Sleep training from an adults perspective

[Soubriquet]

link

Made me feel a bit sick reading it tbh but AIBU to think this isn't really accurate.

Most adults wouldn't leave their baby to sleep in sick and wouldn't send their children to bed hungry

Sleep training is usually the last resort for most parents and the advice is always to only try it if the child is well in themselves, clean and full.

It's not really like that though, is it? Most parents (me included, years ago) use a different approach so our children still feel safe and secure in the knowledge we haven't abandoned them but that it's sleep and no nonsense time.

That article is horrible and inaccurate imho.

YANBU. It is better for a child to learn to sleep through the night - as long as you are checking on them, they have been fed and changed and you don't leave them to the point of an hysterical fit, there is no reason not to try a technique that might work and make them happier long-term. I get that not everyone agrees with it but the objections seem to me to be massively over-stated.

What an absolutely ridiculous article. Horrible and inappropriate.

And YANBU of course. But I didn't use it as a last resort, I trained them as we went along, so a very modified version iyswim.

I'm lucky that both of my children have always been good sleepers, but if sleep training was my very last resort, and someone said something like that to me, I would probably think I was a failure as a mother because what else can you possibly do?!

What a load of scaremongering twaddle parents who are struggilng could come across that bollox and just struggle more. Sleep training is not leaving a child to scream till its sick fgs

Sleep training is nothing like that link implies.

I am regularly baffled by people who try to insist it is.

I think it might be people who have oversimplified what sleep training is and/or have misunderstood the science around attachment/brain development/emotional development.

I had someone on Facebook say in the same post that babies brains are too primitive to be able to understand the concept of falling asleep without help AND also that if you don't come to a baby immediately they learn they are alone in the world and that no one will ever come. Quite a complex and sophisticated thought for a primitive brain that can't even fall asleep

Ugh what a crock of shit.

Completely ridiculous.

There is sleep training and then there is leaving a child screaming for hours on end while lying in their own sick. They are not the same thing and no one I know who has sleep trained has left their child to scream and scream.

I hold my hands up and admit I was of the "oh, it's so heartless!" opinion. Then DC3 happened and was such a bad sleeper. At one point I was so sleep deprived that I attempted to walk my children into the path of an oncoming car - we got to the crossing, my head equated that with 'let's cross' but missed out the bit about checking it was safe to cross. DC3 started sleep training that night and we're now at a happy medium where he starts off in his own bed and, if he wakes in the night, is allowed into my bed to sleep until morning. Previously he'd have messed about but now, even when he gets in my bed, he goes straight to sleep.

I was hoping it was an article about adult sleeping problems.

What a load of crap.

Not really accurate?? Biggest pile of bullshit I've read in a long time. The author has completely misunderstood sleep training.

That primative baby brain is quite complex eh plimsolls

There is sleep training and then there is leaving a child screaming for hours on end while lying in their own sick. They are not the same thing and no one I know who has sleep trained has left their child to scream and scream.

There are different kinds of sleep training. Some kinds really do advocate leaving them to scream for hours on end - shut the door, walk away, don't go back until the morning.

comparing sleep training in baby's to an adult conversation???? what cr@p.

I sleep trained my oldest but would never have left him lying in sick!!

Jesus, no-one will remember being left to cry in bed a few times as a baby - it won't scar them for life.

Primitive brain

I remember MIL telling me that the first thing newborns learn is how to lie and that they'll lie about being upset by making themselves cry to manipulate you into picking them up.

Deceitful little feckers.

Ha ha, tarla these deceitful little primates we have the misfortune to give birth to

Or you could never teach them how to sleep or do anything they won't like. You'll be wiping their arses til they're seven and letting them sleep in your bed, eat when they want.

There's a difference between controlled crying to wean them off feeding or rocking to sleep and abandonment. It isn't as though parents love the sound of their children crying.

I have absolutely seen shutting the door and leaving them to cry themselves to sleep advocated. I do think that's cruel.

That is not sleep training. I hate to hear DD cry but she will self soothe after a minute. If not I go in, pick up, put down and try again. That's not cruel.

I think it is a form of sleep training surely.

splendide there are (a minority, in my view) of people who do this and I think most would agree it's cruel. It's very different to the sleep training I've seen friends try on their children though.

I just think that there's a bit of a trend for any talk of sleep training to immediately be conflated with the "shut the door and leave them" approach which in turn gets assumed to be "leave them to scream and be sick all night, that'll learn 'em! ". I think those conflations are difficult and problematic as (in my experience) it then shuts down any discussion of sleep issues or strategies and trying to help/encourage children to sleep more soundly for longer.

Not only is it inaccurate but it's a pain in the arse to read and follow.

Never really had to 'sleep train' my first but if needed -the health and sanity of the entire family was dependant on it I would use some techniques on my second.

Also, as a slight off-topic, my daughter will sometimes cry just before she falls asleep, whether she's in my arms, on my breast, in her oram, or in her cot. It's just a kind of "tension release" thing. Only lasts 60secs max but I'd make it worse if I started intervening in it as I'd wake her up more and she'd get cross and tired. So technically, she is crying herself to sleep. But it's not cruel.

I agree Plimsolls. I think it's very hard.

I also think that some of the language around sleep training generally is unhelpful. The idea that if a baby is fed and clean and warm then there can't be anything else they need is completely wrong. BUT equally that doesn't mean that you should never let them cry for an instant either.

I suppose for me, I found the expectations very hard. Once I accepted that it's normal (although not universal) for babies to wake a lot I was actually happier. I didn't feel like I had failed to teach them something I should have done, I felt less guilty.