If you didn’t sleep train, what age did wake ups stop?
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Anonymous
My kids were not sleep deprived and not were we. Kids slept with parents or parents slept with kids. Kids didn’t wake up and if they did they saw parents next to them and fell back asleep because they were not scared of being alone. Everyone slept great and happy and nobody cared for hours for parents that never came. To each their own |
Anonymous
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Around age 2 for all of mine, which was also around the time I stopped nursing them. My oldest nursed a few months after sleeping thru the night, my middle stopped nursing first and then slept thru the night a couple months after. My youngest is the only one who ever wanted to climb in bed with us in the middle of the night. She did that maybe once or twice a week, tapering off until she stopped around 4? She’s 7 now and would definitely love to sleep with us every night if we let her! She is neurotypical, just an extremely cuddly person. Always wants lots of hugs and to snuggle on the couch constantly.
We tried sleep training our first at 6 months and used the same methods all my friends swore worked for their kids. It didn’t work, at all, so I gave up and kept nursing him back to sleep. He was definitely the worst sleeper of the 3, so many wake ups and wouldn’t go back to sleep without nursing. He has ADHD but no sensory issues. He is now a happy, independent teen with no issues going to sleep alone. But in those early days I thought he would never sleep! |
Anonymous
| My oldest is 10 and was also literally immune to sleep training. She still doesn’t sleep alone. |
Anonymous
I ended up sleep training both of my kids but would have preferred not to get to that point. Unfortunately even with cosleeping both of them would wake up and need to be walked around, sometimes for 1+ hours multiple times in the middle of the night. I wondered both times if they were just very low sleep needs but once they were sleep trained they slept a normal amount overnight. It just doesn't always work out the way you want it to. Some parents are ridiculously judgemental so I only mention sleep training if I know they're not... I felt guilty enough as it is. |
Anonymous
Same here. My son is almost 6. He probably still wakes 1-2 per week and comes into our bed. He isnt sleep deprived- he is the happiest, highest energy, joyful kid. He runs circles around other kids his age. He is reading entire books on his own and doing double digit subtraction and addition. He was a struggle as an infant- multiple health issues through about 1.5 years old. He nursed until 2.5, thought weaning would help, it did not. Time and flexibility helped. Also recognizing that he is high touch. Loves cuddles and being with people. Ive considered getting a cat or smaller dog to sleep with him but cant guarantee that would happen so I just enjoy the cuddles as they occur. Nighttime issues are two-fold in my opinion: lower sleep needs or higher separation anxiety/touch requirements. Outside of actual health issues. OP it improved, slowly and with lots of setbacks but to be frank, youll find that with people who sleep trained too. Some kids have to be retrained over and over and some parents end up locking their kids in their rooms to keep them in from 7-7 or whatever arbitrary time they decide. \ |
Anonymous
Glad it worked out for you, but there are responses here talking about their kids waking several times a night for years. That is sleep deprivation, and extremely dangerous for brain development, not to mention the parents. |
Anonymous
I don’t think you’re a monster. You are making the choice you think is best for your child and situation. My 1 year old wakes up many times each night (not sure how many) and I do nurse her back to sleep quickly. She is not chronically sleep deprived or developmentally delayed. I am fine with it since I stay mostly asleep during the wake ups, the first five months were really hard until she could nurse like that due to some early feeding issues. Now I feel normal though, I don’t count the wake ups or look at the clock, I just go back to sleep when I can. There are definitely reasons some people need to have their babies fall asleep independently and I understand and support that. But falling asleep or going back to sleep independently doesn’t necessarily mean the baby wakes up more or less. It may shift their sleep patterns to consolidate night sleep more for different reasons at an earlier age, but I’m not aware of any research that shows this makes a difference developmentally (positive or negative). So it’s a parenting choice. I do think it’s important for parents to have the full information. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220322-how-sleep-training-affects-babies “As well as asking parents to record sleep diaries, Hall's study included actigraphy, which uses wearable devices to monitor movements to assess sleep-wake patterns. When the researchers compared sleep diaries, they found that parents who had sleep-trained thought their babies woke less at night and slept for longer periods. But when they analysed the sleep-wake patterns as shown through actigraphy, they found something else: the sleep-trained infants were waking up just as often as the ones in the control group. "At six weeks, there was no difference between the intervention and control groups for mean change in actigraphic wakes or long wake episodes," they wrote.” When having a baby sleep independently, crying for an hour multiple times a week may indicate a schedule issue. I would look up age appropriate schedules and make sure baby doesn’t need some more awake time out of bed, they will likely fall asleep faster. |
Anonymous
Yes, OP here. It was I who asked. Thank you for this info. It helps. |
Anonymous
OP here. Thanks for sharing. |
Anonymous
| Truly couldn’t care less if people sleep train (I did for one, didn’t have to for my second) but every other thread these days is how awful it is to be a parent and then you open this one and think well gee why?? Your kid didn’t sleep through the night til SEVEN YEARS OLD???! y’all are smokers complaining about lung cancer. You do realize your decision is the problem? |
Anonymous
| 16 |
Anonymous
It's normal for EVERYONE to wake up several times a night. This is normal sleep not sleep deprivation. Studies on sleep training shows that it does NOT decrease wakeups but rather it decreases the child alerting the parents. Literally the amount of extra sleep is minutes. Not saying that sleep training is not worth it for parents but it does not on average lead to decreased wakeups or significantly more sleep for the child. |
Anonymous
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Sleep-trained babies and toddlers still wake up! They are just habituated to not bother their parents—and half the time the training "method" instructs parents to ignore wakeups anyway.
Also, waking up does not mean sleep deprivation for the child. (It definitely can for the adult). The child usually falls back asleep in about two minutes after soothing. Parents will use whatever lies they need to justify the cruelty of CIO—as if a few minutes of disrupted sleep compares with the affects of abandonment/panic on a child's nervous and hormonal systems. To answer your question, OP, my kids slept through the night with no wakeups starting around 2. They still required attention to fall asleep until 4 or 5, but not to stay asleep. |
Anonymous
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OP, I have a 10 year old and a 6 year old, and I didn't sleep train either of them. We have all been sleeping through the night with no wakeups for so long that I can't really recall when it stopped, but I think by age 3ish for both.
This is probably a huge outlier in this culture, but I let them sleep next to me until they were around 2. they would wake up, but I would cuddle or nurse them back to sleep. We were not sleep deprived. After that, at 3/4 they would sleep in their own bed, but wake up sometime early morning and come to our bed. after 4, they started waking up at 7:30am. I wouldn't do anything differently. FWIW, I'm from a different culture (Indian American) and my method is very normalized, so that probably helped (my relatives in India were absolutely horrified at the idea of the baby sleeping in a different room). My female relatives/good friends in this country who have Indian moms all raised their kids the same way (no sleep training and lots of cuddling). The kids are all happy and smart. |
Anonymous
Exactly this. We did co-sleeping with both our kids and everyone had good sleep. Older boy started sleeping fully through the night with his crib in the same room (not strictly co-sleeping, but he could wake up see us and go back to sleep, though climbing into our bed occasionally as well) from about 1 (same age he weened). Daughter took longer (weened around 18 months but still kept waking up for milk for a few more months after that), but has been wake up free since 21 months or so (2.5 now and co-sleeping mostly but agreeing to sleep in the crib in the same room from time to time). |