WWYD baby next door screaming 20 mins now

[Dobbysgotthesocks]

Parents outside having a smoke.

I just came in from work. Popped upstairs to get something. Hear child crying (their bedroom next to my bathroom). Hear the bedroom door shut loudly next door. Increase in crying from child.
Next thing I know both parents are outside in their back garden. Definitely can hear child as directly below bedroom. Child is hysterically screaming. Child just over a year.

I've been upstairs 25 mins now and they are still crying.

Frequently hear child cry for extended periods overnight but not this hysterically and always assumed parents would be with them as I wouldn't necessarily be able to hear parents trying to calm an upset child.
Often hear them shouting at their older child.

Call Social services?

They could be trying “cry it out”. They could have had a fag because they were at the end of their tether.

my son was a right screamer and I would have hated if my neighbours called the police whenever he was having a moment. He was not neglected or abused in any way. But he did like getting his own way

This.

"Cry it out" , means you're supposed to go in and soothe them every few minutes. Not both parents abandon the child for nearly an hour.

Put them down and walk away for 5 mins? Ok.
Shut them in a room and leave them for an hour to scream? No.

I've no idea.
But just on my own experience, one day my baby was teething badly and screamed all day. By the end of the day about 8 hours in, I was broken. I gently laid them down on a carpeted floor of their nursery, closed the door safely and left the house to ask a neighbour if she could hold them for a bit. I had to leave the space.
It really depends on what has caused the crying I guess. I think only you can know they exact type of crying here.

A teething child will easily cry for 20 minutes at a time even with a parent with them. SS will not pay any attention to your reports.

Why don't you call round tomorrow and say you have heard baby crying a lot more recently - is there anything you could do to help? Shopping they might need? A prepped meal while they are tired and probs not getting much sleep?

They didn’t abandon the child for nearly an hour though. From the OP subsequent posts, they went inside the house after a while and OP is guessing that they didn’t tend to baby.

That’s exactly what lots of parents do.

It’s awful but there are loads of books and websites and people here even that recommend it.

‘"Cry it out" , means you're supposed to go in and soothe them every few minutes. Not both parents abandon the child for nearly an hour.

No it doesn’t. It means shut the door and let them cry.

You are describing controlled crying.

www.whattoexpect.com/first-year/crying-it-out.aspx#definition

The idea of either is frankly hideous.

If your gut instinct says something is wrong it doesn’t hurt to call

It can hurt. Unwarranted social services intrusion can put parents under considerable stress and can push a "coping ok for the most part" mother into PND.

The amount of calls social services get its no wonder they're so over stretched.

I put a post on here during the early hours of the morning as my 8mo is going through sleep regression and is waking every hour in the night. After trying to settle him for 25 minutes I had to go and sit in the bathroom to get a breather as I was getting upset and burnt out from exhaustion. I used to be a smoker, if I still was then I would've probably gone outside for a cigarette myself. I was at my wits end and wanted some advice on whether to give controlled crying a go over the next few days to try and break the habit.

So yes my neighbours likely heard my baby crying alot through the night. It's fucking exhausting.

My neighbours have probably also heard me shout out on occasion when my disabled older child has smashed the tv for the fourth time or been caught in the midst of doing something else as equally as dangerous.

Babies cry. Older children can be hard work. Sometimes parents get overwhelmed and need a breather. Sometimes they raise their voice. They/we are human.

Unless you know a child is being abused please stop reporting people to social services. They are so over stretched and under funded they just don't have the resources to offer the support that people assume they can. Some social workers have 40 odd families on their case load. They simply cannot just "help" every Tom dick and Harry.

With budgets stretched as far as they are, social services are (rightly) more focused on safeguarding serious cases these days.

Don't waste your or their time.

If you were asking for help and didn't get it, wouldn't it have actually been better for you at that moment in time if someone had reported the crying?

It's the 55 minutes without checking or comforting (which the OP clearly says she would be able to hear) that is the red flag here. Yes, they might be doing cry it out, which is fucking horrid anyway, or it might be part of a wider pattern of neglect. Only way you will know is to report it to someone in a position to check.

It’s very boarderline but personally I’d never leave my child to cry for that long (in fact have spent the majority of most evenings lying down with him until he goes to sleep 🙄).

I suppose leaving them to cry gets them out of such bad habits much quicker. I have probably been too soft on mine.

Prolonged crying in the night is a bit worrying though. And prolonged shouting at the other kid, but not shouting in general. Sometimes it’s the only way to get through to them.

My neighbour (who doesn’t have kids) messaged me the other day to see if DC was alright - she was tantruming in the hallway, her default tantrum spot (and it is dramatic). She said it shouted like she was being murdered 🙈. It’s a tricky one, unless you’ve been there I suppose it’s hard to gauge.

Trust your instincts. Build a picture. From what you said I would report. FYI I work closely with SS.

Unless you know a child is being abused please stop reporting people to social services.

The worst advice I've ever read on here, and that's saying something.

Call social services on a crying kid? Wow
Hope you don't
I left my kids to cry it out.
Op isn't even a parent

20 minutes is fine. I know many of the mums wouldn't consider that fine. But they are also the kind of mums that have kids that are 3 and still don't sleep through the night 😅

Yes, but if that was the case there was an opportunity to give then Calpol or a teether.

Actually I knew two frightfully posh NCT mums who let their babies cry it out all night long because 'they had to learn'. One baby lost his voice for two days. The other cried until he vomited.

Best SS weren't involved. High earning parents. We moved away but I always wondered how their children turned out and whether that (imo) brutal trteatment had any effect on them.

20 minutes is fine. I know many of the mums wouldn't consider that fine. But they are also the kind of mums that have kids that are 3 and still don't sleep through the night 😅

What patronising bollocks.

Leaving a child of any age hysterically crying for 20 minutes is unacceptable. Having a fag in the garden while your child cries themselves to sleep is disgusting! Go with your gut, OP. If you want to make the call, do it. It will be recorded at the very least and could help build up a picture of concern.

Shocked by all the PPs who think it’s acceptable to let their children scream for 55mins+ - if a dog was barking for that amount of time a day it would be taken off you. Why do we think it’s ok for children to be left to cry but not a dog?

I suspect it takes somewhat more than two seconds …

As did mine. Many years ago when people didn't call SS at the drop of a hat.

Just mind your own business. Your have no idea they could be sleep training the child. Keep your nose out.

My main takeaway from this thread is that a large number of parents don’t understand how ‘sleep training’ or ‘cry it out’ works.

Just ignoring your distressed child indefinitely is not great. Just because the baby has stopped crying doesn’t mean it’s no longer distressed, it’s just learned that no one will come.

“sleep-trained infants were waking up just as often as the ones in the control group”

“I can't answer as a scientist," says Siegel. "But intuitively, as a parent, as a therapist, as an educator, if within five minutes, your child is not finding a way to bring them into a calmer state, then their zone of proximal development has been pushed, I think, beyond its limits. And then you would want to give them support."

www.bbc.com/future/article/20220322-how-sleep-training-affects-babies

This. The amount of posts I have seen here where a parent is at the end of their tether with a crying child and are advised to remove themselves from the situation. It's eminently sensible rather than shake or shout at the child

Oh goodness, that is awful. That poor child- failed by just about everyone.