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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?

#251

Post by ipaddr »

paganel wrote: post #228
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…

Back in the day travellers men/women/kids/strangers would all sleep in the same bed in the medieval western world. Things have changed.

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

#252

Post by pavas »

illegalsmile wrote: post #161
cycrutchfield wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 do…

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.

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

#253

Post by standardUser »

chinabot wrote: post #189

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.

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.

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

#254

Post by paganel »

remote_phone wrote: post #238
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…

> 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.

> 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.

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

#255

Post by sanderjd »

aaomidi wrote: post #204
sanderjd wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

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…

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.

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

#256

Post by DieAgainAli »

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 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

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

#257

Post by standardUser »

mlboss wrote: post #249
chinabot wrote: post #189

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.

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.

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).

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

#258

Post by giraffe_lady »

scotty79 wrote: post #247
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…

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.

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.

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

#259

Post by feet »

scotty79 wrote: post #247
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…

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.

There's a lot more than synaptic pruning going on during the neurological development of infants such as migration of cells

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

#260

Post by psychphysic »

johndhi wrote: post #177

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…

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.

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