pediatrician is ignorant about SIDS risks? They are
| much more likely to be informed about this matter than you,
| with your n=3 anecdote.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I'm sure they are very educated about SIDS. But their job
| is to give you enough information on the pros and cons so
| you can make a well informed decision yourself.
|
| It isn't the job of any expert to tell you if you should
| or should not do something. Humans have been cosleeping
| with their infants since time began. Clearly there are
| some serious pros to it. An expert who is truly good will
| never tell you what to do. They will only inform you of
| the pros and cons and let you arrive at your own
| conclusion.
|
| It's the same deal with lawyers, dentists, accountants,
| security folks, UX designers, engineers and everything
| else. I mean, could you imagine what a product would look
| like if you _only_ took input from your lawyer?
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| >Humans have been cosleeping with their infants since
| time began.
|
| Take a look at a graph of infant mortality rates since
| time began, chief. Appealing to "this is how things have
| always been" does not really work in this case.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| "Slept with parents, eaten by a sabertooth-tiger"
|
| Sorry the statement is not wrong, but it made me laugh a
| bit, the rates are probably all messy across the years.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Take a look at a graph of infant mortality rates since
| time began, chief
|
| Thats cool. I have. But we co-slept anyway because for us
| the benefits outweighed the risks. Especially while
| breastfeeding... Raw facts and data alone are not the
| only things required to make an informed decision on any
| subject. They only serve as inputs.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| We started co-sleeping with our son at first wake at around 8
| months, and have been doing that continuously for the past 7
| months or so (basically he sleeps with us in bed between 2
| and 6ish AM). I've enjoyed the arrangement but my wife is
| tired of it, due to getting kicked and punched all night
| long. On top of that, she's 32 weeks pregnant and really
| needs the sleep.
|
| Does your wife share your enthusiasm for co-sleeping?
| fn-mote wrote:
| > my wife is tired of it, due to getting kicked and punched
| all night
|
| I hope this isn't patronizing. If you want it to work you
| could put the little one on your side of the bed instead of
| in the middle. A mattress on the floor next to you can make
| rolling out of bed a non-event.
|
| Or sleep on a futon / remove the bed stand. There are many
| variations that work.
| mrsubletbot wrote:
| That sounds rough! From what my wife has let on, third
| trimester sleep is tough any way you slice it. My kids kick
| me sometimes, but usually I can just move them over and
| resume my slumber. It helps that we took two mattresses (a
| king and a twin) and pushed them together, so there is
| plenty of room for the four of us.
|
| And to answer your question, my wife is even more gung-ho
| than I about co-sleeping. She actually had to convince me
| to start doing it in the first place, because I shared the
| concern of lot of commenters here with regards to SIDS.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Same age for my children and same recommendation.
|
| I actually sleep about 9 hours per night, after which I
| naturally wake up.
|
| I would also recommend going to bed at the same time as the
| children. Painful from one perspective, but always rested in
| the morning.
| jjulius wrote:
| Forgive me here; I'm approaching this from a place of
| ignorance and curiosity, and I hope I don't overstep any
| personal boundaries - both for you and myself!
|
| My wife and I had many reasons for why we ultimately chose
| not to co-sleep. One of those reasons was our sex life. I
| don't pretend to know what the "norm"/average is, but it's
| frequent for us, 3-4 times per week, and at the risk of TMI,
| it can be fairly... involved. We know a few couples who co-
| sleep and I've always been curious how, or hell, even if, it
| has impacted their sexual relationships. Clearly it works for
| them (and you) and that's great! I would just be interested,
| if you're comfortable sharing, to hear what your experience
| has been here.
| giarc wrote:
| I'm not the person you are replying to, but my kids often
| find their way into our room before we get there. We
| usually just move them back to their own beds. If they come
| back on their own, it's usually not until much later after
| we've had time to ourselves. My kids go in phases, for a
| few weeks they will come in every night, then for seemly no
| reason, they won't come again for a month or so. However
| with 3 kids, they can't sync that schedule so we more often
| than not have a kid in our bed.
| mrsubletbot wrote:
| Ha! Perfectly reasonable question. Well, we just about
| never have sex in our room, but luckily for us our house is
| large enough with plenty of other venues for intercourse.
| The hardest thing for both me and my wife is the fact that
| we can't just roll over and fall asleep afterwards. I do
| miss those days!
| wmeredith wrote:
| The average is about once per week: https://www.prevention.
