to think that parents contribute to the sleep issues?

[ChocolateBiscuitCake]

Disclaimer: I have two DC who have not always been brilliant sleepers and go through patches of wakefullness at night/early in the morning (!) but...

I have been reading some of the sleep threads and am really surprised by the number of people who have older babies or toddlers who sleep SO badly whilst claiming that they don't know how to improve the situation and won't do any form of CC.

From my experiences, babies have to learn how to sleep well and they do this by you setting up routines and helping them along the way. If you feed your 12 month old milk in the middle of the night, they will keep waking for milk in the night. If you bring them into your bed, they will want to be in your bed. If you have to lie down and hold their hand, they will expect you to be there holding their hand if they wake up.

Nothing changes overnight and teaching your baby/child to sleep well takes patience and consistency. But leaving a baby to cry for 5 minutes is not going to hurt it and ignoring a toddler whilst you drag them back to bed and not give into their ridiculous demands is not difficult. We are the adults!

AIBU to think that some parents need to be a bit tougher rather than find some miracle cure for poor sleep habits?

Cristina's point about potty training was bang on. It seems to me that sleeping through the night alone and without the need of comfort is the only skill our children must all learn very early on or they are naughty children with sloppy lazy parents. Smug and ignorant.

We should all sit our babies in potties every 15 mins from 6 weeks too.

But very few parents are driven to the edge of insanity because they have to change nappies, and being in nappies for longer than necessary rarely causes any harm to toddlers beyond moderate nappy rash. Sleep deprivation on the other hand...

As per the OP, and indeed Richard Ferber, if cosleeping and 2am feeds are working for you and the whole family is getting enough sleep then that's great. I personally managed fine with the whole baby-grumbles-vaguely-about-food-mum-rolls-over-inserts-boob-in-mouth-removes-boob-straight-back-to-sleep thing, and could have managed that indefinitely, but if you're all running on zombie time then that has massive health and well-being implications.

Agreed! Got to be cruel to be kind...
I think it's actually cruel to allow your child to maintain the feeling of being insecure in themselves enough to not be comfortable self settling and being in their beds all night. Promoting this behaviour I believe will only cause more distress in the long term whereas cc or similar may cause upset for a short period of say, a week at most if followed correctly, then a settled child for the rest.

The point I was making McQueen is that most parents have already tried the other methods. They've done their time, and according to the books they should now be reaping the rewards, but no, their baby still won't sleep. So that's when they give in and resort to desperation tactics. They have nothing to lose, as their baby won't sleep whatever they do, so they may as well start making that famed "rod for the own backs".

Trust me, I've been a junior doctor working 48 hour stretches with not a single minute of sleep, but it was easy compared to being a single parent to a non-sleeping baby!

I definately agree! I see babies from 14 days until childhood and inevitably it is the parents who get to 9 months and are still rocking, patting, stroking heads, feeding to sleep, co-sleeping, driving around, putting in bouncers, cuddling to sleep, that by the time the child is 2-3 still have sleep issues because they have never been given the chance to learn to get to sleep on their own and rely on those cues for sleep. Those babies where parents have intervened at an earlier age when the baby is not likely to remember the sleep training have uninterrupted 12 hours sleep at night. IMO it is far more cruel to use cc at 2-3 because they have become so used to particular comforts for sleep and remember sleep training. At least at 4-7 months they are not likely to remember and the attachment to sleep cues is less strong and more easily dealt with.

Anxious this is a whole different debate, but can I say that just because a child doesn't remember something, doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic. We just don't know how traumatic is was because they can't remember it!

Midsomer babies obviously don't usually come into the world with a sleep pattern, which is why it is important to have a day and night routine to distinguish one from the other. The other issue is that lots of parents don't connect why the baby isn't sleeping. For example I visited a mother with a 7 month old whose baby wouldn't sleep. I asked if we could try on my visit - the cot was full of toys which the baby was playing with when she was put in her cot which signals the cot as being for play, not sleep. We removed the toys, put the baby in the cot, whinged for 5 mins and then fell asleep.

How can someone be traumatised by something they can't remember . I know it was a very common practice in my mothers generation and the vast majority of friends who did sleep training had children who slept, I don't know any of their children who were traumatised, including myself and my brother!

They might have a vague latent memory but at 2-3 they have an almost complete memory! Far more traumatic and must feel to the child that they are being rejected.

I think we're talking about different types of parent here. I'm not talking about the ones who don't bother with a routine, and do silly things like filling the cot with toys. I mean the ones who do eveything "right", for weeks on end, and STILL their baby wakes every half hour. After long periods of minimal sleep despite following every guideline ever written and abundant common sense, they turn to desperate measures before they collapse with exhaustion. And they don't appreciate being told it was all their fault in the first place!

No-one knows the effect of neonatal/infant trauma. DS1 was on SCBU for the first ten days of his life, having numerous painful tests and treatments. He cried and cried. Of course he has no memory of this at all now, but it's impossible to know if it may have shaped his personality.

No obviously there will be the odd exception, but on the whole there is usually a reason and usually its because parents didn't do routine, etc before 9 months when the baby then has separation anxiety. Then attempts to get the baby to sleep alone are useless at that point, which then runs on until this settles but because all else has failed they give up and resort to all the aforementioned cues.

I agree that nobody knows, however, there is a vast difference between the levels of cortisol aroused during very painful procedures compared to crying induced during cc or shush pat technique as this does not produce physical pain. Again nobody knows. What I do know is that for toddlers to have to endure screaming for several nights will absolutely be remembered and is therefore definately more detrimental to their emotional wellbeing.

Maybe I'm out of date on all of this because my youngest child is ten. I didn't know anybody who did controlled crying with young babies. It was just taken for granted that you would have weeks, maybe months of broken sleep.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but a lot of people on this thread seem to be talking about young babies.

