Live data from Hacker News

What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

bbc.com

591–600 of 644 posts

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

#591
post #306

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…

It's curious years of good nights of sleep and a happy child enrages you. We sleep trained our son at 7 months. He cried for 90 minutes the first night, then slept soundly until 7 am. The second night he cried for 45 minutes then slept until 7 am. He didn't cry the third night. Every night since he's slept peacefully from 8 PM until 7 AM and asks to go to bed when he gets tired. He's happy during the day unless somet…

What enrages me is how it's become accepted as 'the right way' for parents in my culture, along with other "techniques" like feeding schedules, where many people end up essentially starving their child without realizing it, and then wonder why they can't sleep through the night. What I know to be true is that infants are completely dependent on their caretaker/s, and they cry to communicate what they need when they need it. Ignoring this feels wrong to me - so I don't do it. I understand that different families have different needs, and that work schedules make things more difficult than they were in the past when children were raised communally. Every family needs trial and error to figure out what works for them, and yes some infants will sleep better alone. What I take issue with is the industry around this that has convinced what seems like most parents that this is The Best Way.

> Isn't a few hours of discomfort in exchange for years of good sleep and happiness a good trade off?

It could be - that's a decision for each family to make. I will point out that many families think their baby is sleeping through the night - when what's really happening is they are still waking up repeatedly but have given up on crying (accepting that nobody will come to help them).

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

#592
The issue I've had with studies of children and parenting techniques is this:

There's rarely any accounting for family culture. How people in the family treat each other day-to-day matters. Do the parents fight when the kid sleeps? This will for sure impact the kid and their sleep if they hear it. Is there a sibling who torments the kid? Sleep issues practically guaranteed.

We've found it's much more effective to talk to our friends who've been doing trauma work. Finding out how they were handled and the impact they report tends to lead to more insight we can use.

Studies that don't account for family culture and are done in countries where there's lots of shame and fear of judgment around what's going on in a family are already flawed.

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

#593
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 detachme…

Economically - being the only economy left standing post world war definitely had its advantages! Especially after the major ramp up and mechanization for WW2. The US went from a mostly agrarian economy to the world manufacturing power in short order, and those economic benefits lasted a long time.

That had mostly faded by the 70’s though.

Openly misogynistic society wise - It’s probably worth calling out the invention of effective birth control here.

Pre birth-control, men and women mixing in all but the most controlled circumstances would result in women getting pregnant, and that had consequences. Emotionally, financially, and biologically. Often life altering, even if the pregnancy was aborted.

That cost often ended up being borne by the women who got pregnant and their support structure, and there are biological reasons why that happens. Society can try to spread the load out, but the Don Juan’s of the world can be adept at trying to work around that.

This leads to that misogynistic society, both directly and indirectly. Looking at global trends, with the only exceptions being out of the way more nomadic societies, the more materially poor a society is, the more rigidly structured the gender divides are, and the more controlling they are of female sexuality in general.

This of course, gets taken advantage by some folks (shitheads) to further gain control in other areas.

On the male side, it’s relatively much easier for men to avoid the biological cost of their natural sexual behavior.

Effective birth control turns this on its head of course. Society is still grappling with what that means, and its implications, and likely will for a very, very long time.

The 50’s and early 60’s were pre (available) decent birth control.

[https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-info/a-brief-histo...]

Mid 60’s to 70’s it started to roll out (and kicked off the ‘free love’ movement).

Women’s liberation became a much more common theme then as well. It was of course a topic before then, but practically was extremely difficult.

Practically, to be independent pre birth control, a woman would need to be either 1) long term celibate/abstinent from normal sex (not easy for most!), or 2) go through a lot of abortion (really not easy for most, medically or emotionally), or 3) be infertile, or 4) independently wealthy.

Otherwise, they would get sucked into the biologically and financially expensive process of having a baby, over and over again, for decades, while having no extra time or bandwidth to earn income. While men don’t have that problem (or at least, biologically, can skip out on it easier).

And due to all the biological processes involved (and legitimate needs), it’s very difficult for most moms to ignore the kids that result, and those kids are very needy for quite awhile - much longer than it takes to get pregnant again, for sure.

