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What happens when babies are left to cry it out?

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421–430 of 644 posts

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

#421

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 "problem" behavior. You get things like in the OP, corporeal punishment, wilderness therapy, conversion therapy, using aversives[1] to literally hurt and shock autistic kids into complying with the behavior their parents want to see, etc. Some parents even seem to enjoy and take pride in it, and there are some who wish they could send their 11 year olds to go work in the coal mines to build a work ethic or something.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aversives#Use_in_applied_behav...

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

#422

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…

> There are many cases where all of humanity has been doing something that we only recently decided was wrong. For instance, slavery. Not really comparable because we decided it was morally wrong, not that we were wrong about its effects. Its not like humanity used to think slavery was good for the slave.

[deleted]

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

#423

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? 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 taught in schools though.

OP is right though. Throughout Entire history people had slaves until it was abolished.

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

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I disagree with your statement about being way safe. Research doesn't account for what happens when baby is in the crib and it doesn't sleep. So sure, you might have avoided SIDS, but the baby might die because the parent fell asleep while standing with the baby in their arms. P. S. Again sorry for my tone, I'm super angry for how the entire medicine treats Co-sleeping like a horrific thing So the resear…

> P. S. Again sorry for my tone, I'm super angry for how the entire medicine treats Co-sleeping like a horrific thing This is a theme across all kinds of expertise. In my opinion a good expert will understand that the world isn't black and white. They'll understand that there are many, many more variables that go into a decision than their particular line of expertise. They'll understand their job is to clearly conve…

The other challenge is the one of ‘how do you actually get different behavior’.

Knowing all the shades of grey, what do you tell folks in the 15 seconds of attention (at most) that you’ll be able to get that may produce a better outcome.

It definitely doesn’t include much grey.

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

#425

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…

> There are many cases where all of humanity has been doing something that we only recently decided was wrong. For instance, slavery. Not really comparable because we decided it was morally wrong, not that we were wrong about its effects. Its not like humanity used to think slavery was good for the slave.

> Not really comparable because we decided it was morally wrong, not that we were wrong about its effects. Its not like humanity used to think slavery was good for the slave.

People still argue that slavery (in particularly, chattel slavery of Blacks in North America) was good for the slave, and the argument was even more common when slavery was legal but under active debate.

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

#426

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…

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 people don't know what effects that would have on a growing baby. (I'm not saying scientists but just random people)

questions that would worry them would probably be things like what if the baby start depending on them and their bodies reduce/ceases to produce melatonin naturally, and that this permanently affects the baby.

I haven't looked into the findings for theses kind of questions, but even if you look into it you'll also have to be condident of the reliability of the results. maybe it's harmless for adults but not for 2 year olds. Maybe the pediatrician you went to see didn't prescribe them for a reason.

Edit: a quick Google search in English mostly found positive articles about it, while the same search in french found negative articles warning about the potential risks like this one: https://www.vidal.fr/actualites/29656-melatonine-non-sans-da...

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

#427

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…

Is this parody/sarcasm/troll?

At a minimum, Africans and Muslims had slaves. Pretty sure the Incas and Aztecs did. I lack data on Asia.

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

#428

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…

> There are many cases where all of humanity has been doing something that we only recently decided was wrong. For instance, slavery. Not really comparable because we decided it was morally wrong, not that we were wrong about its effects. Its not like humanity used to think slavery was good for the slave.

> Its not like humanity used to think slavery was good for the slave.

People said it was the natural order of things - similar to how men owning women or children was divinely approved, and if you read about “the curse of Ham” you can see many variations of the excuses offered that it was just due to ancestral sin - and during the colonial era that exact argument was used to the general effect that slavery provided heathens with a chance to adopt Christianity and be saved.

The reason the Southern Baptists exist as a separate denomination is because they split off from the main Baptist community in support of slavery, only recanting in 1995!, and while that’s generally accepted as being significantly motivated by the massive financial impacts it relied on those rationalizations (it’s biblical, we’re improving people who would otherwise be doomed to a primitive existence without the chance of salvation). These days people know not to say slavery was good but you can still find conservatives saying colonialism was a net win for many countries.

There’s considerably more about this dark part of our history here:

https://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp

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

#429

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…

You might be aware of the pathway that generates melatonin.

It begins with tryptophan, which can be converted either into niacin or serotonin. Taking a niacin supplement with tryptophan will boost the opposing pathway.

Serotonin is itself the source of all melatonin.

Adjusting diet is not as controversial as a hormone supplement.

Do not attempt this while taking an SSRI, which can be deadly.

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

#430
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Nursing mothers inhibit their own pregnancy” It’s an interesting theory, but having my second kid appear 12 months after the first — in spite of the breastfeeding — makes me very sceptical of its reliability.

It is very reliable indeed, but there's still variation. Compare https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3726904/ : > Data that were collected prospectively from a child health study conducted in Gaza show a strong relationship between breastfeeding and two major components of birth intervals, the postpartum anovulatory period and the waiting time [from resumption of menstruation] to conception. > The finding of a strong pos…

The effect appears reliably when looking at groups of people. It is not a reliable method of birth control.
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