Milly I don't think its because you are out of touch, more that we tend to surround ourselves with likeminded people IIRC Most of my friends had dc who slept from early on, had routines for sleeping, bath, bed etc and you may well have had friends who do things as you did.
I see the general concensus in clinic when people complain about non-sleeping dc and inevitably most of the time when I write up the notes and see the last review they were not sleeping/ co-sleeping, etc. and were what I would view as the more attachment style parents.

ds is 4 and has just started sleeping in his own bed and still often comes in mine, until recently i used to cuddle him to sleep now we read, he still drinks milk or water in the night and he stays up late at weekends sometimes we are out late too

i do things very differently from you op, i would not use cc. i have a very confident little boy who has no attachment issues we have just moved and he has started at a new nursery and there have been no problems at all considering he is over indulged and spoilt as i have done what many consider attachment and unconditional parenting i personally dislike labels nearly as much as i dislike smug self righteous parents.

i am amazed that my lazy parenting has worked out well

Freudian that is fine if you enjoyed having your child in your bed for 4 years and it didn't affect your relationship with DH, make you grumpy because you had disrupted sleep etc. Most parents I have met are at their wits end needing good sleep, relationships back on track etc. Or they are pg with dc2 and have no idea how they will fit everyone into the bed if they co-sleep and turn to sleep training. Its your choice, but I feel that you are smug in implying that I have dc who are insecurely attached - wrong, I have 2 very different but very secure children who engage with school and pre-school very well and had no problems settling what so ever. I would argue that any child of 4 still requiring milk during the night and having disrupted sleep is probably not getting as much sleep as would benefit learning.

drinking a little milk does not disrupt his sleep and why let him be without a drink if he needs one i drink water in the night i still get a good nights slwwp

i do not have a dh, even if i did i would have still co slept, and i would not have done cc it does not sit comfortably with me (like smacking, time out and naughty step but that is for another thread) i did what i felt came naturally to me many others consider this wrong as i was not following routines, didn't do this or that but all has still worked out ok

cc and strict routines are not for everyone, they are not necessarily the right answer for all as babies are different and what parents expect is different.

i have not implied anything about your children. i have simply pointed out that i have done things very differently and my lazy parenting has worked out ok

'i have a very confident little boy who has no attachment issues we have just moved and he has started at a new nursery and there have been no problems at all considering he is over indulged and spoilt as i have done what many consider attachment and unconditional parenting i personally dislike labels nearly as much as i dislike smug self righteous parents.'

I don't know why you talked about attachment in the context of confidence I didn't say attachment parented children were less confident, which implies to me that you consider the alternative of using cc to mean attachment problems , nor did I state that they were spoilt, merely that they were often the children who didn't sleep without cues until toddlerhood/ pre-school age.

You have proved my point! You have said that he slept with you until 4 and still wakes for milk in the night. Most adults do not need to drink in the night generally, only with colds etc/ diabetes/ medical issues. His waking is habitual as opposed to need.

well i am an adult and i take a glass of water with me to bed as i sometimes wake thirsty or with a dry mouth etc, why would a baby, young child be any different.

we co-slept, fed on demand and they were all in their own beds, sleeping through the night between 2-3yr no crying involved.

even when they fed in the night they didnt 'wake' properly, mearly stirred and latched on, fed, had a cuddle, whatever and stayed settled and asleep.

having babies in their own beds, own rooms it a very western phenomenan bourght about in the last 50yrs or so mainly and its not natural for babies and young children imo, they need that human contact and tend to sleep better for it, most grow out of it and i would rather let them do so than than force them by using cc.

several posters have also stated that they followed the 'rules' correctly and it took a lot longer than one week, and often you are back to square one if the child gets ill etc, so you are not just doing it once, you have to repeat the process, not nice imo.

I really dislike this notion that cc and routines are the right way and that cosleep and any other kind of comfort are the lazy wrong way. I have a friend whose first child was happy to be in a GF routine and her second was a complete shock and to this day has needed a different aproach. She said that she tried the same methods with DC2 as she did with DC1 and he wasn't receptive. It didn't work.

At no point did I say that attachment parenting is wrong. As I have said a few times, if it works the great. But go to the sleep forum and there are a whole load of threads about older babies and toddlers where it is not working...

I am referring to these posts and the fact that if they were tougher with their kids then I am sure they would all sleep better (obviously excluding those with SN, illness etc before that argument comes about again!!!).

And I wholeheartedly agree that the benefits of sleep for everyone far out-way the week (max) of sleep training where the child may be a bit cross!

Are you implying that if a parent refuses to do cc then they losetheir right to have a moan about the lack of sleep? Or to open a thread searching for other ways to solve their problem?

no you never said attachment parenting is wrong (i was explaining how i parent, lazy in some peoples eyes, and how i feel cc is wrong) but you are asking if you are you wrong for feeling by not trying cc if you have a child that does not sleep is wrong and leaving a baby to cry will do them no harm. maybe it does not, i personally disagree as for me every instinct of mine was to see to my ds when he was crying especially under the age of 1, of course at times i stepped away but that was when it was needed for me not him. So in answer to your question yes i do feel you are as it is not something i would ever consider doing

i personally do not like gina ford type parenting. when i was pregnant i read her book and knowing nothing about babies thought what a great idea apart from being in his own room from day one. ds arrived and it went in the bin. nothing that i have read by a so called baby expert could differ from what i felt i should be doing than her book. i am not saying it is wrong it is just something i would never use, or her other techniques (or ones that have been used by maternity nurses for years she has now put into a book and profited from). cc feels wrong for me as carrying a baby in a sling all the time, co sleeping, demand feeding and so on feels wrong for others