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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?

#221

Post by dijksterhuis »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #209
vmilner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Uk school was still doing collective punishment beatings (“Who spoke?” (No-one replies) (30 boys get caned) ) in the early 80s.

Well has it worked? Have you knifed anyone?

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.

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

#222

Post by JW_00000 »

pcurve wrote: post #53

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. >…

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.

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

#223

Post by amriksohata »

conqueso wrote: post #150

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 th…

So very true, I feel this is why adults are becoming more and more hardened and emotionless from childhood rejection issues

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

#224

Post by relaytheurgency »

adamredwoods wrote: post #170
lars512 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 strat…

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.

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.

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

#225

Post by dijksterhuis »

somrand0 wrote: post #219
afandian wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

It’s well known that “elite” schools such as Eton also used physical punishment in a similar manner.

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

#227

Post by CraigJPerry »

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.

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

#228

Post by paganel »

conqueso wrote: post #150

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 th…

> 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...

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

#229

Post by anthonypasq »

darrmit wrote: post #12

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/advic…

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.

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

#230

Post by sweetheart »

afandian wrote: post #164
johndhi wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have children?

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.

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.
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