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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?

#561

Post by TeMPOraL »

unity1001 wrote: post #488
TeMPOraL wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Wow. Good luck with that.

Thanks! We've had a lot of good luck so far. In fact, the child psychologist we went to proactively, to talk about how to help a 1 y.o. child handle moving to a new home in a different city, approved with the way we handled both this and other issues, and with our approach in general. But hey, N=1, it's always possible she is wrong.

> The entire psychology science and discipline was still not able to solve it. But your optimism is encouraging.

The issue isn't with psychology, the issue is with people treating an entire spectrum as one bit "is or isn't" boolean. It's good for writing outrage-inducing stories to maximize revenue. It's good for winning arguments despite being wrong. It's not good if you actually care about the outcome.

The kind of issues we're talking about here are mostly the psychological equivalent of a bruised knee. Meanwhile, the commentariat and the pundits selling books want to round everything up to emotional abuse, as if letting a child cry for 15 minutes was as bad as leaving them to live on the street. Unfortunately, some of the HN comments seem to go this way too.

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

#562

Post by TeMPOraL »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #434
TeMPOraL wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think the tone of your comment indicates a confidence in pharmacology that is difficult to justify,

Hey, being condescending about magical thinking and pseudo-reasoning does not automatically imply a special confidence in pharmacology. That said, I do have perhaps above-average confidence in pharmacology, based on some experience and paying attention to details. Much like scientific papers, pharmaceutical products have specific effects and ranges of applicability. If you're aware of those and the trade-offs you'll be making, then pharmaceutical becomes a very effective tool - one that works reliably and consistently, unlike magical / naturalistic thinking.

> betrays significant immaturity about the complexity of these sorts of decisions…

I think it's the other way around. The example responses I provided are, to me, how immaturity looks like in the reasoning department. A lot of complexity in these sorts of decisions is created by people giving such replies, as now parents have to also trade off effective solutions against being judged by others.

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

#563

Post by komali2 »

lazide wrote: post #536
komali2 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you right makes me think you're trying to say we disagree about something lol but for the life of me I can't figure out what. > so much higher then When?

When it wasn’t two parents working full time to support everyone (aka the post WW2 years until what, about the 90’s). I’m disagreeing with what seems to be nostalgia, or a call to a different type of circumstance. I’m just noting, it had major drawbacks then too. Lots of stay at home moms drinking themselves into a stupor being one.

Right, back then cost of living were a much lower percentage of average wages. The "Homer Simpson" era when one father could work one job and own a nice a home while feeding a family of 3. Recall that minimum wage used to be a living wage in the USA.

There are definitely issues around gender, wage, and job opportunities in the USA, but right now I'm talking about the total economic downside of out of control detachment of wage against cost of living.

> Lots of stay at home moms drinking themselves into a stupor being one.

Could this have had more to do with an openly misogynistic society and lack of hiring and academic protections for women?

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

#564

Post by TeMPOraL »

Auracle wrote: post #459
TeMPOraL wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, no. Melatonin does affect things other than sleep. That said, you do what you need to do as a parent. I would only (silently) judge someone if they jumped right to that and kept at it. Messing with hormones should be a last resort, even if it seems benign.

Of course! My point is two-fold here:

1) "Last resort" doesn't mean "don't use, ever". A lot of the commentary on baby sleep issues would have you delay trying this until you've tried everything else repeatedly - or, in other words, indefinitely. But sleep deprivation of the entire household is no joke, at some point trying the same methods that didn't work again and again is just torture, and the negative effects far outweigh trying a hormone supplement.

2) Most advice around this topic is based on magical thinking, examples of which I included. Yes, bodies are complex, bodies of developing children even more so. Yes, hormones in general are hugely impactful and messing with them is dangerous. But it's not magic, it's not tainted by evil or something. We do have some idea about what the risks are.

The underlying idea behind the examples I provided (real and widely spread, unfortunately) is a knee-jerk rejection of anything man-made, of any intervention that wasn't available to our great grandparents, or their great grandparents. It's irrational and dangerous and annoying, and usually comes bundled with thinking in absolutes (instead of trade-offs).

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

#565

Post by FooBarWidget »

mrleinad wrote: post #481
klipt wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't bodybuilding bad for kids' growth in tallness? At least, that's what I read.

If one of your kids is male, then he might resent his lack of tallness once he reaches the reproductive age.

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

#566

Post by martingoodson »

XorNot wrote: post #537
jasonhansel wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very much possible to co-sleep and then gradually transition them to their own bed. Isn't co-sleeping (as in bed-sharing) discouraged in the US, at least for newborns, because of the risk of SIDS? To quote the AAP: > AAP recommends that parents sleep in the same room – but not in the same bed as a baby, preferably for at least the first six months. Source: https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-releases/aap/20…

SIDS however is probably genetic and little we do has made a difference (for example, when I was a baby the advice was to sleep children on their stomachs - it's literally the opposite now)[1] [1] https://www.schn.health.nsw.gov.au/news/articles/2022/05/wor...

This is dangerous and wrong. The incidence of SIDS has been reduced greatly by stopping putting newborns to sleep on their stomachs.

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

#567

Post by amai »

Just an anecdote from friends: Their baby was crying a lot and having a lot of trouble with sleeping. Desperate after some months they tried out one last thing the doctor suggested: The mother switched to a vegan diet. And the baby suddenly is calm and sleeps well. Later it turned out their child had several food sensitivities, which caused a lot of discomfort. It seems the vegan diet of the mother made her milk less irritating for the baby. The lesson: Sometimes babies cry for a reason. It is worth changing your routines to figure out the cause of discomfort.

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

#568

Post by RHSman2 »

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…

We are with you. Our ADHD boy. Oh how I remember this time!!!

It taught him to sleep. We stopped it on weekends and then slowly weened him off after 6 months.

Now at 8 he sleeps super well.

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

#569

Post by paganel »

remote_phone wrote: post #378
paganel wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The discussion is in no way comparable. If anything, you could say that we've all been actors, i.e we've al been kids, but even that seems a little stretched.

Anyway, this talk of "it's so hard to be a parent!" mostly comes from middle-class well-to-do people for whom it shouldn't be actually hard to be parents, or at least not as hard as it objectively is to much poorer people.

I suspect they're mostly doing it (the complaining, that is) as a social signifier, the same way that part of the same well-to-do middle class people used to complain until not that long ago that they're over-worked because of all of the emails.

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

#570

Post by dragonwriter »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #565
mrleinad wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crossfit. And bodybuilding of course. Seriously, I had the same question when I read that.

Isn't bodybuilding bad for kids' growth in tallness? At least, that's what I read. If one of your kids is male, then he might resent his lack of tallness once he reaches the reproductive age.

> Isn’t bodybuilding bad for kids’ growth in tallness?

Bodybuilding, as such, is generally considered dangerous for kids; whereas age-appropriate strength training is not (though even that is generally recommended for significantly older than 2, most sources I’ve seen suggest not younger than 6-8 to start.)

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