You cio or your child wakes up forever

[Newsenmum]

Posting for traffic and a wide range of views. Never sleep trained my six year old. Hell and sleep deprivation for many, many years. He still needs cuddling to sleep and is in my bed the second he wakes. There are sen needs so maybe that’s part of it but loads of separation anxiety, despite me doing everything possible to stop that!
Nearly two year old needs feeding, cuddling to sleep. Wakes every hour when sees Im not there. Tried comforting her in cot, being there but shushing and other methods but just really upsets her.

I guess my question is, how on earth do you all do it? Every thread I see goes on and on about how demonic it is to let your child cry. What do you do then? Genuinely?

You ignore our weird British culture, accept that a baby/toddler/little kid wants his/her mum and stick a toddler bed in your bedroom until they are happy, secure and want to go in their own room. Take bedside table/other furniture out if needed. My kids are adults, this is what I did.

I sleep trained my first after starting to hallucinate (was found trying to BF a pillow at one point). I didn't have a choice as my MH was on the floor and I was categorically unsafe to be around a young child. It took 3 nights (well, 90 mins, then 45 mins then 10) and after that my DS would wave me goodnight from his cot, then thumb in and sleep. I trained my next two also and do not regret it.
You have to do what works for you and your child.

I co slept with all of mine I til they naturally went into their own beds. They were all sleeping through at around 2, 2 and a half years old, and when we co slept and they woke for a feed, I'd just get my boob out and fall back asleep. Worked brilliantly for us.

Probably doesn’t help you OP but in case anyone else reads this and believes in the ‘rod for your own back’ stuff - I did all the ‘wrong’ things with DS - co-slept until he was three, breastfed him to sleep at night and during the night sometimes etc. he is nearly 8 and has been an excellent sleeper since quite young. He’s off to sleep immediately every night and unless he is ill, I don’t hear a peep out of him until the morning.

I personally think you either get a bad sleeper or you don’t. I don’t think it’s caused by anything in particular. But do what you need to do to get some sleep. Parenting is hard enough as it is without doing it through the fog of sleep deprivation

Just to add, when he started in his own bed at three, my rule was as long as he falls asleep in his bed I don’t mind if he comes in to me in the night and sleeps the rest of the night with me. He naturally stopped that. For about a year until he was 4, I would lie on the floor next to his bed until he fell asleep and then quietly move out of his room. I was separated from his dad at that point and I remember his dad saying “ooh do you know we don’t need to lie by his bed anymore? You can just say goodnight and leave him?”
I didn’t believe him but tried it anyway. First time it worked and it made me laugh because I obviously spent much longer than necessary lying on his bedroom floor waiting for him to go to sleep. I often imagine him lying there and thinking “well I don’t know why you’re lying down there mummy but if it makes you happy I guess” 😂😂

I co-slept with all my DC.
Around 3yrs old I moved them to their own room. They would usually fall asleep in their own bed then climb out the cot and be back in my bed, usually before midnight.
What permanently made them stay in their bed was a bit more time and stone cold bribery.
I got a star chart and a gro-clock which I set to 2am (to shift colour from blue to yellow without the sound alarm of course). If DC managed to stay in their own bed for 5 consecutive nights until the yellow light came on (sticker on a calendar chart for each night) I would take them to their favourite charity shop to pick a toy from the £1 toy box they had.
Obviously, the time on the gro clock got amended every so often. I can't remember how long it took but it didn't take long and I remember it as a nice time for the kids and me.

Neither me nor anyone in my circle has ever done CIO or sleep training. All our school aged children now happily sleep on their own. DD went from cosleeping to needing us to get to sleep and coming into our bed when she woke to needing us to get to sleep at first but not needing us if she woke up in the night to being able to sleep independently with a guided meditation app on, and now sometimes falls asleep without the app.

Sleep is natural, you can't train it. You can only train them not to call for you when they need you.

OP's 6 yo will just take longer to get there due to the SEN.

