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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?

#481

Post by mrleinad »

klipt wrote: post #467
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What kind of sports are good for a two year old, and how do you take them to the sports if both parents work?

Crossfit. And bodybuilding of course.

Seriously, I had the same question when I read that.

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

#483

Post by dboreham »

I have a sample size of 2:

First kid slept through the while night immediately after coming home from hospital. When we proudly told pediatrician this at first checkup they became alarmed (even though weight gain was normal) and requested we wake him up every 4h. Very hard to wake him. Next checkup pediatrician says to wake him with wet washcloth. Still hard to wake, so we quit trying to wake him and enjoyed nearly 2 years of sleeping at night until kid #2: wouldn't go to sleep and continued not going to sleep until age 8.

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

#484

Post by unity1001 »

sanderjd wrote: post #199
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.

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…

[flagged]

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

#485

Post by komali2 »

lazide wrote: post #466
komali2 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice, same, I think the "cultural problem" comment is not saying that the problem is that "women are going to work" but rather that "the parents have to be away from the child for the majority of the time, or they will all be homeless and hungry." I'm not sure which country the OP is discussing, likely one without good maternity/paternity laws and whatnot, which is really sad to hear about, I hope more citizens deman…

Plenty of women need and want something to do besides 24/7 baby and house care stuff. And they won't starve to death if they don't do it.

Right, I'm countering the accusations of misogyny with "no, we're talking about the flaws of capitalism." Consider that many families in the USA have two parents, both working multiple jobs, to make ends meet. To me, one of the most important things in my hopefully 80 years is family, and so I get sad when I see people forced to trade that little time we get already, for work.

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

#486

Post by unity1001 »

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.

> I think the articles talks about this: the child still wakes up in the middle of night but does not cry

The child is avoiding crying in the absence of its parents because doing so would cause predators to find him before his parents. Evolutionary instinct. The parents will (hopefully) return from hunting & gathering eventually, to pick the child up.

And when the parents regularly fail to return or never return - yeah, one way ticket to a psychological disorder.

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

#487

Post by unity1001 »

metabagel wrote: post #350
epolanski wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There's plenty of evidence for it. Read the books by Dr. Bruce Perry. Read about attachment theory. If you read his books, what you will also find is that children respond differently to trauma. So, some children may not be harmed at all by childhood trauma, while others may be deeply affected. The basic fallacy here is that children under the age of three can self-soothe. They cannot. This is all part of infant deve…

> Dr. Bruce Perry... attachment theory

That one sure is an American cultural product that exists nowhere else. "Attachment is a problem" - here is a theory for it.

The entire human evolution is based on attachments created between the group members. From parenting to siblings to relatives to friends to everything else. The destruction of such 'attachments' causes social bonds to be broken and people getting isolated into depression. No wonder people call the US 'prozac nation'...

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

#488

Post by unity1001 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #338
sanderjd wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, it's both, for real. Waking up and crying five or six times a night really isn't good for infants and is even worse for toddlers. They need to be well rested for all the learning they do during their days. But it's also the case that anything that is bad for parents is bad for children. Especially when it comes to sleep deprivation. I'm completely convinced that in my almost-five year old's entire life, the most…

> But driving isn't the only problem. Parents are more irritable, less present, and just generally worse, when they aren't sleeping. This. It's hard to not laugh at a remark like "the reason parents do it is for their own benefit". Of course we do it for our own benefit. Because our benefit is the benefit of the child as well. Temporary attachment or emotional issues, if they happen, can be fixed. Worst case, the par…

> Temporary attachment or emotional issues, if they happen, can be fixed

Wow. Good luck with that. The entire psychology science and discipline was still not able to solve it. But your optimism is encouraging.

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

#489

Post by LoudFrog »

smallstepforman wrote: post #36

From Darwins point of view, klingy children slept besides their parents, were not eaten by sabre tooth tigers, and passed on the klingy gene. Babies that slept alone were eaten by Sabre tooth tigers, and did not pass their “can sleep in isolation” gene across. So why fight nature, accept it as part of life. Sleeping together bonds parents and children.

And I suppose the cave babies used potties too.

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

#490

Post by unity1001 »

christophilus wrote: post #270
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…

> As a parent, it is your evolutionary instinct to comfort a crying infant. My genes didn’t get the memo. My instinct is to say, “He’ll be fine, but if I don’t sleep, no one will be fine.”

> My genes didn’t get the memo

Don't worry. Your gene pool will eventually select itself out via that mindset.

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