Sleep training is bad for mental health AIBU?

[Katbum]

I’m starting to think you can trace the emergence of sleep training as a widespread practice in the 90s through the emergence and rise in young adult mental health crises from the 2010s or so on. AIBU? Is there longitudinal research on this?

I was certainly sleep trained in the 70s, if that means being put to bed and left there to sleep! No co sleeping and I've very few memories of getting into my parents bed unless sick

No

You would do better to look to how society has become more and more isolated and individualised, with too much focus on the self to the degree that everyone thinks everything is about them or focused on them and that is anxiety provoking and leaves people feeling out of control (contrary to how it might sound)

You don't think babies were ' sleep trained ' before the 90s?????

Do you really think sleep training was invented in the 90s? Current mental health issues are due to our self obsessed and social media obsessed society, paired with the pressures of modern life, cost of living crisis etc.

I think the emergence of the mainstream interweb / social media is a much more likely culprit.

No sleep training / no boundaries / no routine could just as easily be an issue too.

You think that before the 90s no one was sleep training?

They might not have called it sleep training, but my grandparents raising babies in the 1950s regularly put baby in a pram at the bottom of the garden to sleep, ignoring any crying that ensued. They certainly weren’t “contact napping”, they didn’t cosleep and they didn’t spend hours on elaborate sleep routines. They had six children, they didn’t have time!

I think the young adult mental health crisis is better traced to the state of the education system, the rapid rise in social media/mobile phones and never switching off, the financial crisis, the housing crisis and generally rising expectations of life and happiness.

Sleep training isn't new, babies throughout history were sleep trained.

I dunno though, chronic lack of sleep, having no time to yourself and I a fracturing relationship are also bad for mental health too

Too much screen time, a lack of local community/in-person interaction and time outdoors are the culprits.

I say that as a co-sleeping mum.

You think most families had the luxury of gentle parenting for the last few hundred years before the 90s🤣

Perhaps it's the opposite. The more recent child centred child rearing having the negative long term impact, rather than child simply slotting into life.

Eg babies being put in prams in the garden for hours in all weathers

I don't think sleep training has any impact either way but as a society we have been progressively moving away from sleep training well before the 90's.

It wasn't called sleep training in the 80s but I don't remember any of my friends doing co-sleeping and all the night time palaver expected of parents these days. Unless they were teething or ill, babies and toddlers were put to bed and left there. I remember the advice was to go in after a few minutes crying (no lights on) and stroke them back to sleep (no talking, no picking up). Once they were weaned (4 months back then), we only offered water if they kept up the crying.

I'm not saying we had it right - it was just different and from my perspective now, less stressful than what I read on here.

I think there are many factors behind the mental health crises in young people, but sleep training isn’t one of them.

It’s more like the lack of sleep training causing the mental health problems. I bet at least 50% of diagnosed SEN conditions would miraculously disappear if kids started getting a proper night’s sleep.

I didn’t sleep train my DC, I put them
in their cots awake and they went to sleep, there was no crying involved.
They stopped waking for a feed at 8 weeks and slept 12 hours at 12 weeks. No laying with them for hours getting them to go to sleep or up every hour or so.

I did quite a bit of research about sleep training (the 'controlled crying' method that I think you're probably referring to) and there's no evidence that it causes psychological damage. The advice is to wait until a baby is at least 6 months old. It took 3 nights to sleep train my DS (at 10 months) and since then he's always slept through the night without any problem. I've got many friends who decided not to sleep train and their now 7 year olds are still struggling to sleep and coming in to their bed every night. I find it difficult to function with broken sleep & could never cope with that!

I think this is more likely than sleep training being an issue, sleep training has been around forever.

The emergence of the internet and then social media are surely the biggest influences on generational differences though.

NO the current issues are down to lack of resilience and not making kids deal with small issues and always having to be happy etc. So when they get bigger they have no coping strategies. Then even a minor thing is a huge issue when they have no way of dealing with it.

If only all babies came with that setting!

If only all babies came with that setting!

I got lucky all three times.

That is quite a leap OP. I think quite a lot has happened in society that has had a bigger impact on the mental health of young people than whether or not they were left to cry for a short time as a baby.

Yeah, sleep away the autism.
😡

Frankly, that's not fair.

I got lucky once and I'll take it. She's making up for it as a threenager though.

Sleep training has been a thing much further back than the 90s.

This link seems biased but it mentions books from over 100 years ago.

intuitiveparentingdc.com/blog/history-of-sleep-training

I think it's the opposite actually. Parents refusing to put a baby into a routine, patting & shushing & co sleeping have made children far less resilient. I would imagine most of us born in the 70s & 80s were in a routine very early on & weaned at 3 months. I don't think Mums fretted as much either. I imagine the strict routine & early weaning avoided lots of sleepless nights! Or they just pushed the pram to the end of the garden where they couldn't hear it!