AIBU to wonder if sleep training negatively impacts a child (attachment theory)?

I think your friend is leaving something out, this is not normal. If they are sick they still cry and you go and get them. Sleep training is literally for a couple of days, maybe two weeks maximum. You are extremely misinformed. I think you're also confused with CIO as this is the Romanina Orhphanage thing and also in context that they were probably left most of the day on their own. When a baby has a proper routine with nap length and timing done properly, they'll also sleep well at night. It's actually a bit of science regarding being overtired and undertired. A friend of mine is asleep consultant so I have learned alot from her. I think that parents should just do what they are comfortable with, I do find it surprising the parents who are so against sleep training but then cosleep given the known risk of SIDs. My friends baby died from this so I would never cosleep. We all make different choices based on what we are willing to risk and what we think is best for our baby

DD2, who was not sleep trained, has thrown up twice in her sleep and not woken. The first time I heard her and went straight in - she was asleep. The second time I didn't find it until the morning, and she was sitting at one end of the cot pointing at the dry sick at the other end as if wondering who'd thrown up in her cot.
Never sleep trained, always responded to any time she woke in the night.

I don't really believe that controlled crying would make a toddler who was awake and had vomited think "no point in crying, they won't come". In controlled crying, the parent would absolutely come within a few minutes at the longest. It's not a case of saying good night and then ignoring them until morning.

DD1 was sleep trained, but she's never been sick in the night so I can't compare. But any time she does wake in the night (she's 4.5 and wakes maybe once a month) she comes in to us, as she knows we will comfort her.

I found DD sleeping in dried vomit once aged 2, and she also woke up like that aged 6 very confused ‘why her bed was yucky’ with no memory whatsoever of having been sick. She’d obviously just done it in her sleep. The first time turned out she also had a raging fever and tested positive for strep throat needing antibiotics. Second time it was a stomach bug. She wasn’t sleep trained, there was no need as she slept through from 8 weeks old. So I wouldn’t jump to conclusions that the kid had learned not to cry just based on that alone. Much more likely he puked in his sleep so didn’t know where it had come from.

Of mine, the one who wasn't sleep trained has ADHD, the one who was, doesn't. It's hard to see what the mechanism would be for sleep training causing the neurological differences found in ADHD.

Didn't sleep train and my kid has adhd, hardly surprising given genetics and family prevalence. Wouldn't judge anyfor sleep training, I am sure you can do it and still be attached and loving. To be honest, given that lion's eat their young and still managed to survive fine as a species, we probably have quite a lot of leeway in how we can parent without major damage.

It is a shame that history was mainly written by monks, as they didn't have any interest in documenting domestic situations and what women did in the past. Then the industrial revolution happened and with mass migration, we lost the word of mouth history in a generation.

Although my baby is sleep trained and we did the Ferber method, she sleeps with a monitor in her room. So there is no way that she cries and is left to it. If she cries, someone goes in and checks on her. Now we've got to the point that when she cries it's for a reason. When she goes to bed it's after her bedtime routine, bath, feed, teeth, story, cuddle and bed. She's more than ready by then to sleep and takes about 5-10min. The child waking up to dried vomit - that's something completely different.

@TempestTost

It has to affect the kids, I really wonder if it's implicated in the attention disorders that seem so prevalent now.

It may explain the massive increase in ADHD. I hadn't really considered it. I was assuming it was iPads & too much screen time which was the issue.

Yes, sleep consultants say they need to be at least 6 months

oh sorry I missed this. I didn’t realise cry it out wasn’t sleep training, I think my sil/bil refer to it that way. Is it just its own seperate method then? And agree 4 months is too young. Anyway, it wasn’t a subject I could broach with them!

Yes this is like my niece, it’s happened multiple times where she’s woken up with dried vomit on her/her bed. That’s when I think it’s gone too far, it’s not even like she’s a child who doesn’t cry much, during the day time she does a lot! Luckily I think this is the exception with sleep training, my SIL and BIL did proper cry it out at 4 months which also seems quite unusual. I’d say she’s loving and attached during the day though, it’s just night time where she’s silent!

I was using it as the extreme end of a continuum.

Leaving them cold turkey until they are sick is the worst and not advisable I don't think anyone says this is what sleep training is, I think this is the outdated CIO method that no one uses

I agree, that’s why I think someone doing it for a few weeks to help the baby learn how to sleep on their own won’t really have an effect when you take into consideration the rest of the time you spend together.

It’s all about context and how you do it. So it absolutely is that the baby learns there is no point crying and eventually sleeps. I don’t believe it’s ‘learning to self sooth’ I think it’s ‘giving up’. It’s extinguishing a ‘behaviour’ but at that stage the behaviour is actually and expression of need. It’s not great for attachment but whether it’s damaging for the attachment depends on two things;

1. how it’s done. Gentle and graded is better for their sense of security. Leaving them cold turkey until they are sick is the worst and not advisable.
2. the wider context. If the needs are met sensitively most of the time and it’s not an otherwise neglectful relationship then it’s not going to much damage to the sense of security.

I personally didn’t because I could cope with the lack of sleep and wanted to prioritise the bond. If I’d been a single parent, struggling with sleep deprivation, needing to work and at my wits end so not being so attuned at other times then I would have considered it.

Each family is unique and as long as it’s not part of a wider pattern of ignoring emotional needs it’s not going to do damage. It does challenge the attachment bond though. No doubt in my mind about that. It’s just about degree.

@Wictc one-offs obviously are not the same as systematic, planned, deliberate occasions taking place regularly. Like with anything in parenting. I give my kids biscuits / crap sometimes and nothing terrible happens but if I did that every day they'd probably have tooth decay.

