Any other adults who were sleep trained (as babies)?

[BigPinkBall]

So I’ve seen a few threads tonight about sleep training with some people claiming it damages babies brains and others saying it has no affect.

I was born in the 80s when Feberising was the “in” thing and my parents are very proud that they used to leave me to cry myself to sleep, my mum tells me about how she’d do the hoovering to drown out the noise. She also told me that when I was little and I wanted to get into their bed she’d tell me to bring my pillow and lie on the floor next to their bed.

I think it did affect me, I can’t go to sleep if it’s quiet or dark, I need to have the tv on to be able to fall asleep, what are other people’s experiences?

7pm-8am!

Oh and the other thing to remember is that memory is very fallible. It only takes a few years for it all to get very hazy. dh and I have totally different memories of some quite key events for our children (like ds's first steps) so I'm not sure how much I'd trust the account of anyone about how they did things 20/30/40 years ago.

DM is very proud that she ‘taught me day from night,’ by leaving me to cry it out as soon as we got home from hospital.

I’m a dreadful sleeper - terrified. Of the dark as a child, terrible nightmares as a teen, insomnia etc.

Not sure if they’re linked to the CIO or the rest of her shitty parenting though

I only recently found out my mother would leave me to cry as a small baby. I don't know whether any of this is related but I have often have insomnia, fear of the dark and nightmares/stress dreams. I've also suffered with depression since about age 10, with varying degrees of severity throughout my life. Who knows what affect it really had? More research needs to be done I think.

I don't feel comfortable leaving a baby to cry it out, it's just not for me. My children were not left to cry and are all very good sleepers now they're older and not clingy or anything. An older child having a temper tantrum though, different matter.

I wasn’t sleep trained but my DH was. His sleeping is terrible he can only sleep in a dark room with no noise. When we go on holiday he really struggles with it not been his bed as it’s the only place he can get a proper nights sleep. His sister is the same and she was sleep trained as well. I wasn’t sleep trained and can sleep anywhere with noise and it doesn’t need to be completely silent. DSIL sleep trained her children and her oldest has to have the same bedtime routine every night or she will be up screaming, they had to leave a family party last weekend after the starter so not to disrupt her routine and she is 7. It might just be a coincidence but I do think children that are sleep trained struggle with sleep as an adult.

I was sleep trained and live with insomnia and sleep paralysis now. For 11 years I survived on about three hours sleep until I started Mirtazapine for depression which had the wonderful side affect of knocking me out and I gained three stone. I need earplugs and a mask before I can even contemplate trying to sleep.

I was sleep trained as were my siblings and DH and his siblings and our DC. I am from France and he is from Spain and in our experiences it is the norm.

I’m a 70s baby. My parents let us choose where we slept and I can sleep on a washing line now

My older children all co slept until they moved of their own accord and are fantastic sleepers now.

My 22 month old is still in our bed and, I think, trying to kill me with lack of sleep.

I was sleep trained from birth and have always slept very well. My mother says she can’t recall a single night I didn’t sleep through from about 2 weeks old. My youngest sibling is the only one of us that wasn’t sleep trained, even now she can’t get herself to sleep and often will be up most of the night and sleep the next day - she’s lost jobs over it.

I was born in the late 70s. I was put to sleep for the night downstairs in my pram as a baby. There was no heating upstairs and DM worried it was too cold. Apparently I was a 'good' baby and slept through from a 10pm feed from about 3 months. I was breastfed for about 6 months.

When I had my first DC, my mum was always encouraging me to leave him to 'settle himself'. This consisted of leaving him to cry for at least 10 mins, and I think was based on what she did with me (but apparently I didn't cry that much and usually went to sleep quickly)

As an adult I have occasional insomnia (3am wake-ups and unable to go back to sleep for an hour or so), but this is usually when I'm anxious about something particular. I've had episodes of clinical depression too.

My mum used CIO on my brother and me (as was typical at the time). Neither my brother nor I had any problems with sleep as youngsters. Since I've had kids things have got dodgy though!

There is, currently, no evidence that sleep training has a long-term negative impact. Most studies are poorly designed or are looking at something that is tangentially related and that is used to draw a different conclusion that may or may not be true. Sweeping generalizations that are not supported by the scientific evidence have been made by people with particular normative views of how children should be raised. The few studies with good methodology that look at outcomes down the line find no difference.

