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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?

#371

Post by TeMPOraL »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #305
ineptech wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That evolutionary instinct came from a time when humans lived in communal support networks and new parents had help from extended family, and does not translate well to a world where Mom has to work 9-5 in an office a few months after birth. You might as well express shock that suburbanites don't supplement their diets by foraging for fruit and mushrooms. Besides, it's not like parents 10K years ago had the option to…

[flagged]

Name a non-shithole place on the planet where that isn't the case.

This is not a US phenomenon, it's pretty much a global phenomenon by now. It's the flip side of breaking down the traditional family/society model - as more and more households had two incomes, the market quickly compensated for the surplus, and now most households struggle without two incomes.

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

#372

Post by tinco »

rgbrgb wrote: post #315
eslaught wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In The Netherlands the national advice is 9 to 12 months before separate rooms based on some SIDS statistic.

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

#373

Post by mrjh »

metabagel wrote: post #345
awillen wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're throwing around accusations of abuse despite the fact that you admit you haven't read literature on it. Why are you contributing your admittedly uneducated opinion on this? Go read some of the literature instead. Stop judging parents you've never met (and yes, despite you saying you're not judging, you obviously are). Just because something worked for you doesn't mean it works for all babies or families, and i…

I think this is a dangerous practice. Read the literature on attachment theory. https://www.attachmentparenting.org/ensure-safe-sleep-physic... "Research shows us that an infant is not neurologically or developmentally capable of calming or soothing himself to sleep in a way that is healthy. The part of the brain that helps with self-soothing isn't well developed until the child is two and a half to three years of ag…

You’re getting downvoted because this is just one person’s opinion and yet you’re presenting it as gospel… dogmatically repeating the same post over and over in spite of there clearly being strong support for the opposing POV. More than one opinion can be valid.

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

#374

Post by TeMPOraL »

metabagel wrote: post #358
TeMPOraL wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 be…

But infants aren't capable of looking after their own needs. You're really mixing up different stages of childhood development.

> But infants aren't capable of looking after their own needs.

That's my point. They aren't capable of looking after their own needs. They need their parents for that. But what they are capable of is correlating their behavior with their needs being fulfilled, and doing more of the thing that correlates well with those needs being met.

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

#375

Post by jjulius »

metabagel wrote: post #345
awillen wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're throwing around accusations of abuse despite the fact that you admit you haven't read literature on it. Why are you contributing your admittedly uneducated opinion on this? Go read some of the literature instead. Stop judging parents you've never met (and yes, despite you saying you're not judging, you obviously are). Just because something worked for you doesn't mean it works for all babies or families, and i…

I think this is a dangerous practice. Read the literature on attachment theory. https://www.attachmentparenting.org/ensure-safe-sleep-physic... "Research shows us that an infant is not neurologically or developmentally capable of calming or soothing himself to sleep in a way that is healthy. The part of the brain that helps with self-soothing isn't well developed until the child is two and a half to three years of ag…

Do you have an unbiased source? Both that website, and the only piece of research linked to at the bottom of the page, are from heavily biased sources (Attachment Parenting International and Journal of Attachment Parenting). None of the primary articles under "Research Related to This Principle" support the quote you highlight (least as far as I can tell, maybe I missed!), and the specific quote doesn't link back to any specific study. Not only that, but...

>Until that time, a child depends on his parents to help him calm down and learn to regulate his intense feelings.

Again, you're ignoring the fact that parents absolutely do tend to their children emotionally during sleep training. I highlighted that in another response to you earlier, as well as this very comment chain. You even edited your comment and acquiesced to support a version of it at six months, and now you're back admonishing the practice as "dangerous" altogether?

Edit: I am not saying you shouldn't hold your own views. Do what you want with your kids as long as you and your family are happy. Just ease up on telling others they are wrong - they are just as right for their family as you are for yours.

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

#376

Post by bawolff »

naasking wrote: post #275
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…

> What are the odds that the rest of the world and entire history of humankind were mistaken the whole time, until some behaviorists came along and figured it all out in the last century? There are many cases where all of humanity has been doing something that we only recently decided was wrong. For instance, slavery. Certainly the odds aren't good that this is true of everything humans do, but the odds that some of…

> There are many cases where all of humanity has been doing something that we only recently decided was wrong. For instance, slavery.

Not really comparable because we decided it was morally wrong, not that we were wrong about its effects. Its not like humanity used to think slavery was good for the slave.

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

#377

Post by Gordonjcp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #371
Gordonjcp wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Name a non-shithole place on the planet where that isn't the case. This is not a US phenomenon, it's pretty much a global phenomenon by now. It's the flip side of breaking down the traditional family/society model - as more and more households had two incomes, the market quickly compensated for the surplus, and now most households struggle without two incomes.

In the UK you get six month's paid maternity leave, and that is in a country being run into the ground by right-wing idiots.

In most European countries it's 12 months.

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

#378

Post by remote_phone »

paganel wrote: post #254
remote_phone wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What is easier, watching a movie or making a movie? Or do you think those are equal in effort?

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

#379

Post by tinco »

dccoolgai wrote: post #347

My wife and I deliberated over this for a month. In the end, we decided that "cry it out" was really just gaming the infant's evolving worldview with a sense of "learned helplessness" - something both of us struggle with individually. So we knew it would be tougher on us - and it definitely was - but the alternative of teaching a baby that the only thing they could really do was "ineffective" was something we couldn'…

Same, but hearing stories from other parents makes me believe we are just very lucky that our baby is responsive to this empathic approach.

Also white noise app cuts down on the whinyness before sleeping tremendously.

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

#380

Post by TeMPOraL »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #244
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…

Hypothesis: the parent, by forcing themselves to sleep train, conditions themselves to ignore more of the infant's emotions; and the infant, observing no reaction to their emotions, learns the same behavior, leading to higher incidence of autism. Typically (aside from some neurological disorders), there is an underlying reason for the infant to be crying. They could be hungry or wanting to urinate or defecate (many c…

Reality: sleep training enters the picture only after all the things you've mentioned have been checked first.

Even from a pragmatic point of view, it's hard to imagine otherwise, because all of those underlying reasons are quick to check and (usually) quick to mitigate. You don't even consider sleep training until exhausting every other option, because literally everything is easier than any of the sleep training methods.

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