All those who could never leave to cry for one second - what do you do when you are on the motorway and there is nowhere to stop safely and pull over? I think everyone has left their child to cry for a bit.

Children constantly learn. Learning not to cry as no one is coming would mean they would never cry out (apart from sudden pain) again, which I have never heard of. It’s like saying they never learn to feed themselves as you feed them, or they learn to only poo in their nappy. They are constantly developing, if learning was static as a baby, it would be a very different vision of humanity. Obviously neglect is completely different as that is built up over years, but teaching a baby to self soothe whilst otherwise being a loving present parent, I can’t see making any long term impact.

Do you have more than one? Reality is by the time 2nd arrives you sometimes have to leave baby safe but crying for a minute or two while you tend to a toddler who needs washed / changed / has a death wish.

My friends friend did controlled crying (so not even cry it out) and thought it had worked great. Then one morning they found toddler ds sat in his own vomit. It was very much dried in and looked hours old. He had been sick in the night and was just sitting in it waiting for the sun to come up because he didn't see any point in crying in the night.

Absolutely heartbreaking and in a typical uk home so no Romanian orphanage arguments needed to argue about how cruel sleep training is.

Of course critics of this story will argue it doesn't apply to their^^ child, their child is fine blah blah blah. But there is always the RISK the child will be damaged and for me personally that's a risk I could never take with my own children. They know if they need me I am always there.

Now maybe all these short bursts of time when I can’t or haven’t consoled them might cause attachment issues.

Attachment isn’t about being permanently attached to your child, the child needs to know care givers leave and come back again - or they don’t develop an internal sense of you which is fundamentally what attachment is. It’s about consistency of response - if the care giver consistently responds and is attuned to the child’s needs they develop a secure attachment style. Rupture and repair is part of that process ie “mummy couldn’t stop the car to comfort you, but she can comfort you now”.

Imo it's cruel not to teach a baby to settle themselves, if they're awake multiple times every night and likely not napping properly either. Good sleep is so vital for their development. Plus their days are miserable when they're tired.

X100!

My dd changed massively once she started getting good sleep. She was calmer, able to play independently, just a happier baby all round. She's 14mo and will now go bring her comforter to me and take my hand and walk to her room when she needs to nap! My 2 cannot be more different.

Excellent point. And you are right that all with siblings can be thought of as having trauma to some extent 😂 It’s part of the reason it is recommended to space your children out; that advice isn’t just to give a birthing persons body time to recover.

Imo it's cruel not to teach a baby to settle themselves, if they're awake multiple times every night and likely not napping properly either. Good sleep is so vital for their development. Plus their days are miserable when they're tired.

I honestly think it's a really important part of a parent's job to help them get the best sleep possible, actively trying to improve things for them rather than just passively waiting for months or years. I find it a bit odd when parents who are very concerned about what their DC eats or how much telly they watch don't do anything about their sleep when it's so important for their development and health.

(I had one who needed sleep training and one who didn't. I think it's the luck of the draw.)

My anecdotal experience with twins was that babies can be over stimulated by the soothing techniques. they lie quietly while you’re holding or stroking them because they like it, but it doesn’t necessarily help them actually get to sleep.

I discovered this when, with two crying babies, who I initially tried to juggle soothing, one day I decided I just needed to concentrate on getting one down and when he was asleep I would try the other. The one I was leaving fell asleep long before the one I was soothing. I tried for several days with different twins being left. It was always the one not being soothed who went to sleep first.

For non-anecdotal research, there appears to be no difference in outcomes (including in parent-child relationships) between children who underwent gentle sleep-training methods and children who were not sleep trained at all (see: https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/130/4/643/30241/Five-Year-Follow-up-of-Harms-and-Benefits-of ).
And in another study, researchers found no difference in attachment between parents who left their children to cry more those who left their children to cry less: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/11/leaving-babies-to-cry-does-no-harm-study-finds (Sorry, can’t find a link to the actual paper quickly, though I’ve read it in the past so it’s on line somewhere) I believe this study has come in for some criticism about the conclusions it has drawn on the strength of the data - i.e. that the data says what it says but isn’t sufficiently robust to draw strong conclusions. The inference being that concluding that babies aren’t hurt by cryin is a strong conclusion because theories suggest they should be. However, it seems odd to me that those criticisms aren’t more concerned about the lack of hard data supporting theory that is heavily relied on within the discipline, which makes such support for such theory seem more like an ideological rather than scientific stance.

@user666555 ask away op. I absolutely know what you're going through. With my older one and being a first time mum, we were just out of our depth and figured out the issues long after bad habits set in. My ds just became a very clingy child because that's all he knew. We carried and rocked him to sleep because that was the only thing that comforted him. So it was just a vicious cycle. We did try sleep training when he was over 1 but we gave up after the first night because we thought we were distressing him. But then again, that's all he knew so off course he would be distressed and we did not persevere.

My dd on the hand is 14m old now and we recognised her cmpa, colic and reflux immediately. And again we were given the usual run around about babies crying and wait and see. But we went the private route and got her on the right stuff immediately. She was on Neocate, with Omeprazole, Carobel thickener and BioGaia probiotic. This helped settle her so much.
The very next thing we tackled was her sleep because we recognised the bad habit from my DS. So at around 10m we sleep trained and we did the best thing ever for us but mostly her.

Tonight for example, she is teething and yet I lay her down in her cot and left the room and she took 20min to fall off to sleep. In that time she just rolled around playing with her comforter and eventually slept. In the very same 20min I lay with my 7yo till he goes off to sleep. He will at least sleep in his room for the night but has that intense sleep association of needing dh or I there to fall off to sleep while a baby puts herself to sleep.