For me, i couldn't bear to hear my child cry. It was like a primal thing, i just could not cope with it

He was a super high needs baby (reflux, allergies, eczema) who woke every hour until 18 months

He needed to nurse to settle, otherwise he'd cry until he vomited

I co slept and fed to sleep until 2.5, and fed when he woke up (very short feeds every few hour)

At 2.5 he was old enough to understand " No milk until morning" and he'd accept a cuddle at night time wake ups

Shortly after, he started to sleep through

Once i stopped nursing, at night, getting him to sleep initially, I'd lie there for a little bit and then say I needed a cuppa or quick wee and leave for a bit. He'd often just fall asleep then.

This naturally evolved to him falling asleep listening to a read-aloud story

So, no CIO, no specific plan, it just happened

Maybe not the best method, but what worked for us and what I felt he needed

What if they keep getting up and following you if you leave the room?

We tried controlled crying with our first but it really seemed to spark his anxiety which he still struggles with, even as an adult. We cuddled the others to sleep as a result.

My parents tell me they left me to cry in the early 80s as I "sounded cross not sad"... I've had trouble going to sleep since late primary school. As an adult I listen to sleep apps and find it difficult to sleep alone. I don't think going to sleep is a skill that can always just be learnt as a small child by being left alone.

i have co-slept since birth with both my kids, including together. Saved my sanity and they slept better too!

Pause method from a few weeks old plus a consistent routine from a few months. I’d seen what happens if you don’t do something early on (years of disturbed nights being normalised) and knew I didn’t want that for my family.

Simply paused for a few seconds if baby started to stir and observed what happens. About half the time she’d then show hunger signs so I’d lift and feed. The other half she’d fall back asleep, which meant she learnt to connect sleep cycles on her own. All feeds before 7am treated as a night waking (dark, no eye contact, no interaction, just feed), all daytime feeds fun, lively, talking, eye contact etc.

She’s never been left crying, always been responded to (but in an appropriate way). Has slept brilliantly since a few months old.

ND child, but I think the boundaries and expectations early on really helped.
Friends/relatives who are really struggling didn’t have consistent routines (often because of shift work or large extended families to visit so out of their control) or because they don’t seem to set boundaries.

You must have a very small circle. Let’s be honest, you have no idea if that’s true or not.

You’ve literally just described a form of sleep training after saying you never did it.

I don’t know if this is a method because I was a first time parent and I had no idea. I did this thing where I let him lie in bed with his bottle crying and stood with my hand gently on his chest. Then when he stopped crying and drank his milk I gave it a bit of time, and I’d lift my hand off his chest and stay bent over. And then I’d gradually stand up. And then that one step on a bit. And then another step and then another step and eventually I’d get out the door. It was hard for about two weeks because sometimes I have to do the process two or three times. But it worked like magic. I think the reassuring hand and just keeping him there so he knew that he was safe but he knew he wasn’t going anywhere worked.
I’m pretty hardcore though. I would’ve done that method for two months if I thought it would work. Some people can’t bear to hear their baby cry, but I was stood there with him with my hand gently on his chest. I just had to stick it out and then go downstairs and have a glass of wine.

Babies are not all the same!

I have not sleep trained any of my four.

Eldest: nightmare sleeper. Severe sleep apnoea, resulting in waking every 30 minutes or so. Operation to fix it not long after her 2nd birthday - amazing!!! I fed her to sleep until she was 2.5, then changed to singing/cuddling. Started to leave her to drop off just before she was 3 - did have a nightlight that slowly changed colour and gentle music playing. I never once left her to cry. She did cry for about 2 minutes the first night I didn't feed her to sleep, but thay was it. She used to wake up for a wee until she was 3.5, and we had a patch of nightmares when she was nearly 5, but other than that she's a great sleeper.

Twins: They had dummies. Amazing invention from my perspective! Kept them till their 4th birthday for bedtime. They did wake up and cry in the night for about 4 days after removing them, but were cuddled back to sleep. Only cried for nightmares/illness after that. (Do still have to wake the one with additional needs for a wee every flipping night though..... hope he eventually grows out of that!).

DD2: unicorn baby! Fed her to sleep, still doing so and she's coming up for 2. She wakes around 5am for another quick feed, and occasionally doesn't bother with that. She's just a very deep sleeper.

