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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?

#431

Post by shepherdjerred »

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?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maladaptation

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

#433

Post by k2enemy »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #423
naasking wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Dude, only Europeans had slaves right? It is not like the entire world had them. In fact the word slave originates from Slavic people.. I don't think Asians ever had slaves in the history. The OP comment said " what are the odds that the rest of the world was wrong for a millenium and Americans figured it out in 100yrs" Edit: damn. non European had slaves. Didn't know it before. Wasn't definitely part of the history…

I'm not sure if this was sarcastic? But in case not, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Asia

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

#434

Post by DiggyJohnson »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #419
jack_pp wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAD, I don't have kids but I'm curious why melatonin properly dosed would be seen as worse than crying to sleep. From what I've learned about melatonin it seems to me you did the right thing

Because it's a chemical ! A hormone ! Because you're dosing your kid with a drug ! You're taking the easy way out! You're using a shortcut to cover for your inability to endure the first few days of ${sleep training method}! These and similar kinds of bullshit judgements.

While I reserve any judgement on GP’s use of melatonin to help their child sleep, I think the tone of your comment indicates a confidence in pharmacology that is difficult to justify, or at least betrays significant immaturity about the complexity of these sorts of decisions…

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

#435

Post by pictureofabear »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #419
jack_pp wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAD, I don't have kids but I'm curious why melatonin properly dosed would be seen as worse than crying to sleep. From what I've learned about melatonin it seems to me you did the right thing

Because it's a chemical ! A hormone ! Because you're dosing your kid with a drug ! You're taking the easy way out! You're using a shortcut to cover for your inability to endure the first few days of ${sleep training method}! These and similar kinds of bullshit judgements.

They aren't bullshit judgments; they are concerns about unproven methods.

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

#436

Post by dinkumthinkum »

ineptech wrote: post #272
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…

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…

I wonder if many people realize mortality rates were much, much higher in antiquity and prehistoric times.

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

#437

Post by dinkumthinkum »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #298
omnibrain wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a world where Mom has to work 9-5 in an office a few months after birth That's a cultural problem itself.

Unfortunately, solving a cultural problem is the second most difficult thing to do, after changing laws of physics. Or, as some web article I read the other day put it: society is fixed, biology is mutable. And it's not just about two-income households. From my personal experience I can say that, even with one parent working, a poorly sleeping child can bring the parents to the brink of divorce, or depression, or bot…

I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like society is that fixed. It seems pretty malleable over the scale of decades.

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

#438

Post by dinkumthinkum »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #377
TeMPOraL wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not 5 years or 16? I think “shithole” country is pretty inflammatory and condescending.

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

#439

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #405
FrankyHollywood wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fall asleep right away if around someone this... with my first kid I didn't know how to handle, advice was 'to leave it cry to sleep', but it felt like torture to me, inhumane, letting it cry for so long. A little baby just doesn't want to be alone. I discovered just sitting in the same room, reading something on my tablet was enough to fall a sleep after like 20 minutes, 90% of the time. And yes, there are those n…

> That's not how it works, the first year is horrible. (...) things will get better when the kid grows older. Except when they won't. Our older daughter started having real sleep issues around when she was 1.5 years old. From that point on, every night was one of "those nights nothing works". Her sleeping schedule became quite consistent: roughly 21:00 - 05:00 if she didn't nap during the day, or 23:30 - 05:00 if she…

Glad this worked for you.

For our kids, they do sports. Heavy duty sports, since age 2-3.

Now they basically volunteer to sleep on their own.

Bedtime is not a drag. Its a priviledge. And Its glorious.

Every kid is different. But they are all energy machines. Starve the machine of energy, or use it all up, and the machine will go idle. .You have to find what sticks.

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

#440

Post by dinkumthinkum »

heavyset_go wrote: post #421
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…

> The fact that this is so commonplace in my culture (USA) is frustrating and enrages me From the outside, American culture around child-rearing seems like there is an adversarial relationship with tinges of resentment when it comes to how parents see children. A lot of the tough love type of parenting seems to come from a place of pacifying parents, giving them what they want, over their burdensome children with "pr…

There isn’t really an “AmerIvan culture around rearing children”. America large variations in behaviors. If American parenting was completely as you suggest, how do we have a generation of professional victims or constant discussions of “helicopter parenting” or “participation trophies”?
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