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?

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

Learning to tolerate uncomfortable feelings is part and parcel of life, by jumping in every single time your child feels the tiniest bit of upset you are not teaching them any skills in managing feelings. In fact you are teaching them that feeling upset/scared etc should be avoided as you don’t think they can cope with it.

Im not suggesting leaving kids to cry for hours but gentle reassurance that they are fine and safe and are around is all a 6 and 2yo should need.

Building resilience and some autonomy in children is really important otherwise they will be terrified without you which is not fair on anyone imo.

I never did CIO I hated the idea of it. I just followed a loose routine of bath, nurse and down in the cot. They all just slept well unless they were ill with something. they woke in the night once or twice and settled quickly when told to go back to sleep. The first child took the longest he'd shout me once a night till he was about 4 but I'd just say go to sleep and he'd go back to sleep. Other two never called me at night unless ill.
I'm sure I remember reading some baby book or something that said Sleeping through the night was considered a 5 or 6 hour stretch of sleep. Not the 8 we all would like.

Bullshit thread title. Never left my two year old to cry, she happily goes to sleep by herself now. She’s securely attached and happy.

That’s so sad. These ‘methods’ have done untold damage.

That poor little girl!

Really? I want my DD to know that she can always come to me or someone else she trusts when she's dealing with hard emotions. Teaching children to keep their feelings to themselves and deal with them alone doesn't have great outcomes.

Eldest has sen and at 7 needs melatonin and lots of I put to go to sleep including an iron clad routine we can't deviate from.

Youngest is 4, declares it bedtime, brushes teeth, gets pyjamas on story, song, cuddles in a goes to sleep. Likes company but can do it herself.

Noone was sleep trained

SEN will take longer than other kids. My SEN child was 7 before sleeping through, compared to my other child who was about 18months. It’s tough but you will get there eventually.

This is incredible but that has never worked wirh me!

Thank you for acknowledging sen is a whole different ball park haha.

From the age of 2, I moved them into their own bed and they start the night there. When they woke up, they'd come in with me. They would rarely wake up again. This meant max 1 wake-up per night for me. My 6 year old does not have SEN and is starting to not come through any more. I didn't bother with a cot as bedshared til 2 and then they could toddle in to me. The first couple of years were hard as I bedshared and breastfeeding frequently at night and also got insomnia with my first, sleep deprivation is so so hard and I felt it but it's now a distant memory.

And I still mostly sit with my kids til they fall asleep although occasionally I can say I need to work or do something and they are ok with that as they get older. I really value that connection time now as they grow bigger and more independent from me.

My FIL said they closed the door until morning unless the crying went on for too long. It wasn't called sleep training but that's exactly what it was. They didn't even a baby monitor back then.

He has 4 well adjusted children who all love him (and MIL when she was alive) so their bonding was not affected.

SEN is a totally different ballgame OP and your 2 year old may have them too.

We sleep trained at 5.5 months but it all went to shit when teething and illnesses started. We abandoned sleep training as he was teething or ill ALL THE TIME between 7-11months.

He's 12 months now and has suddenly decided to sleep through the night without any sleep training at all (he has 12 teeth and 2 molars which is a lot for his age so I think we just got teething done early in one big go).

So I think sleep training helps short term but long term they do whatever they want anyway.

Well that’s absolutely horrible. It can have all sorts of negative long term consequences on attachment etc but even if it doesn’t — like in this case — it does not justify leaving a baby to feel abandoned and alone in the dark. I could never do this. It would be going against all my natural instincts. Selfish.

Mine slept through reliably from four and five months. Stopped bf, own room, never ever ever came into our bed, they never even knew it was an option! Absolutely that was done for me. I needed that space and was going back to work. Also wasn’t afraid to leave them to whinge.
i honestly cannot remember ever being up and down with them at night after that, barring illness.
Midnight milky snuggles might suit some but nothing beats several undisturbed hours kip in your own bed.

Yes, because a bunch of books were published in the 1900s telling people to do that because it's inconvenient to have your workers tired from looking after their baby.

For centuries, humans knew that the way you care for a baby is to keep them close at all times, including at night.

Most of the world still does that.

This is 100% a mess of your own making, especially with the younger one. The older one I can’t comment on as I haven’t a child with SEN.

Nutritionally a child does not need feeding in the night past 9 months, anything else is a simply a comfort feed. You need to be firmer and drop the night feed for a start, then focus on them self settling. It’s so so short sighted to say it’s cruel to let them cry it out for a couple of nights but what’s crueler is not teaching your child basic skills like self settling that could cause problems into adulthood

Never once left my daughter to cry, coslept till 2, always stay with her till she falls asleep in the evening (still now at 5 - to be fair it takes no time at all) and will get up to her if she needs me (or DH will) in the night. Which is fairly often though we do get more undisturbed nights these days - that’s a recent thing.

I’ve been known to moan that Sarah Ockwell Smith and her ilk have ruined our bloody lives, I definitely wonder if we were too gentle. Though on balance I think she’s just a terrible sleeper - DH and I are crap sleepers who wake at the slightest thing and struggle to go back off, I need eye masks and black out blinds and to listen to certain podcasts or apps in order to drop off again. DH is so restless too. Guarantee we were both left to CIO from pretty young and clearly it didn’t teach us anything! I don’t actually think you can teach a baby to sleep - it’s nonsensical.

To all the PPs saying sleep training somehow “teaches” a child to sleep and without it they don’t “learn” to sleep - how in heck did hundreds of generations of humans manage to sleep before some male scientists and Instagram sleep consultants came along then 😂

Agree with this!

Or maybe parents have been horribly sleep deprived for centuries and resort to some kind of sleep training, without any books telling them to do that or without having a name for it.

Mumsnet is very anti sleep training but in real life most mums at my work and my mum & baby group have done some sort of sleep training (I know because it comes up in conversation when we're commiserating about our kids waking at 6am).

Not sleep train, let them develop naturally and bed share.

For most of history, the whole family slept in one room, so no, they didn't sleep train their babies.

Some breastfed babies do sleep through the night! So you don't always have to bedshare. I did at some parts but mostly didn't.

You’re very ignorant of history, aren’t you?