if you don't ever do any sleep training what happens?

[blushingmare]

Going through a bit of a bad patch with DS' sleep and pondering the dreaded sleep training. I felt forced into it with DD as was pregnant and under pressure to get her bedtime better with the imminent arrival of a newborn. But just wondered, if you've had a child who needs your presence to sleep - at bedtime and during the night - if you haven't done any sleep training at all then what has happened by the time they're 3 or 4?

I'm just wondering if encouraging them to sleep independently is easier once they can be bribed reasoned with.

Guess what! They eventually manage to go to sleep by themselves! Never sleep trained any of my three including nocturnal twins. Change your expectations. Read Kiss Me by Carlos Gonzalez.

I never did sleep training. They just grew out of needing cuddles or me, by about 3 years old.

I love this thread! It's making me feel so much better. My family make me feel like such a soft touch for being with my toddler til he falls asleep even though we now have another baby. But I like it, and we don't co-sleep although he does come into our bed for cuddles in the morning. And I have always worried we'd never have the guts to 'sleep train' but he'd always need us if we didn't. This thread makes me feel it's ok. And weirdly, for the first time tonight he rolled over after stories and said 'go downstairs now'...

I always think the right way is the way that works for mother and child.

Cuddle them while you can, My 13 year old is bigger than me and while we hug we can no longer really cuddle. Plus he smells of Lynx now and gone are the days when he was small and chubby and smelt of milk and baby shampoo. I know my 3 year old will be like that too one day, so I cherish the cuddles.

We have never sleep trained, we opted to Co sleep and they just gradually grew out of it.

Madthings are 16, 13, 11, 7 and just 5. The youngest dd will still at times come in with us but this is because she has glue ear and wakes with ear ache. It's not an issue she just hops into our bed. They have all grown out of it between the ages if 2-4 generally apart from if il/nightmare etc in which case they need comfort.

Belive me they grow up all too quickly and won't want to share a bed, hell you will be lucky if they will talk to you at times once they are teens.... Actually mine have been really lovely and pretty easy going but we do get the Kevin the teenager grunts at times :)

Thanks for all the responses. It seems like a mixed bag, as is all of parenting! But this has made me feel more confident about my natural inclination to not do too much and wait and see what happens. We coslept til he was about 15 months and then had a good few months of him doing well in his own room, before hitting this bad patch again. He won't sleep in my bed now - just insists that I sleep right next to his cot, but luckily we have a single bed slammed up next to his cot, so that is possible, although not always comfortable with my arm dangling through the cot bars.

The nights I can more or less cope with, but the thing that veers me more to the "I've got to do something about this" thoughts is the bedtime. It can just get really difficult with my older DD when I'm having to sit in with him to get him to sleep while she is waiting for me to come and put her to bed too. Makes bedtime stressful quite a lot. So I think it's either some kind of sleep training or I need to change their bedtime routines, but it's tricky when rarely DD will go to bed before DS.

We didn't sleep train DD, who was a fecking awful sleeper. She was about 18 months before she slept through the night. But by two she was doing so regularly, and by 3 she was going to bed happily enough at 7pm getting tucked in with a bedtime story and then left to settle herself to sleep till 7am. She's actually very good now, if she wakes up before her groclock has changed colour, she just lies quietly until it does.

Now we just need her little brother to do the same...

Depends on the kid. I didn't sleep train DD and she just started sleeping on her own, for twelve hours straight, around her first birthday. (Before that, three hours was her longest stretch. That year is a blur.)

My aunt and uncle never did sleep training with their DD and they sleep with her every night, either in their bed or hers. She cannot go on sleepovers or have them at her house. She will be ten in a few weeks.