| com/sex/relationships/a24846275/how-o...
|
| From personal experience: after we had kids, sex became a
| lot more about opportunity than any particular place (our
| bed) and time (at night). It was that way for a while. Now,
| they're a little more grown up, and things are the way they
| were before. Everything is a phase.
| jjulius wrote:
| Makes sense, and your point about opportunity seems
| obvious in hindsight. I appreciate the response. :)
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Infants dying also has much more of a basis in human history
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I always loved comforting my little boy when he was a crying
| baby.
| metabagel wrote:
| Having read "The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog", which goes into a
| fair amount of detail regarding attachment and attachment
| disorders, letting an infant "cry it out" strikes me as child
| abuse. Infants have no control over their environment, and crying
| is almost their only way to communicate.
|
| I'm not enthusiastic about sleep training either - the gradual,
| controlled removal of sleep time emotional support by the parent.
| I would suggest to be very conservative and cautious if you want
| to take that route, and as the article states, definitely not
| before the age of 6 months.
|
| Edit: I saw another comment which talked about "checking in" on
| the infant during sleep training. I think there is some middle
| ground I would be comfortable with after 6 months of age, where
| you don't rock the child to sleep for an hour, but you check in
| on them, gently touch them, talk to them soothingly for a little
| bit, and then you leave them for a little while. Come back in a
| little bit and briefly soothe them, and then leave again for a
| little while. As long as they know you are there. And you could
| stretch those periods out to see how the child does. But, again I
| would suggest to be very conservative and cautious and don't try
| this at too early of an age.
| johndhi wrote:
| Do you have children?
| afandian wrote:
| Not the commenter you replied to, but I am a parent.
|
| I see attachment as one of the most important aspects of
| human experience. Forcibly severing this is, in my opinion,
| emotional abuse.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Well said. My wife is a therapist who works extensively
| with children and she would absolutely agree with you.
| Letting a child cry it out has profound effects of
| development, in ways that may be invisible or hard to
| notice for many years. Someone else in this thread
| mentioned The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog, which is a great
| book on the subject.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Forcibly severing this is, in my opinion, emotional abuse.
|
| When you think of parents letting their kid "cry it out",
| what do you picture? What is your understanding of the
| process?
|
| Edit: Seems the answer to my question is over here[1].
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34177882
| em-bee wrote:
| i have been with friends who let their baby cry it out in
| the other room while the parents entertained guests. it
| did feel like emotional abuse.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Theres different levels of crying, and its easy to tell the
| difference as a parent. Theres regular, all-purpose crying
| which I'm in favor of allowing to run its course. Then theres
| actual panicked, full-on crying which is when I would say its
| time to intervene.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| > where you don't rock the child to sleep for an hour, but you
| check in on them, gently touch them, talk to them soothingly
| for a little bit, and then you leave them for a little while.
| Come back in a little bit and briefly soothe them, and then
| leave again for a little while. As long as they know you are
| there. And you could stretch those periods out to see how the
| child does
|
| You just described the Ferber method, a very popular sleep
| training approach.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| Thank you for saving me from having to look this up.
|
| I thought the same thing, 'isn't that basically describing
| sleep training...?'
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| TIL: some people think "cry it out" means total abandonment,
| and that they will ignorantly and confidently tell others
| that it's child abuse.
|
| > > As long as they know you are there.
|
| This line was funny to me... like they think the baby is
| running on logic and not instinct at 6 months old.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Edit: I saw another comment which talked about "checking in"
| on the infant during sleep training. I think there is some
| middle ground I would be comfortable with after 6 months of
| age, where you don't rock the child to sleep for an hour, but
| you check in on them, gently touch them, talk to them
| soothingly for a little bit, and then you leave them for a
| little while. Come back in a little bit and briefly soothe
| them, and then leave again for a little while. As long as they
| know you are there. And you could stretch those periods out to
| see how the child does. But, again I would suggest to be very
| conservative and cautious and don't try this at too early of an
| age.
|
| I have two children under the age of three, so this has been a
| topic I'm innately familiar with. What you are describing _is
| the commonly taught method of "crying it out" or "sleep
| training"_, and yes, _it 's commonly suggested to wait until at
| least six months of age_.
|
| It's incredibly frustrating how many people in this thread seem
| to think that we are just abandoning our children for the
| evening and calling it abusive, even earlier in your own post.
