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What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

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Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#131

Post by wizzwizz4 »

sanderjd wrote: post #122
Patrol8394 wrote: post #104

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.

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…

> 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.

Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#132

Post by Beltalowda »

rspoerri wrote: post #79
jmnicolas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even cats have wildly different personalities so I don't think sleep training human babies have anything to do with their personalities.

Did you sleep train the cats?

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.

Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#133

Post by lazide »

sanderjd wrote: post #122
Patrol8394 wrote: post #104

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.

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…

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.

Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#134

Post by tylerchurch »

sanderjd wrote: post #122
Patrol8394 wrote: post #104

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.

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…

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.

Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#135

Post by [deleted] »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #131
sanderjd wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#136

Post by cycrutchfield »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #123
metabagel wrote: post #110

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…

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…

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?

Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#137

Post by jeeeb »

Patrol8394 wrote: post #104

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.

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.

Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#138

Post by lazide »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #103
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 resear…

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.

Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#139

Post by tptacek »

Patrol8394 wrote: post #104

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.

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! :)

Re: What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

#140

Post by mmusc »

Cerium wrote: post #55

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 un…

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.

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