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?

Pissing myself at this. You know sleep training existed before the 90s, right? My MIL left DH to cry himself to sleep and he’s about the most stable well-adjusted person I know. Meanwhile I have anxiety and a billion hang-ups, and slept through happily from six weeks with never any need for my parents to do anything except pop me down sleepy but awake. I even used to burp myself!

There is longitudinal research and it shows no effect on child mental health from sleep training. It shows a beneficial effect on parents mental health.

Easy to find on Google scholar if you want to read it.

All the negative stuff is from Romanian orphanages - hardly comparable to a loving home environment

It makes you wonder how many comments on forums like this, conditioning people to believe that (1) children should never be disciplined (2) ‘contact napping’ is best for babies and (3) anyone who tells you otherwise is ‘toxic’ and should be ignored or banished, are actually written by the Therapy Industry. 85% of them, I would imagine.

The internet is a powerful tool and most people are pretty gullible.

Mental health issues largely due to screens and social media and too much traffic meaning kids can't play out

You are confusing causation and correlation. I think there is a rise in mental health diagnosis because we are much better and quicker at recognising mental health problems. And that’s from someone who chose not to sleep train.

I got lucky with the first and smugly assumed it was due to my excellent parenting instincts. My second one revealed to me that it had been purely pot luck! He woke screaming every 45 minutes for 6 months no matter what I did and I nearly died of exhaustion. Sleep trained him over 3 nights at 6 months and thereafter he woke only once or twice per night.

My DH's grandma visited the other day, and she was saying how she was told to put her son (my FIL) in the pram at the bottom of the garden for naps and just leave him there.

It wasn't called "sleep training" but it's no different to cry it out. And is far harsher than something like Ferber.

Just because it wasn't called sleep training, I think you're wrong if you think that everyone pre the 90s was cuddling their children to sleep and never leaving them to cry for a minute.

I believe sleep training was most prevalent in the 70s. You might want to compare that generation with the ones that came after it?

Try reading The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum, PhD.

She’s not even confusing correlation - parenting has become more attachment based since at least the 70s, not less. She’s just confused.

🤣 sleeping training was invented in the 90s. Hilarious. That’s maybe when someone invented the idea of checking in versus full cry it out?!

The only things we know for sure is that sleep is a basic human need and that babies and toddlers cry. It’s literally impossible to avoid them ever being upset, so IDK why some people get so weirdly fixated on bedtime. Mine spent a hell of a lot more time screaming in the car seat than it typically takes Ferber to work. Maybe someone study that 🤷‍♀️

I’d like to think we’re better at recognising and treating mental health issues now but honestly IDK. It’s definitely not the sleep training.

Sleep training goes back century’s, it’s not a modern thing. I suspect mental health issues derive from unsuitable agenda driven education, parental absence, too much screen time, social media dynamics, not enough nature and movement, pandemic chaos and the break in societal engagement (particularly difficult for those with adhd/PDA/autism who just about managed ok pre covid).

More likely connected to iPhone release date 2007…

Pre the 90s(ish) it was called parenting.

Lol. This is brilliant defensive work pps.

I don't think it's sleep training parentdata.org/is-there-a-best-method-for-sleep-training/

It could well be phone use / screens if that fits the timeline?

No one's being defensive. I didn't sleep train and I still think you're wrong! It's just a fact that sleep training used to be the norm, it just wasn't called that, it was called looking after a baby.

Agree @ColleenDonaghy

We didn't do any sort of crying it out (we did do other "training" like trying to do eat-activity-sleep, but I don't think that's what the Q is aimed at, so am not feeling defensive).

But I know my lovely mum would have let me and my siblings cry a bit (after checking our physical needs were met). I think it was usual in the 80s. That's why responsive parents now complain about older generations not understanding their methods

Sleep training does have negative effects on babies I believe, as I do agree with Erik Eriksons stages of personality/world view development in children. What he says just makes sense. The first stage an infant goes through is trust vs mistrust and not responding quickly and caringly to a child's cry teaches them that their needs will not be met. They eventually learn crying is futile. That leads to a view of the world where you will not be safe and cared for. Does it impact them throughout their lives? Sure I think so. Is it the cause of the incline of mental health issues lately. I don't think so.

I'd say the opposite, a lack of sleep training/good sleep hygiene is worsening things.

Tired children behave worse, struggle more to cope.

I was definitely sleep trained & im very resilient, my children both have been too.

Neither sleep training nor mental health issues are remotely new. They have both been around as long as humans have.

There are plenty of other modern things to actually be concerned by. Sleep training is not one of them.

Sleep training does not only mean cry it out.

It can include gradually reducing sleep props at an appropriate age to teach a child to fall asleep easily without being held/rocked/fed to sleep etc. It does usually mean accepting some cries as changes are made. It doesn't mean ignoring cries, but it means knowing and accepting for eg a 1 year old may resist change and cry to communicate that but you may gradually introduce the change anyway.

You may call it defensive. We call it fact. You are seeking self confirmation bias.

I wonder this too. I didn't particularly sleep train, but my eldest went from waking every two hours in our room to sleeping through most nights from the first night we moved her to her own room at 7 months. There was a huge change in her in the daytime too, she was so much sunnier.

Sleep is good and important, for all of us. I'm not convinced sleep training is a bad thing at all.

I think the extreme gentle parenting is more likely to lead to mental health problems because tired parents unable to cope and other adults and children having to deal with princes/princesses