If you had a bad sleeper but didn’t sleep train…
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Anonymous
| My friends who left their kids to cry it out have much more independent kids than mine and have much nicer lives to be honest. Their kids listen to them, are better disciplined etc. It could be many factors but I think the fact that I dropped everything and ran to soothe them every time they cried didn't help. |
Anonymous
+1. I feel the same. The parents I know who followed more attachment style parenting and didn’t sleep train have kids who are a PIA. They seem more self centered, bratty and think their mom is their employee. |
Anonymous
I don’t think having parents who don’t establish boundaries or have rules really helps children in the long term. I do feel bad for moms who tend to screaming kids all night. The ones I know complain about it all the time and have exhausted kids. But they won’t do anything about it! I don’t know if they enjoy not sleeping or truly think they are doing their child a favor? Sleep is simply a requirement in our house. We don’t allow children to keep up the entire house unless they are ill. At nighttime we sleep. When we go somewhere in a car, we ride in a car seat. |
Anonymous
DP. As the parent of a child with severe anxiety I suggest you get away from this idea that your child does not have anxiety because you're such an awesome parent. It's genetic. We really have a terrible attitude towards mental illnesd in this country, and you are part of the problem. |
Anonymous
DP. Look, a child not sleeping and being up every hour or few hours for years can’t be good for anxiety. |
Anonymous
Oh is that your medical opinion? Look lack of sleep is definitely bad for health (I am pro sleep training) but there is no evidence of long term harms from either sleep training or not sleep training. There is no need for you to stigmatize mental illness in this debate, so just stop. |
Anonymous
So you’re saying a kid not getting enough sleep will help reduce anxiety? |
Anonymous
No, it’s common sense. Restorative sleep is important. Your child not sleeping cannot be good for them. |
Anonymous
Again, I am pro sleep training. We sleep trained successfully, and our child has severe anxiety. Research shows sleep training does not impact long term emotional health, one way or the other, so while I agonize about many of the decisions I've made as a parent, that is definitely not one of them. Look, assessing the quality of your parenting based on whether you sleep trained is stupid enough. But blaming other parents for their children's anxiety because of some judgement about whether they sleep trained or not, is stunningly ignorant. But I guess that's just how you want to be.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-infant-sleep-training/infant-sleep-training-has-no-long-term-effects-study-idUSBRE8890JP20120910 |
Anonymous
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Y’all sad that it needs to be repeated so many times, but the kids is all different!
I posted above, my first didn’t sleep reliably til she was 11! We tried everything, short of letting her puke multiple times a night for over a week. I can barely recall but we did it for at least 4 nights, with no sign of improvement. She’s still a shitty sleeper. I successfully “sleep trained” my second, which meant that when I was ready to be done breastfeeding at night, around 7 or 8 months, I just stopped going in there. He whimpered for a few nights and then slept. Sure, you can screw things up with a bizarre philosophy, but most of us do what we have to do. I’m sad that my child has had such a hard time, and it has definitely had negative consequences for me, but I promise you this wasn’t my doing. |
Anonymous
I have 3 kids. 3rd is a newborn. First kid slept through the night at 4 months and responded well to crying for 5-10 mins. Second baby slept through the night at 20 months and there was no “crying for 5 minutes” - I left him once to cry for 3 whole hours, and after that I decided I’m not doing this anymore. So yes, if he cried I “ran in” bc the crying wasn’t going to stop. Two different kids, same mom, different results. |
Anonymous
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No one is saying that CIO causes anxiety. But we are at the beginning of understanding what triggers the onset of anxiety in a genetically predisposed child. Antibiotic use, circadian disruption, insecure attachments, the list goes on and on. It’s perfectly sensible to worry that letting a young infant scream to extinction (sometimes while experiencing tooth or gas pain, hunger or thirst) doesn’t help this situation if your child is highly sensitive or genetically predisposed.
My experience is that babies who don’t CIO do get enough sleep. It’s the parents who struggle because we aren’t set up to gently get kids to sleep and still meet our own professional and personal needs. |
Anonymous
You can worry about it all you want, but that's not what the posters above (you?) are saying. They're saying they are attributing the anxiety of other people's children on their sleep training choices. If that's what you're doing, you are stigmatizing mental illness and generally being an ignorant twat. |
Anonymous
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A toddler, sure—but a 6 month old doesn’t need “boundaries”. I hate when people project the latest self help jargon onto babies!
OP, here’s a general rule. Those who are actually proud they CIO can’t be dissuaded. They are not the types to self reflect or second guess but rather to “get on with it”. This parental temperament probably benefits their children in many ways as they go through life…just not for the first year. |
Anonymous
| It also doesn’t help those struggling with anxiety to not try and do whatever we can to set the stage for lower cortisol levels, strong attachments, etc. But it’s much easier to go on about stigma than actual put the work into treating babies and children as they deserve. |