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 were both poor sleepers as babies. DS especially woke loads up until 1 year.

Since I night weaned DD (now 9) at just over 1, she has been the dream sleeper. Bedtime by 8pm, usually asleep by 8.30, sleeps through until anywhere from 6-7.30 but with the help of a Gro-clock, has entertained herself in the morning from about age 3 or 4. She knows her friends go to bed later, but is happy to go to bed unless she is missing out on something.

DS (now 6) has often taken longer to get to sleep and will come back to chat to us a few times in the evening. We had some tricky evenings when he was a toddler, but he was (and is now) usually asleep by 8.45/9 then sleep through to anywhere from 6-7.30. Again he has been entertaining himself in the mornings (with some company from his big sister) from about 2.5.

Lol. I was told the opposite... That clever children need a lot of sleep as their brains are recovering so they can learn more.

Having had sleepers and non-sleepers I can tell you there's nothing in either. My DC were clearly similar ability.

I don't think I've ever slept through the night and I've definitely never slept for 12 hours, so my sleep expectations were relatively low for my children.

I wish having children who "sleep through" would stop being used as some sort of badge of honour. You're not a failure if your children require less sleep than someone else's.

My neighbour said this too, she had 5 kids so I’m guessing it was true otherwise she wouldn’t have had that mine.

Mine didn’t and still don’t sleep well ans we’re well past the baby stage. Life isn’t the same for everyone and comparing yourself will lead to insanity.

The only thing I'd say is please ignore the "why don't you sleep train" nagging. There are some children who simply can't be sleep trained. I suspect some kind of neurodiversity, whatever, it doesn't matter. I never slept well as a child either, frequently bedwetted, had awful nightmares very regularly. Terrified of the dark well into adulthood (I'm OK now).

My dd thankfully doesn't bedwet very often but shows similar traits otherwise and you can't sleep train this stuff.

All you can do is accept it and embrace the way your child is. My dd is turning out to be good at maths, so there's one thing she's got to make up for it I suppose!!

I know, I clearly said I know it's bullshit. Let us cling onto a myth like that though, why kick a tired mum when she's down

My kids, who are mostly adults now, slept for about 11 hours a night.

Mine have all been generally good sleepers too. I co-slept with all of them as babies, probably until they were around 18 months in truth. They all then happily went in their own beds and slept 7-5/6ish. No idea if co-sleeping was the trick or if I just got lucky but there’s 5 DC so I’d have to be incredibly lucky.

Here's another similar myth... so when my dd (the same sleepless one) was younger she wouldn't get in the bath without someone else (ie me) in it. Occasionally she'd have a small wee in there, oh dear. Someone, I think it was my DM, told me confidently that diluted baby wee in the bath is good for your skin (!) I knew even while she told me that she was telling me utter rubbish but it helped me feel better and that's mum-solidarity

Your maths is awful. How old are her kids and how old is yours? What time does yours go to bed? How do you deal with them when they come in your room?

Same 😁. 12hrs at 3 months with my eldest, it was weird. I didn't tell my NCT group for ages. I only admitted it sheepishly when they asked.

Ah those communists.

I don't know about Russia but actually co sleeping is very common in China (and around the world). Lots of cultures co sleep. It's not some new western hippy thing.

DS didn't sleep that well, DD has so far which just shows children are different. You aren't a better parent if your children sleep better. Obviously you might want them to for sanity reasons!

Mine pretty much do 7-6 unless they’re ill too tbf I think it’s just luck with kids sleep

Sorry op, chaotic house here but the kids have nearly always slept the whole night. Noo ok methods or anything though, just reading and sleep. I just call us lucky. We have other issues, food etc so every house has their stuff!!

Im hearing you!
Although im a bad sleeper myself, my mum told me I only slept 4 hours at a time til I was 3. My DD woke every night til she was 6.

