letting them cry themselves out sets the scene for neediness and insecurity down the track
I’m not sure how to read this; where are you on the continuum from “I heard it’s bad” to “I read all the papers and came to a deep considered view”?
(My understanding is that the state of research on sleep training, like most other parenting strategies, is pretty terrible.)
Ours slept through at 6 weeks
People often mean different things by “sleeping through the night” (I blame Moore and Ucko 1957 for using 5hr starting at midnight) so we should make sure we’re talking about the same thing. Since maybe 12m the pattern had been that Nora would wake once to feed around 3am, with occasional wakings before or after where she might or might not need settling. The recent change is that we decided to drop the night feeding, and now she typically sleeps 9pm-7am without needing anything from us (though, as in the post, she might still cry briefly at the end of a sleep cycle).
I’m not sure how to read this; where are you on the continuum from “I heard it’s bad” to “I read all the papers and came to a deep considered view”?
I also thought so when I read your post. I’m at the “The book ‘The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog’ says so” point. The book is not about sleep in particular, it’s about psychological trauma in childhood, especially the one obtained from neglect.
Also, I think this might cause the child to develop either an avoidant attachment style (there’s no point in crying or asking others for help, they won’t come anyway).
I’m at the “The book ‘The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog’ says so” point. The book is not about sleep in particular, it’s about psychological trauma in childhood, especially the one obtained from neglect.
My understanding is the book is about children who were severely neglected and abused, and while I haven’t read it I’d think it was even less relevant to evaluating sleep training than the kind of crummy studies we have on sleep training in particular? The gulf between “no one comes when I cry a little, I’m sleepy, let’s go back to sleep” and “no one comes when I cry hungry for hours and hours in a dirty diaper” is huge, as is the one between “this happens a few times when I’m first learning how to sleep on my own” and “this happens every day for years”.
I think this might cause the child to develop either an avoidant attachment style (there’s no point in crying or asking others for help, they won’t come anyway)
The general idea is that you’re teaching them a pattern of when crying will and won’t work, not that crying never works. In the rest of their life they still experience having requests (including pre-verbal ones like crying or pointing) acknowledged and respected.
I don’t know how to square that with the idea that one shouldn’t ignore their crying kids. I have no idea how kids’ crying at night works. Is it possible that a parent should just suck it up and come and comfort the baby every time they cry? Maybe you can comfort her since she’s crying but not give her the reward of soothing her until she falls asleep? Is it possible that she cries at night because she’s doesn’t get enough cuddles during the day or because the room looks scary or something like that? I don’t know enough about the situation and I don’t have any kids of my own and don’t have any practical experience of dealing with them. Maybe you can be there with her in her sleeping room when she cries but still make it so that she learns to self-soothe and put herself to sleep? Like, idk, stay with her but don’t rock her to sleep or something like that.
I’m not sure how to read this; where are you on the continuum from “I heard it’s bad” to “I read all the papers and came to a deep considered view”?
(My understanding is that the state of research on sleep training, like most other parenting strategies, is pretty terrible.)
People often mean different things by “sleeping through the night” (I blame Moore and Ucko 1957 for using 5hr starting at midnight) so we should make sure we’re talking about the same thing. Since maybe 12m the pattern had been that Nora would wake once to feed around 3am, with occasional wakings before or after where she might or might not need settling. The recent change is that we decided to drop the night feeding, and now she typically sleeps 9pm-7am without needing anything from us (though, as in the post, she might still cry briefly at the end of a sleep cycle).
I also thought so when I read your post. I’m at the “The book ‘The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog’ says so” point. The book is not about sleep in particular, it’s about psychological trauma in childhood, especially the one obtained from neglect.
Also, I think this might cause the child to develop either an avoidant attachment style (there’s no point in crying or asking others for help, they won’t come anyway).
My understanding is the book is about children who were severely neglected and abused, and while I haven’t read it I’d think it was even less relevant to evaluating sleep training than the kind of crummy studies we have on sleep training in particular? The gulf between “no one comes when I cry a little, I’m sleepy, let’s go back to sleep” and “no one comes when I cry hungry for hours and hours in a dirty diaper” is huge, as is the one between “this happens a few times when I’m first learning how to sleep on my own” and “this happens every day for years”.
The general idea is that you’re teaching them a pattern of when crying will and won’t work, not that crying never works. In the rest of their life they still experience having requests (including pre-verbal ones like crying or pointing) acknowledged and respected.
Ok, I don’t know more than that about addressing children’s crying. I just thought that ignoring it is (almost always?) bad but I’m not sure.
What do you think about my response to pharadae below?
I don’t know how to square that with the idea that one shouldn’t ignore their crying kids. I have no idea how kids’ crying at night works. Is it possible that a parent should just suck it up and come and comfort the baby every time they cry? Maybe you can comfort her since she’s crying but not give her the reward of soothing her until she falls asleep? Is it possible that she cries at night because she’s doesn’t get enough cuddles during the day or because the room looks scary or something like that? I don’t know enough about the situation and I don’t have any kids of my own and don’t have any practical experience of dealing with them. Maybe you can be there with her in her sleeping room when she cries but still make it so that she learns to self-soothe and put herself to sleep? Like, idk, stay with her but don’t rock her to sleep or something like that.
It seems like you don’t have an explicit justification for why one shouldn’t do that, and basically believe that because people have told you.
There might be valid reasons for that notion or not, but there’s no necessity to square it together.