| lars512 wrote:
| The article mentions this 5y study
| (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22966034/) which included a
| sleep training intervention at 7m, and found "no evidence of
| differences between intervention and control families for any
| outcome".
|
| It sounds like the main concern would be starting sleep
| training too early (sub 6 months), or using it in unusual
| situations where there are already attachment issues.
| remote_phone wrote:
| > Having read "The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog", which goes
| into a fair amount of detail regarding attachment and
| attachment disorders, letting an infant "cry it out" strikes me
| as child abuse.
|
| You sound exactly like someone who doesn't have kids, advising
| parents and speaking with authority that you don't have.
| paganel wrote:
| > and speaking with authority that you don't have.
|
| All of us have (had) parents, the majority of us have been
| raised by parents, and that includes the childless people.
| And even the people who weren't fortunate enough to be raised
| by one or two parents are entitled to talk about parenting,
| I'd say that they're even more entitled to talk about it.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Not regarding a human child, but my spouse thought leaving our
| rescue dog, still a youngster only a few months old, in a cage
| in another room overnight was somehow proper, which frankly
| incensed me as cruel and abusive nonsense, because it's not the
| way of the wild, not what any of us were evolved for. And I'd
| lived with and worked with rescue animals for decades, so felt
| strongly about this.
|
| (i put my foot down and gave her run of the house so she was
| soothed to be with her (generalized) family, and she's been
| fantastic ever since. my spouse is still indignant about her
| plan being abandoned, but it proved the effective and healthy
| choice.)
| silisili wrote:
| Dogs are not 'way of the wild' creatures. Most, if not all,
| wouldn't even survive in the wild without human intervention.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > because it's not the way of the wild
|
| Not to defend crate training, but potty training, walking
| your dog on a schedule, feeding it processed dog food and
| generally keeping a pet indoors is also not the way of the
| wild.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _potty training, walking your dog on a schedule,_
|
| These are actually somewhat similar to wild dog behaviours.
| They usually have specific areas to poo, and they often
| have routines - albeit, not externally-enforced ones.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| yep agree with all that too
| Insanity wrote:
| Crate training is a good thing (imo) but should be done
| properly. Not just sticking them in a crate overnight in
| another room and ignoring them.
|
| Our dog is crate trained, which makes travelling with him way
| easier for example. (He is 1 year old now, so at night he
| just walks into his crate whenever he feels tired. We don't
| have to put him in his crate anymore).
|
| You have to make sure they associate positive experiences
| with it.
| kgermino wrote:
| Adding to this, we didn't crate train our dog and while I
| wouldn't say I regret that, it makes things harder.
|
| She hated the crate when we introduced it. We couldn't find
| any way to get her in there without her panicking and
| trying to dig out after a few minutes. She had a bad
| history before us and is completely fine outside the crate
| so we gave up.
|
| Day to day it's fine. She wanders on her own schedule, has
| a dog bed she claims as her space, and doesn't really cause
| any issues. However, when we travel she's loose in the car
| without a comfortable space. When some people visit there's
| no obvious place to send her, so she has to be locked in a
| room where she isn't used to being confined. When kids
| visit she has a harder time getting away from the chaos.
| She doesn't have a consistently dark place during the day
| to sleep. The list goes on.
|
| Crate training isn't just about giving your dog a small
| room you can lock them in, it's giving them a private,
| safe, emotionally and physically comfortable space they can
| call their own. The crate travels - so their safe space is
| always with them, they can escape to it, and they are in a
| comfortable place if you need to lock them up for some
| reason (as always happens sometimes). Our dog doesn't have
| that.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| good point. we left her crate set up with door open, which
| she could use as a "fort", and she did like that for
| napping. i guessed partly in the sense she doesn't have to
| stay partially awake worrying about being stepped on.
| retrac wrote:
| We picked up a young stray. Too rambunctious to be left out
| overnight. Well-behaved generally but around 3 am he jumps
| on top of us and wants to play. Not working. A crate
| though? Seems barbaric. But we did it gently, in slowly
| increasing increments. If he became distressed, we let him
| out. I think that's probably key. Oh, sleepy time? Let's
| try to get him to do it in the crate for an hour. Then a
| few hours.
|
| Now, around bed time, he goes in on his own, lies down and
| waits for his treat. He usually prefers to sleep in the
| crate, and he goes there during thunderstorms too; it's a
| good safe place. We don't usually have to lock the crate
| door anymore, but when he's rowdy it's "no! bed!" and he
| goes and lies down in the crate, and we can cinch him in,
| for a few more hours of rest. Even that's increasingly
| rare.