I've never sleep trained. I thought about it a few times (when the twins were a year old i thought about it a LOT) but never bothered. So no, I don't think most babies just cry forever until sleep trained. However, I think the age at which they stop varies widely. Children with additional needs it may be MUCH later than ideal. Sleep training may help it along.

If its what you need to do for your sanity/sleep, then there's lots of information out there. If you prefer not to, that's also OK - you wont harm them/prevent them from sleeping independently if you don't. You need to think about what you are most happy with and what works for your family circumstances.

I never trained her to do any of it. She decided what she was ready for when she was ready for it. I'm pretty sure I know what my friend's views are on bringing up babies and none of us were silly enough to think that leaving a crying child alone teaches them anything.

DS didn't sleep through the night until he was almost 3 and we put him in a full size single not a toddler bed. Never did CIO etc he was cuddled to sleep , then we'd sit in a chair next to his bed as he got older, once he got his big bed the chair had to go but I'd sit in the bedroom next door and go in if he needed me. He has a yoto player which helps. He's 6 now and sleeps 7:30-7:30.
I do think in your case it isn't as simple due to the SEN.

My ND stepson is 8 years old.

He cosleeps at his mums house, and doesn’t at ours. We stay with him until he falls asleep, and go back in for wake ups to resettle him, but nobody gets in anyone’s bed.

The first step was getting off his bed when we put him to bed. We sit either on the floor, or on a chair now. That’s his bed, we don’t need to be in or on it at bedtime. He knows it’s his bed, because that’s the message he’s been given.

I don’t really “get” how cosleeping helps separation anxiety. Surely it makes it worse, because it encourages children to believe they need their parents 24/7 when actually they could be independent if encouraged.

Various posters here are saying they won't need breastfed forever, as an adult people can sleep independently etc which of course is true but how long did they need help/support sleeping. My sister used to lie down beside her boys at bedtime, they would also come and sleep beside her in the middle of the night. Between the two kids I don't think her and her husband had a full night's sleep for 10 years. They would also have to give up half an hour to an hour of their evening to get their children to sleep. Maybe I'm selfish but I need my sleep and I need my evenings for my sanity. I didn't CIO per say but I just let my two cry/whinge a little and I'd go in and check on them periodically. They weren't been fed or rocked to sleep (though they did use a dummy) so they gradually independently fell asleep. They go to bed now with a story and a good night. It's absolutely fine to breast feed, co-sleep if you're happy to do it but I wanted a little bit of my life back and to enjoy a couple of hours to myself every evening.

My twins woke up every time I rolled over. Putting them in their own room made them sleep miles better.

We haven't done any formal sleep training but we have step by step encouraged more independent sleep. It's been an up and down process at times as my daughter as physical health problems that impact her sleep. When they flare up she needs more comfort to get to sleep then we have to work on getting her back to the point she was before. When she's doing ok we try to push her to be less reliant on us for sleep. We have tears but we are always there just slightly removed from where we were. For example sat next to her bed rather than lay in her bed.
She's just turned 5 and now nearly always sleeps through the night but still needs to in her room to fall asleep. There was a time when she only slept being cuddled by us but now we sit in the corner of her room and she goes to sleep in her bed.

At 14m, we were all getting absolutely hammered by colds and bugs. None of us sleeping, multiple wakings a night. And he was often only sleeping 40m during the day at nursery.

Sleep training consisted of pick up and put down. It lasted 25m the first night, half of which was being cuddled by my husband. The next night it took 5m and one visit. Night weaning done at the same time, one or two visits by my husband for a few nights.

Boom, done. He did occasionally wake when teething, and we went through a period of early mornings. But in spite of him sleeping properly, night and naps, happily going down (he actually said "happy" as we put him down this evening), drastically better health and better days, some would still characterize this as "horrible leaving to cry".

I don't subscribe to the idea that those 25m and one night undid all the other times we've come to him immediately - after all, he does still cry if he needs us.

Your not alone hun my 5 year old was a great sleeper untill she turned 5 i have no idea what changed and now she will not go to sleep without me or her dad .we have tried everything. I have my suspicions about sen needs there too.
Just remember what works for your family is what is best for you.
You will get there x