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What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

bbc.com

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

#311

Post by oaktrout »

unit_circle wrote: post #301

I haven't seen a single top level comment that demonstrated a complete reading and understanding. Some even willingly admit an inability to process the information. Funny, because I thought this was actually remarkably good scientific journalism! I guess this demonstrates why this technical reporting is rare. It took my wife and I about an hour to read and discuss the entire article. My main takeaway is the low fidel…

I enjoyed the article but found it to be a little wordy and difficult to skim to find what I was looking for. Most systematic reviews and meta-analysis convey more information in less text. I personally prefer to get to straight to the facts, say more with less.

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

#313

Post by locusofself »

0xEFF wrote: post #306
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…

It's curious years of good nights of sleep and a happy child enrages you. We sleep trained our son at 7 months. He cried for 90 minutes the first night, then slept soundly until 7 am. The second night he cried for 45 minutes then slept until 7 am. He didn't cry the third night. Every night since he's slept peacefully from 8 PM until 7 AM and asks to go to bed when he gets tired. He's happy during the day unless somet…

We had the exact same experience. A few nights of crying (we didn't totally abandon her, just a did a peek in and say goodnight again (no picking up the baby) after 5 minutes of crying, then 10, then 15, etc) for a few nights. Daughter has slept through almost every night since then, she just turned 4.

Sleep training (which involved some degree of "cry it out") was a life saver for us.

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

#314

Post by clcaev »

eslaught wrote: post #286
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…

In case it's not obvious to everyone reading here, no one recommends using the cry it out method on infants younger than six months. For younger infants, you should always respond as quickly as possible. Our doctor recommended that we have at least one person sleeping in the same room, but in a different bed, for the first six months. Then we gradually transitioned to allowing him to put himself to sleep, and I final…

I think missing a "window of opportunity" with kids "never learning to sleep by themselves" is dubious. Those approaching adolescence develop quite strong need for personal space, eventually. They start rejecting parental company, instead preferring to be alone or be with their peers.

I have one data point to share. An eight year old child decided one day, rather abruptly, that they were "done" with cosleeping and wanted to be in their own room, in their own bed, by themselves. And that was that.

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

#315

Post by rgbrgb »

eslaught wrote: post #286
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…

In case it's not obvious to everyone reading here, no one recommends using the cry it out method on infants younger than six months. For younger infants, you should always respond as quickly as possible. Our doctor recommended that we have at least one person sleeping in the same room, but in a different bed, for the first six months. Then we gradually transitioned to allowing him to put himself to sleep, and I final…

Our doctor (Kaiser) said 4 months fwiw.

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

#316

Post by com2kid »

mlboss wrote: post #232
jjulius wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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.

Everyone wakes up at night.

If my son wakes up at night and needs some water, he'll cry. Diaper change, cry. I have a nursery can and I can see him wake up sometimes, look around, and go back to sleep on his own, because that is perfectly natural.

W/o sleep training he wanted to be patted back to sleep everytime he woke up. That took 15 to 30 minutes, 2 to 4 times a night.

After sleep training, he sleeps better, and gets more sleep, and still has all his needs taken care of.

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

#317

Post by Mikeb85 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #303
Mikeb85 wrote: post #274

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…

Well the advice is usually to start at 6 months so you are a bit early anyway

Fair enough but the article does cite a study about sleep 'interventions' at 3, 6 and 9 months plus the aforementioned quote about 3 month olds.

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

#318

Post by laserlight »

epolanski wrote: post #297
afandian wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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,…

> Teaching a child that their call for help will not be answered is unkind and damaging You don't know that, there is no evidence for it and it definitely depends on the age. Your post is drammatically different when speaking about a newborn, a 6 or a 12 or 18 months old. Babies absolutely need to learn to self soothe and that crying won't always meet attention too. The idea that unattending a crying baby here and th…

> You don't know that, there is no evidence for it

Yep, I agree.

> Babies absolutely need to learn to self soothe and that crying won't always meet attention too.

How do you know that? Where’s the evidence for it?

PS: Not the one you’re replying to.

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

#319

Post by omgomgomgomg »

This is a no brainer.

Crying comes from emotional triggers like anger, fear,pain, hunger, loneliness etc.

When we cry as adults, it kinda helps to have a trusted person around to stand by us.

As a parent, it is obvious that you do not let your babies let it cry out.

Listen to yourself, not to youtube advice.No need to study evolution.

There are some moments where it appears they want to be left alone, but try your best to calm them down and cheer them up.

From baby to autarky, it takes 2 decades in the best case.

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

#320

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

> Like, what the fuck do we think these babies are actively scheming to find ways to get soothed?

That's exactly what they do. Do you believe they're processing sophisticated ideas of love, attachment and comforting? That they're making a choice to ask their parents for soothing?

Infants are acting on basic instincts. With very limited but rapidly expanding space of possible actions, they're actively learning what behavior will lead to their basic needs being satisfied. They can and will overfit on whatever pattern they can spot.

> I swear our brains are looking for adversaries in infants now.

In operational sense, they are - they're fighting for resources for their own survival.

> 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.

Of course they can and will manipulate you. That's, like, parenthood 101. The whole set of biological and psychological changes parents undergo, the whole deal with attachment, is to make the parents vulnerable to the child. The brain of an infant may understand little at first, but it understands enough of "action and consequence" to start doing gradient descent and quickly learn how to get what it needs from its parents. Of course it helps that the parents want to fulfill their child's needs - initially, the kid isn't really learning how to get the parents to respond, but rather training the parents to respond to specific cues.

Eventually, children learn to speak, and that's when it's really clear just how devious and manipulative kids are. It's both amusing and rewarding to watch them push the boundaries of their intelligence to get you to react they way they want. Except in those cases where they succeed, and you only realize it moments later that you've been had :).

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