|
| I think a major mistake is to use it to separate the dog
| from people. It's very important that he can hear us
| nearby, even just sleeping. If he can't hear us, it becomes
| separation anxiety and he needs to get out because he's
| trapped in an isolated place. About five minutes out of the
| bedroom and the whining will start. I'd guess that it's
| probably also important that it be predictable and
| associated with daily routines. And it should never be used
| as punishment.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| that last paragraph is exactly what was wrong in our
| first few nights and which we changed by moving the crate
| into the main bedroom with us, and then there was no need
| for the crate door to be closed. everything seemed
| harmonious (hence my assertion the original distant part
| of house nonsense was unnatural isolation).
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Crate training is pretty normal and not sure why you feel so
| weird about it. Is it "the way of the wild" to keep the dog
| in your house?
| illegalsmile wrote:
| I don't get it either. Our shelter dogs were always crated
| overnight since they weren't allowed in the bedrooms and
| they would go there when it was bed time with no problem.
| Occasionally they'd go to their crate to take naps or seek
| refuge there during storms. I guess if a dog willingly
| going into a crate to sleep while everyone else slept is
| cruel and abusive I don't know what they'd think about
| actual abuse. Our dogs lived long happy lives. Most dogs I
| know have a spot that's tight and cozy, maybe even covered,
| that they go to; crate or not. If you crate train with
| positive reinforcement it's a benefit for everyone IMO even
| if you don't make them sleep in there.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I think what we did is much more similar to what you
| describe, with the crate door left open, so she didn't
| feel isolated when the other pets and humans were in
| other rooms. we moved the crate upstairs and left the
| door to it open, and she took a liking to it as her own
| space, and would choose to go sleep in it like it was her
| bedroom (or whatever), but having it at the distant end
| of the house clearly alone for the sake of isolating her
| is what I found counterproductive.
| pavas wrote:
| You're talking about the dog not minding being in the
| crate since you've taught them its nice and cozy. In that
| case why does it have to be a crate, why not say, an
| indoor doghouse?
|
| As far as that goes, there's nothing wrong with that and
| that's not the part that people actually have problems
| with (but it's a nice strawman to argue against).
|
| The part that is cruel and abusive is locking them up
| when nobody is at home so they can't damage your
| possessions. If there is some emergency like a fire,
| intruder, something falling down, etc, they can't do
| anything about it.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Docking tails and ears is normal too. Male circumcision is
| normal. Locking people in cages for possessing certain
| plants, extracts, chemicals is normal. War and all of the
| murder that goes on in it is normal. Burning coal is
| normal. Limiting rights of women is some countries is
| normal.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| common, yes. what wolves and coyotes do, sort of, during
| the day when out hunting, but not leaving their pups alone
| overnight, right?
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| I think every baby is probably different and there won't be a one
| size solution.
|
| We tried everything but the cry it out version where you let them
| cry for 10 mins then go in, reassure them, leave and repeat was
| definitely the worst strategy by a mile in our case.
|
| What worked for us, and like magic, was stopping planning sleep
| times and instead planning awake times. E.g. after rising he'll
| have 2.5 hours awake, then down for a 1st nap. Then whenever he
| wakes the clock starts for 3 hours, then down for a nap. 3rd
| awake pattern... etc.
|
| The length of the wake windows extended by 10 mins or so each
| week but by that point there was a rhythm going and being able to
| get that far was 90% of the magic.
| Cerium wrote:
| Cry it out is not the only sleep training technique. My wife and
| I have been able to implement a gradual reduction of supports in
| an effort to successfully sleep train our daughter. We started at
| four months by making situations that she sleeps easily a little
| harder: for example she would fall asleep while drinking so we
| started putting her sleeping bag on after she drank. As most
| people say, it won't fully click until after six months. Around
| six months she started to demonstrate that she could fall asleep
| by herself. By eight months she rejected help sleeping. Holding
| her and doing things that worked in the past would only make her
| angry, she would demand being placed in the bed when she wanted
| to sleep.
| mmusc wrote:
| This. Both my kids were sleep trained but never involved
| leaving them to cry it out.
|
| You let them cry for a min or two but no then you go in and
| soothe them.
| trafnar wrote:
| Yeah, "sleep train" does not mean "cry it out"
|
| My kids slept through the night by four months, with other
| techniques.
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