Im v envious of all the people on this thread and IRL who had children/babies there slept all night.
But at least some pps are attributing it to luck

The 2 things guaranteed to make myself feel shit about myself were kids who slept all night and kids who ate everything you gave them (DD was - and still is at 19 - very fussy) i think both are a lot to do with luck,but lots of parents will congratulate themselves on their superior parenting! Both my DC were not dry at night til 6 or 7 either so that didn't help

Mine slept relatively well from 18m, but always woke horrifically early until about 4yo. No matter whether he went to bed at 6.30pm or 10pm, he was up at 5am. That only changed when school started.

he still wakes in the night multiple times a week though, but I don’t really count it as not sleeping through? Even if he comes through to my room or I have to go and lie down with him, we both nod off again quickly so it’s just like waking up for a pee or to stop the cat from scratching about or of there’s a fox or a helicopter or a car alarm making noise.

My terrible sleeper is also a terrible eater. So I fail on both aspects

But we have been in hospital recently and they tried to give him melatonin and a low sleep drug and he still didn’t sleep… I met a doctor on night shift at the coffee machine and he was like ‘ ah, yours is the child that can’t even be sedated to sleep’.

Depending on the age of your children, something that has made a big difference to our 2 and 5yos is having something to tell them when it’s still nighttime. We use the moon/ sun on their yoto players but any nightlight timer etc would work. They now sleep 11 hours ish and don’t come through until they know it’s ‘day time’ (6.30). Otherwise before they can tell the time they can wake and have no idea if it’s morning or not.

My son was a good sleeper from early on, until he hit 2 then he’d be up from midnight to around 4-5am, no matter what I did he was up and that went on for around 18months. He’s 10 now and sleeps really well, asleep for around 8.30 unless he’s got a million questions about the meaning of life, then up for 6.

Mini blondes has always slept 12/13 hrs from 4mths and is now heading to 9

she loves her sleep

I often have to wake her 7.45 for the we have to get out of bed now alarm goes off , for school

she’s in bed by 730pm school nights and currently still sleep and now 7.36am so I will open her door and make some noise to gently stir her and if not then 745 actually wake her

never did controlled crying - didn’t need to. Just a good routine as a baby which installed good sleep habits

yes my friends hated me 😂

My dd didn’t sleep through uninterrupted until…honestly idk, maybe 8 or so - less disruptive to my sleep as she got older though. She’s not remotely ND, became a very sensible sleeper in her teens - had to be out of the house 7:30 sharp to get the bus to the school she wanted to go to so she went to bed by 10pm and slept!

10 hours is not unheard of. Mine used to. My friends dudnt

Different children different patterns.

DD was probably 4 before she managed a single night without waking up, and then it really was just a single one. Every now and then she’d throw one in after that to get our hopes up. And she’d wake up by 6 no matter what time she went to sleep.

5 now, and in year 1, and that seems to have helped a lot because we do get much better sleep on the whole. Astonishingly she’s still asleep now and I’m going to have to wake her up, but she probably didn’t go down till gone 9 and woke up twice in the night.

Also, if she closes her eyes for more than 10 seconds in a day it’ll be nearly midnight by the time you get her to sleep that night, and it’s been that way since she was about 2 as well.

She’s an otherwise healthy, thriving child with good routines, really active, eats a good range of food, hardly ever ill, doing well at school etc etc. Sleep has just always been the hard thing.

It’s really easy for people whose children sleep well early on to assume it’s their amazing routines or their methods, something they did or did not do. In reality I think it’s just how some of us are, I certainly found it easier to stop worrying what I was doing wrong all the time and just go with it.

That’s 10 hours not 12 hours but sounds normal to me. Both of mine did the same from about 6 months old. There was no wandering into bedrooms in our house unless someone was sick.

I’m grumpy if I’m woken up from sleep and read early on that if babies/toddlers wake up in the night you just deal with their issue without emotion (such as needing a feed or nappy change in the case of a baby) & then straight back in the cot/bed.

That’s ten hours.

How old are the DC?