Being anti misogynist or not, or hiring protections or not, barring effective birth control, that is going to put a lot of women in difficult situations where they have no reasonable option but taking care of kids and dealing with biological ‘taxes’ that are very high, regardless of what they want. In any zero sum game, that puts them at a disadvantage to folks who don’t have that weight they are carrying.

Just like men being drafted into a war they didn’t start, or working themselves to death in a coal mine because it’s that or their family starves, that means alcoholism, anger/resentment, violence, etc.

Wealth can help - these issues were much worse pre WW2, for instance. But it’s a theme for most of recorded human history.

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

#594
post #299

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…

> co-sleep Suffocation risk is real. Don't do this.

Everything has risk. What is the risk of having a sleep-deprived parent caring for a baby (holding and walking with them, driving, etc)? For some people, co-sleeping (bed sharing) largely eliminates sleep deprivation. Have you weighed those risks against each other, in particular when something like the safe sleep 7 are followed for co-sleeping?

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

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of "it worked for my kid" bullshit that drives me up the wall. With my oldest we bought into comments like this and tried to always comfort him when he was crying. He would not stop crying. We stayed up with him an absurd amount of hours trying every idea in the book to soothe him to sleep and nothing worked. He was probably getting 6 hours of sleep a day at a time when he was supposed to be sleeping…

100% correct. The baby-rearing book industry is a fraud. They claim “well the average baby does X, Y, Z” but they don’t tell you that the standard deviation is huge. New mothers like my wife were stressed beyond belief because our kid only slept 10 hours and ate twice as much as other kids. She was convinced there was something wrong until I proved to her that he was within the standard deviation of normal. Do what f…

How did you prove this?

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

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

This is a load of unadulterated bullshit. Kids cry all the time. It doesn't psychologically scar them for life. Take a chill pill!

It's actual insanity how people have come up think that every. little. thing. they do as a parent has these life long ripple effects. I'm sorry to tell you: these little details of parenting just aren't important either way. What matters is food and shelter and a loving home. Focus on those things for your own family and stop driving yourself crazy with these details, and especially stop getting so riled up by what other parents are doing, it's none of your business!

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

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a bad thing, just like it's not bad for a baby to want to be spoon-fed. But part of growing up is learning new skills, like eating by themselves and soothing themselves to sleep. And a big part of parenting is figuring out the right times and ways to encourage this. You know what has been a far more traumatic growing experience for every kid I've known than learning to sleep independently? Learning to use a…

Childhood trauma is reflected in behavioral issues at an older age. "But part of growing up is learning new skills, like eating by themselves and soothing themselves to sleep." Sure, but wait until they're three before you start sleep training. This idea that we need to toughen up infants is dangerous and frightening. They're completely helpless.

We've repeated ourselves a bunch of times but it irks me to let one of these nonsense comments go unresponded, so again: two year olds and one year olds are not infants and are not helpless. They can fall asleep independently perfectly well.

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

#598

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…

This is the kind of "it worked for my kid" bullshit that drives me up the wall. With my oldest we bought into comments like this and tried to always comfort him when he was crying. He would not stop crying. We stayed up with him an absurd amount of hours trying every idea in the book to soothe him to sleep and nothing worked. He was probably getting 6 hours of sleep a day at a time when he was supposed to be sleeping…

This is so true. Nothing worked to get my daughter to sleep nights until we finally bit the bullet and stepped away for 20 mins and let her cry out. Every night since then she has slept all night long.

Every child is different which is why parenting is not an exact science. Try everything, something will work!

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

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think parenting is the worst possible space for N=1 anecdotes. I have two sets of friends who did what you did and have never slept alone or through the night for coming up on five years. For our oldest, also coming up on five years, we did like one night of sleep training at 18 months and immediately started sleeping through the night like magic. For our youngest, we never had to do anything, he just always slept…

N=1 anecdotes are exactly the things that give new parents a range of ideas to mentally try out and see what fits.

I'm all for that! But what I'm talking about is people (like the person I replied to) that present their N=1 anecdote as the gospel of how to parent right.

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

#600

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…

There seems to be this narrative that Euopeans went to Africa and stole all the people and forced them into slavery. This is not true at all. Europeans traded with African leaders who sold their slaves to the Europeans. Not saying what they traded was a fair price or was justified, but the africans had the slaves first. The Europeans bought and distributed them round the world.

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

Post reply on HN