My neighbour swears her kids sleep twelve hours a night and it has me questioning everything

[GlowWithBalance]

I was chatting with my neighbour the other day while the kids were playing outside. She casually mentioned that her two sleep from nine in the evening until seven in the morning every single night. She said it so calmly, like this was completely normal. I just stood there nodding while silently thinking about my own child wandering into our room at two in the morning asking for water or having a sudden need to discuss dinosaurs.
It honestly made me laugh because she looked so refreshed and put together, and I was standing there with messy hair and a cold cup of coffee I kept forgetting to drink. She wasn’t bragging, just sharing, but it really highlighted how wildly different family routines can be.

Mine slept through from a very early age and didn't get up in the night. My friends were all very envious of me.

Water on the bedside table, and ‘we’ll talk about it in the morning. Night night’.

You haven’t said ages but is pretty normal for your child to sleep through by the time they’re old enough to chat about dinosaurs. I remember mine were late-ish to sleep through at around 10/11 months. I think everyone’s child had by time they were about 18 months? Occasional taking them to the toilet in night when they’re small, but at around 5 they tend to just take themselves. But I’m not sure I count that as not sleeping through, even adults sometimes wake up to use the toilet in the night!

By allowing them to get up and chat about dinosaurs you’re completely messing with their sleep cycle. You’ll have a teenager trying to access tech at all hours.

I remember staying at my parents at Christmas when DS was 8 weeks old and wandering down for coffee about 9am when DS was still asleep and everyone rushing to get me a coffee and asking what times I’d been up in the night with him. They were all so shocked when I said he was still asleep from about 10pm the night before but it was normal pretty much from when he was born. It did mean he fed most of the day and didn’t nap much in the daytime ever though.

You've had a fairly biased response so far.
I think it's Durham Uni which has conducted a number if sleep studied, and it is a very significant percentage (although less that half - I want to say a third) of babies who haven't slept through by their first birthday.

Mine didn't sleep. But I now have the benifit of teenagers who don't need turfing out of bed for school. I can already hear DS1 upstairs. DS2 will likely be down in the next half hour.

Yes I feel I need to pop in to add towards balance,mine aren't sleepers.

Mine have all slept through but its something I've been really strict on from the start as sleep is important to me and I didn't want to be in a position like some of my friends who still had 5 year olds in there bed.

My DC slept 12 hours from a very young age. I'd often have to wake them in the morning. It's just luck though,

DS1 has happily slept straight through from 18 months, still averages 11-12 hours a night at almost 7. Obviously we put this down to our fantastic parenting. Then we had DS2... He is almost 3, and has slept through twice in his life, both times when he was ill. I keep on hoping it will magically click!

Ive got 3 DC.

The first 2 slept overnight without waking up from 4 months old. Never had night time wakings. Slept 12 hours overnight as babies 7-7 & as they got older they would have slept from 9-7 no problem.

Then we had DC3! Now thry are 7 & still dont reliably sleep through the night (I'm often in with them from 2am). They've never slept consistently through the night & I'm hoping they will eventually grow out of this.

I can quite believe that your neighbours kids do sleep 10 hours solid & until I had DC3 I thought that was the norm!

DS1 woke up every night and got into my bed until he was 10 (then given Sertraline for OCD which helped with his anxiety so he could sleep through). DS2 very calm and has always slept well.
I have never let my children "cry it out"- it has felt wrong on every level. But ofcourse it works- I've seen documentaries about children in orphanages who never cry because they have learnt noone will console them. Some will say they learnt to self-soothe. I would call it resignation.

Some kids just sleep better than others. Mine were terrible as babies/toddlers but they now sleep from 8/6.30 pretty much every day. They are 6 and 7. It’s just luck and personality I think.

Both of mine slept through from 8-7 from about 18 months. Unless they were ill. Sometimes woke a bit earlier but middle of the night waking were very rare.

Eldest now 19 didn’t sleep through until age 5 , then patch sleep until 8, but has competed nationally in her sport, trains a lot in sport, still always on the go, never a “lie in teen” always had less sleep than normal. Youngest slept through from 18mths, now 14 and can’t get her to bed or wake her up in the morning. You get what you get both are ND, bright active lovely young ladies.

