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Do you have kids yourself? Just curious.
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What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
51–60 of 644 posts
Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
#52My 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.
Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
#53Summary: 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.
Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
#54Part 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.
> 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.
Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
#55Cry 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.
Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
#56My 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.
I also know someone who has a hernia from being sleep trained as a baby.
Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 t…
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…
> 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?
Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
#58What 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.
Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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 strip…
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.
Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 t…
>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…
> 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.