Parents from other countries: how is "sleep training" handled overseas?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am from Latin America and sleep training was a new concept for me as well. I did what my mother did: first 3 months I will hold her everytime she cried and soothe her, offered her the breast or a pacifier if she did not want to eat. After 3-4 months, if the baby cried I went to check if she was fine (so there's nothing bothering her, room to cold/hot, fever, etc), pat her on her back, offer a pacifier, stay next to her on the crib and if nothing works, I hold her, rock her, sing a song. Once she calms down, I go back to my room. If she cries again I don't respond for the first 5 minutes, she is fine and needs to understand that is time to sleep. If she continues crying more than 5 mins I go back, but I don't hold her, just rub her back and say it's ok, it's ok and go back to my room. The third time she cried for less than 5 mins, so I did not go to her room. The following day she cried less than 5 mins, so I did not go and the following day she did not cry again (except when she is sick or have a nightmare and on those occassions I always go to see her). It worked for both my babies, not sure if it was a coincidence or as my friends say I'm just lucky or it is in my genes. They are both great sleepers (12-13 hours straigth since they were 4-6 months).

Not to be disparaging or anything, but that's pretty much sleep training, albeit a more "gentler" variety than CIO. It's the same method I've used on my two sons, with varying degrees of success. I say varying because my youngest (he's 21 mos) wakes up around 12-1 and I just bring him to bed with us for the rest of the night, but he's still nursing. His brother was already weaned at 9 months when we sleep trained him and excepting the occasional illness or nightmare, sleeps like a champ. I wouldn't have even done that, except being in my third trimester, it occured to me that it would be a bad thing to have two babies in the bed along with a DH who sleeps like the dead. I don't have any daytime help either: closest relative is my mom who is an hour away. I wish i could have it like she did: My parents lived 3 blocks away from my father's parents and growing up I spent almost as much time over there as I did at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm the PP who didn't have the stamina to fully sleep-train my son and noted that you don't hear about 4-5 year olds who wake up every 45 minutes. (By the way, my son is only 9 months old now, so there's still time if i change my mind). I still maintain that it's not "natural" to sleep-train, but that doesn't mean I'm categorically opposed to it, especially if it means the baby is happier and well-rested throughout the day.

FWIW, I wasn't sleep-trained, and I'm a horrible sleeper. My parents came here as adults from Eastern Europe, where there was no such thing...perhaps i never learned to "self-soothe," and that is the cause of my intermittnet insomnia and frequent waking. But surely not all of your parents sleep-trained you (and certainly not the PPs from other countries); isn't sleep-training a somewhat modern (and American and also possibly British) thing? I could be wrong.

The way my mother makes it sound, all the mothers in the 70s put their babies in the crib (on tummy, of course) and then shut the door and went downstairs and had a drink. Some of us cried and some of us didn't. And nobody felt bad about it. Who knows if that's true but that's apparently what she did to me and I sleep like a log. Still on my tummy too. And as far as I know I'm not totally deranged and I have lots of normal, loving relationships. Including the one with my parents.

[Anonymous]

Excellent, excellent thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the English sleep train, have baby nurses, and have the right idea about boarding school starting in the elementary years!

Well I'm English and I didn't sleep train. I had a part time work from home job when DS was an infant, so I slept when he slept. My son also slept in our bed for most of his first year, so sleeping wasn't that much of a problem for him. Now he sleeps in a toddler bed next to our bed and he sleeps through the night.

And no one that I know has a baby nurse or has sent their kids to boarding school! Though they have all taken at least six months off work and then returned to work part time after the baby was born. Part time or flexible working is a lot easier to find in the UK than it is in the US. And of course maternity leave (and vacation time) is a lot more generous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the English sleep train, have baby nurses, and have the right idea about boarding school starting in the elementary years!

Well I'm English and I didn't sleep train. I had a part time work from home job when DS was an infant, so I slept when he slept. My son also slept in our bed for most of his first year, so sleeping wasn't that much of a problem for him. Now he sleeps in a toddler bed next to our bed and he sleeps through the night.

