Hi teapot:
I know what you mean about if they only cry for a short time, it can't be damaging. I understand that some children don't cry for long periods of time and of course different parents have different definitions of what is long, no?
one way which i see it, and it was raised in the McKenna video and in the Kathy Dettwyler article below (based on McKenna's findings) is that long periods of solitary sleep is the desired outcome for parents. Sleep training is a method of achieving this. The side effect (can't think of a better word at the mo.) of extended solidary sleep is that the neurological system of the baby is conditioned into going into the 4th (and deepest) phase of sleep for long periods of time. When Mckenna looked at polysomnographic patterns of babies who were solitary (and bottlefed in many cases) sleepers from older research and compared them to the sleep patterns of cosleeping bfing babies and mothers, he found that they both rarely went into the 4th phase of sleep. because they are both easily aroused, should the baby experience apnea (which because their nervous system is still immature) during sleep, both mother and baby are more likely to be aroused by the lack of breathing. He is suggesting that it is during this 4th phase of sleep that SIDS may be occuring in babies who have been conditioned or learnt to go into deep sleeps before their nervous system is mature enough to always rouse from it.
Now the risk of your 10 mo old of having sids is small and it continues to diminish with time as she approaches a yr old. Sids however, is known to happen in 2yo though v. v. rarely. I am not trying to scare you, I am just passing on info I know.
The other thing which the Mckenna video raises is that touch and sound and smells are very important senses to us. He makes the analogy that baby monitors should be broadcasting our snoring to our babies rather than the other way around. All three of these sensory stimulations are deprived from a child who is not bedsharing or room sharing. There is another article I have read which states that when we are asleep, 80% of our brain is still at work and when we are dreaming, it is nearly 100% at work. So this is suggesting that there is a lot of communication going on under the radar while we sleep. It is a great article on sleep which appeared in the New Yorker and touches on sleep training, cosleeping and adult sleep.
What to me this says is that whether we are in the presence of our children at night or not, we are still defining what our relationships will be like while we are awake. I think one of Dettwyler's articles pointed out that thumbsucking, headbanging, having a comfort blanket or toy is unknown in most cultures where children are breastfed and roomshare/bedshare and that none of these activities are seen in higher primates in the wild - except for animals taht are raised by humans in zoos, for example.
Another piece of research finds that teenage boys who coslept as children were rated as better socially adjusted and more independent by their teachers - the children were all from American Forces parents who lived on the base so there was some sort of uniformity among the cohort.
I understand how powerful a draw it must be when you know a lot of people who have sleep trained and seem to have perfectly adjusted children. I have had a close friend tell me that i had to sleep train my then 16 mo old dd. One of her arguements were that well all her friends have done it, as had she. Yes, most children will on the whole turn out fine. There can be other factors at play however taht people may not agree with me where I think sleep training can play an part in the wider health and well being of a child. One theoretical example is that some children who have been expected to be more independent from an early age also had a higher incidence of depression. Now for me, I may be predisposed to depression so I will do all I can to avoid circumstances which can trigger it.
There was a thread here on MN a few months ago asking mental health workers specifically if they woudl sleep train, all except one said that they would never do it below 12 months and just one said over 12 months, if they felt they had to. To me, that speaks volumes. I have no idea however, why that thread has been deleted and wished I had saved a copy of it.
I have a suspicion it was started by someone who was trolling and didn't like the responses they got so it got 'reported'. I have had monumental back and forths on mn with a few posters wrt these topics.
Re the independence thing: a friend of mine put it this way: how can you sleep trained in order to make a child more independent. If they are not old enough to make a sandwich for themselves or wipe their own bottoms, then they can't be independent.
Anyway, I will probably leave my thoughts here. this is a monumental post and I suppose there is not much more I can share with you. If you look at the top of the page, just below the Mumsnet title the toolbar has an option called 'contact another talker' that is CAT.