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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?

#571
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 - ye…

Only with sleep training, the parents do return in the morning, so what's your point?

Of course a neglected child is likely to grow up with a psychological disorder. Neglected as in the parents (or at least some carer) not being there for days on end, or simply abandoning them. That's not sleep training though.

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

#572

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. My first daughter would wake, have a bottle, fall asleep within a few minutes for 3-4 hours. Wake, bottle, fall asleep for 3-4 hours. The first year was sooooooo easy. The 2nd year I wake, make bottle, hand it to her, she drinks and falls asleep. She’s 4 now and can’t stay in a room alone during the day or night.…

I moved my child to his own room when he was past 3 years old. I had to, because a second child was coming.

Before that age, I also tried several times, but each time I gave up because he protested too much. It was just easier to let him sleep in the same room.

When he started sleeping in his own room at 3.5 years old he had to adjust psychologically. I had to convince him that monsters don't exist, or if he still believes they exist, at least that they can't get in because they don't have the key. I also got a night lamp for him so he would be less scared.

He would still get up frequently and seek me out because he was scared. The counselor advised us to put him back in bed and be consistent about it. If he gets up 20 times, put him back 20 times, no matter the protests. He accepted this after a few weeks.

I also told him that I won't stay until he falls asleep because I have to sleep too. I said I'll stay with him for max 5m, even if he's not asleep. After a few weeks and many protests he finally accepted.

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

#573

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…

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

For what reasons, though. Mostly disease. Irrelevant.

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

#574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Thanks for sharing, and I'm happy it worked out for you and yours!

The implication in your response is, unfortunately, what both my wife and myself secretly fear. I've been diagnosed with ADHD as an adult (and after becoming a father); there's another diagnosed case in my immediate family, and at least one highly probable one. Given how highly hereditary ADHD is, we're afraid our daughters may have it too, and we're struggling not to read any unexpected behavior as evidence in favor.

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

#575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, severe abuse can have lasting impact, but we are talking about babies crying for a bit. Kids have a thousand innane reasons to cry. Having thousand and one doesn't make that much of a difference. For all concerned, I don't have kids and I don't intend to.

“prunning” and “innane” — too many ens!

Thanks. Sorry. I'm not a native speaker and autocorrect is fickle.

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

#576
post #537

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...

Like cardiovascular diseases, it's genetic but it's still in your interest to reduce risk factors (like smoking, which is apparently a risk factor both for heart trouble and SIDS.)

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

#577

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…

Does she still have to take them?

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

#578

Read the article, and many of the comments here. I have a hard time squaring a lot of the hard and fast rules against my own experience. Certainly one persons life can’t detract from large scale statistics. However, I have 6 children. They have all responded to methods of behavioral training in wildly different ways. My oldest two could not do sleep training. 10 months of trying for almost every night and they did no…

I have two kids. I already have to parent both of them differently. It’s like being a first time parent all over again when the second one arrived. And strategies that worked at 2 years don’t carry over to 4 years.

So I’m always skeptical about articles offering generalized parenting advice.

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

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for sharing, and I'm happy it worked out for you and yours! The implication in your response is, unfortunately, what both my wife and myself secretly fear. I've been diagnosed with ADHD as an adult (and after becoming a father); there's another diagnosed case in my immediate family, and at least one highly probable one. Given how highly hereditary ADHD is, we're afraid our daughters may have it too, and we're…

It is very hard to get a diagnosis pre 6/7 but of course we can see behaviors and project our thoughts.

I feel you on the fear and knowing it’s going to be a tougher life.

Same with me at ADHD diagnosis.

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

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not how it works, the first year is horrible. … things will get better when the kid grows older. My first daughter would wake, have a bottle, fall asleep within a few minutes for 3-4 hours. Wake, bottle, fall asleep for 3-4 hours. The first year was sooooooo easy. The 2nd year I wake, make bottle, hand it to her, she drinks and falls asleep. She’s 4 now and can’t stay in a room alone during the day or night.…

I moved my child to his own room when he was past 3 years old. I had to, because a second child was coming. Before that age, I also tried several times, but each time I gave up because he protested too much. It was just easier to let him sleep in the same room. When he started sleeping in his own room at 3.5 years old he had to adjust psychologically. I had to convince him that monsters don't exist, or if he still be…

Thanks for the info! Currently I’m in Taiwan staying with family and the plan is to move to New Zealand at the end of next year. Until then we have no space lol so daughter sleeps in her own bed next to ours.

But in NZ she will have her own room so that’s when she will need to adjust. I hope the 2nd one is easier. She’s only 4 weeks and wakes only twice a night to feed.

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