And no one that I know has a baby nurse or has sent their kids to boarding school! Though they have all taken at least six months off work and then returned to work part time after the baby was born. Part time or flexible working is a lot easier to find in the UK than it is in the US. And of course maternity leave (and vacation time) is a lot more generous.

I think the PP you quoted was joking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[The way my mother makes it sound, all the mothers in the 70s put their babies in the crib (on tummy, of course) and then shut the door and went downstairs and had a drink. Some of us cried and some of us didn't. And nobody felt bad about it. Who knows if that's true but that's apparently what she did to me and I sleep like a log. Still on my tummy too. And as far as I know I'm not totally deranged and I have lots of normal, loving relationships. Including the one with my parents.

That's exactly what MIL has been saying (sans the "having a drink" part, however, I suspect she's just being shy). She loves to reminisce on the time when DH "cried and cried in his crib, for hours on end". These days DH can fall asleep anywhere, anytime. Don't know if it's because of sleep-training, or just his nature.

That said, he's not particularly close to his mother emotionally. Any connection to being left in the dark crying his eyes out? Don't know, but I don't want to experiment with my own child, and so far, at 10 months, we still co-sleep.

[Anonymous]

Really interesting discussion, and so civil so far!

Just wanted to add that I'm American, my parents didn't do any sleep training, and I was (they say) an awesome sleeper as a kid.

Who grew up to have hideous, horrible insomnia beginning after college. So I don't think you can generalize to say that sleep training/good sleep as an infant or child results in good sleep as an adult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am from Latin America and sleep training was a new concept for me as well. I did what my mother did: first 3 months I will hold her everytime she cried and soothe her, offered her the breast or a pacifier if she did not want to eat. After 3-4 months, if the baby cried I went to check if she was fine (so there's nothing bothering her, room to cold/hot, fever, etc), pat her on her back, offer a pacifier, stay next to her on the crib and if nothing works, I hold her, rock her, sing a song. Once she calms down, I go back to my room. If she cries again I don't respond for the first 5 minutes, she is fine and needs to understand that is time to sleep. If she continues crying more than 5 mins I go back, but I don't hold her, just rub her back and say it's ok, it's ok and go back to my room. The third time she cried for less than 5 mins, so I did not go to her room. The following day she cried less than 5 mins, so I did not go and the following day she did not cry again (except when she is sick or have a nightmare and on those occassions I always go to see her). It worked for both my babies, not sure if it was a coincidence or as my friends say I'm just lucky or it is in my genes. They are both great sleepers (12-13 hours straigth since they were 4-6 months).

I'm also for Latin America, and this is what my relatives told me to do. However, I do think that is sleep training. There's a variety of methods out there, and this is just one of them.

[Anonymous]

i am from the middle east, and my mother claims she never had to sleep train me. she claims i slept in my own crib from day 1, sucking my thumb for comfort. for my sister, who refused to sleep on her own and cried every night before bedtime, she followed dr. spock's guidance (this was the 70s) when she was about 6 months old and placed her (on her stomach) in her crib and left her to cry for "hours" one night, and that thereafter my sister allegedly went to sleep on her own.

of course, she may have selective memory since she had 2 nannies (in addition to the host of other household employees and her own mother).

i will also note that i currently am a great sleeper, while my sister is often up all night with insomnia (although she can pass out in a car or on the couch quite easily). and while both of us are close with mom, their relationship is much more strained, and my sister is constnatly acting out for her attention. but this could be a chicken/egg phenomenon.

with my own DD, my mom had no problem holding her all night while she cried and wouldn't sleep. she wouldn't let us sleep train while she stayed with us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[[b]That's exactly what MIL has been saying (sans the "having a drink" part, however, I suspect she's just being shy). She loves to reminisce on the time when DH "cried and cried in his crib, for hours on end". These days DH can fall asleep anywhere, anytime. Don't know if it's because of sleep-training, or just his nature.

That said, he's not particularly close to his mother emotionally. Any connection to being left in the dark crying his eyes out? Don't know, but I don't want to experiment with my own child, and so far, at 10 months, we still co-sleep.