DS1 slept through from 7 months onwards, really easy. DS2...every 3 to 4 hours. Still waiting for that uninterrupted sleep, im so tired.

Ah I messed up. A routine, a bed. Here I was just waiting for them to curl up on a cardboard box at 2am.

just down to a good routine and own beds and knowing this is what's happening and how it happens I guess

No it's not, so you can stop being smug! I know loads of sibling sets (there are some on this thread too) who have a mixture of "good" and "bad" sleepers.

@GlowWithBalance mine does 8.30-6 30 (in bed with me at the moment but was in the cot in same room) and an hour nap (was 90 mins). He's not yet 2.

DS1 slept through from nine weeks

DS2 didn’t until he was three

Glad it was that way round or we might have thought we did something clever…

My daughter happily sleeps anything from 5pm to 7pm dependent on what we're up to later on holiday but her wake up is always 7am her body doesn't allow her later anymore when she was younger she could happily go 5pm to 9am she slept through at six weeks she still loves a nap when day routine allows the time.
HOWEVER although yes we've been blessed by sleep she was a difficult baby in lots of other ways and three years old her often brings me to tears.

DC2 was a fabulous sleeper straight away. Long stretches through the night from the start and slept through fairly quickly. Very much as other people are describing up thread. If they were my first I'd like to think I'd have known it was luck and not assumed that I was somehow doing things 'better' than those who were struggling but I suspect I'd have taken some credit for it. But I'd had DC1 first who was and still is a poor sleeper and so knew it wasn't really to do with us.

There was an obvious difference between the two of them from the day DC2 was born. It wasn't anything we did. There were things we could do to make things better but we couldn't change either of them to be a different type of sleeper. So much of it is luck.

I do think that sometimes parents can unknowingly perpetuate sleep problems either co sleeping. I know that’s not a popular view here though.

DS is nearly five and has reliably slept through for years. DD is nearly two and a half, she usually does wake up once. I just nip in and give her a drink and she’s fine.

#1 slept 12 hours from 6 weeks old until she was about 8yo. Only times she woke was if she was ill.
#2 was the revenge. Every 2 hours until 20 months, when the Dr gave her something to help her sleep. Then it was 8-10 hours with not more than one wake.
#3 was much more like #1 except he wàs ill a good 50% of the time. He used to wake once normally and come into our bed. But he preferred to go down early and get up early which the others didn't.

They all had the same bedtime routine. #1 also napped the best with a 2-3 hour sleep in the afternoon right up until she went to school, aged nearly 5.

Different children need different amounts of sleep.
As adults #1 still needs the most sleep, and #3 is still a relatively early riser. Even on holiday he'll be up by 9am. And they all have a preferred sleeping position that as soon as they could move they went for, and still will often found like that.

I had trouble with both ds's but got it sorted, and then both of them slept through and have never changed. Good job too, because I hate disturbed sleep, it's damaging.

It depends on the child.

My dd has just this month started reliably sleeping through the night. By reliably I mean 6 nights out of 7 (we keep a rough log).

She is FIVE YEARS old - that's five years, years! Of disrupted nights.

And I have a younger one too who looks like he'll be the same way. Dh and I are so tired and have visibly aged

My only consolation is that I read somewhere, probably here on MN at 3am, that children who are poor sleepers tend to be cleverer because they spend more time awake and therefore learning.

Nb this was not from a scientific source but from another mum of sleepless children and therefore obviously total bullshit but I cling onto it because I have no other silver lining in this situation

My middle child has always been an amazing sleeper since the day he was born. Napped for 3 hours a day until he started school too and sometimes fell asleep in reception… obviously a bit worrying (had blood tests etc). He’s 8 now and it’s only just been picked up that it’s because he’s hyper mobile and the effort of staying upright is so tiring 😄 poor baby. So lots of sleep is not always a good thing!
My eldest still a bloody nightmare and we had about 1 year where he went to bed ok and stayed in bed, and now he’s old enough that his bedtime isn’t until 9pm (same time as I need!). So that’s that then.