Of course, these are average differences. It may be that some people respond well to sleep training and some people respond poorly and that it averages out across a population but it isn't impactless for an individual.

Hmm, I’m not sure. Not exactly the same but I was born in the 70s and my mum told me the feeds were very regimented (I was breastfed). This sounds odd to me - I BFed mine on demand - but she said they were told not to feed between midnight and 6am - which is crazy! So I’d be up in the night crying from hunger, and they’d rock me to sleep or take me out in the pram to get me to sleep. It’s nuts!

@MissSingerbrains, this is interesting. My mum BF me but was told by the HV to stop all night feeds after 6 months so my mum basically had to do the same as yours. DM was recently trying to get me to do the same with 9 month old DS but will i fuck There's no way in hell I'm dealing with the nights sans boobs! To be fair to DM, she was told I'd end up obese if i was fed during the night after a certain age and she just assumed it was true.

@AgentCooper My mum also made me eat everything on my plate when I was growing up because she thought I was too skinny when in fact I was just tall for my age, and she’s now said she regrets that because now I’m conditioned that even when I’m full I keep eating until the plate is empty and I’m overweight.

I agree with @boomboomscousin that some techniques work for some people and not others and I was just unfortunate that the techniques my parents chose didn’t work for me but would have worked well for someone else.

Me and my brothers (triplets) conslept till we were 3. We were never left to cry and cuddled all the time. All amazing sleepers. My husband was neglected badly and he’s a terrible sleeper. He suffers badly with nightmares and can’t skeep alone.

No, my mum was an attachment parent before it was called that...

I’m a terrible sleeper, can’t fall asleep, wake up early - I’m always shattered.

I wasn't sleep trained. By all accounts I slept through from a week old

But I do have issues with sleeping without background noise or being in the house alone. I've put it down to never actually living alone. I'm from a large family so there was always usually someone up making noise when I went to bed.

Sure, 1960's left at the end of the garden to cry on my own. I sleep like a log. I'm pretty sure I have a memory of a spider biting my face though.

Apparently I was kind of sleep trained, I wasn't allowed to CIO, but mum and dad took turns at stopping each other coming up.

I have no memory of this and have always slept just fine ( have always been a night owl though!) I didn't do CC with any of mine, but felt pressure not to bring dd1 into bed with me, whereas I did with the next two. They all seem to sleep fine, the (14, 13 and 10)

I was sleep trained and sleep well.

DH was in NICU for 8 weeks so sort of sleep-trained by that. He apparently slept through the night as soon as they brought him home. He is a terrible sleeper.

Neither of mine are sleep trained. DD1 has generally slept well by herself, DD2 co-slept for years and still sometimes comes in now she's 6 - she isn't a great sleeper at all.

My mum breastfed me until I was 2 and we co-slept. I sleep very well now.

I briefly attempted CC with my older son - he was a terrible sleeper and didn’t sleep through until 3 and even then was unreliable.

However, after a few nights I went to check on him and he’s vomited in distress and it stopped from that night.

I finally decided how cruel it is when I moved house: on our first night we weren’t used to the new space and missed hearing our 1 year old crying. When we got to him he was an absolute wreck - hyperventilating, very distressed, soaking with tears and sweat. It took an hour to calm him down. It’s just not okay to leave anyone like that let alone a child.

I was born in 60's and left to go to sleep on my own , My two children the same.
We all sleep beautifully.

I was sleep trained as a baby and have no problem falling asleep anywhere. Light, dark, noisy or not.

Crying alone in my cot is probably my earliest memory. I can still clearly recall the overwhelming terror, and feelings of abandonment and helplessness. Makes me go cold just thinking about it.

Before we had kids, my best friend used to stay over with me if my husband was away so, yes, I'd say it's affected me as an adult, and I still put off going to bed even now that I'm in my forties.

I wasnt but 3 of my close cousins were. Dont know whether its linked but all 3 suffer badly from insomnia.

Sleep training does 'work', to an extent. But its incredibly damaging to the neurological pathways that are still developing in young babies. Babies left to cry it out are much much more likely to suffer from MH problems such as anxiety and depression and indeed sleeping disorders and night terrors.

Sleep training (the cry it out method) DOES NOT teach a baby to sleep. It teaches them to stop crying because no one will come to their aid. How depressing is that?