See, my mom did not call it sleep training, but I screamed a lot during my first few months of life, and my grandmother told my mom to let me cry so I would get spoiled, so my mom did. She told me this so many times I have developed this image of me as a tiny baby screaming my head off while she did nothing. Now that I have my own DD, I cannot understand how she could do that. Our relationship is not the greatest. She was always very close to my brother, who was apparently an easier baby she held all the time.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Here is another data point I will add to the mix, which is what prompted me to ask my question. I recently used an Eastern European babysitter, who happened to be a grandmother with a child psych degree (for what that's worth). She said I should have been letting my 8-month-old DC get used to being set down to go to sleep alone from an early age, and that if I had, it wouldn't have resulted in more than a little fussing. So it made me wonder if this approach (which sounds like what one PP called a gentler form of sleep training) was a common way to deal with sleep in other countries.

I've been totally waffling about whether to do sleep training, so I'm trying to learn as much as I can about the options and outcomes. Hearing only individual stories has been more confusing than enlightening (what works for one seems to not work for another, there are so many different personalities, and who can really say how it has affected any given child in the long term, given how many factors are at play throughout a childhood). I don't just want to have a "good" sleeper; I want to have an emotionally healthy child who will grow into an emotionally healthy adult. If sleep training can accomplish that, then great. But I'd feel more reassured if there were some studies to read. I've not heard of any, so I figured maybe looking at it across cultures might be instructive!

That said, those are really good points people have made, that the context (relatives available to help, fewer work demands on mothers) is very different in a lot of other countries!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:south asian here: generally letting an infant cry it out is considered cruel in our country, but i admit, there is a LOT more help back home than here - all women in the middle or upper classes have a baby nurse (and maid and cook; my cousin has a nanny, 2 maids, a cook, a gardener, and a driver) and many live in extended families, so granny or an aunt is available to help out with the baby. I think poorer people still co-sleep, but in upper class families, infant are more often (but not always) put into bassinettes either right next to the mother or in the next room with an overnight baby nurse (to ferry the child back and forth to the mother if she wishes to breastfeed). Again, sometimes a family member fills in this role - often, a young niece or cousin comes in to help with the baby-care - my mother helped care for her cousin's newborn when she was 15. I think most children are "gently" sleep trained and yes, it may take them longer to be fully able to spend the whole night in their beds, but it does happen eventually!

If I had a baby nurse and a cook and a couple maids to spare, I'd NEVER allow my baby nurse to let my baby cry. Because it would disturb me while I laid around all day watching TV, reading trashy magazines, napping, and eating the fabulous meals my cook prepared for me. When can I move to this country?

2nd poster -- you're a jerk. When you're middle class or above in certain areas of the world, you have domestic help. It's just how it is.

[Anonymous]

OP again. I just wanted to clarify that the Eastern European babysitter did not advocate letting DC cry to sleep. She was opposed to it, which is why she said I should have addressed the issue sooner, when all I'd have encountered was some fussing as DC got used to falling asleep alone in the crib from the beginning. So I'm trying to learn what I should do next time with DC#2!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I just wanted to clarify that the Eastern European babysitter did not advocate letting DC cry to sleep. She was opposed to it, which is why she said I should have addressed the issue sooner, when all I'd have encountered was some fussing as DC got used to falling asleep alone in the crib from the beginning. So I'm trying to learn what I should do next time with DC#2!

For what it's worth OP, this was true for my baby. We started to let him settle himself down from awake in the crib from about 4 months. We never let him fuss/cry for more than 10 minutes in the beginning and then we'd go back and do minimal soothing and leave again (as a PP described, I think). I will say it is really hard to suddenly change your approach at this age though. You get really used to picking them up instantly when they cry. So it's defnitely a process where you have to stop treating them like a newborn. I was surprised how quickly my son was able to adapt. We never had any marathon screaming sessions. He's 6+ months and reliably puts himself to sleep (or back to sleep in the middle of the night) with no crying or less than 5 minutes of fussing.

[Anonymous]

haha - it depends on the baby. I had a baby who would scream bloody murder if she wasn't being held constantly, so setting her down to quietly fuss herself to sleep would have been impossible.