Then take all other advice with a pinch of salt. Just follow your best instincts and do what seems right. Your child will be fine, plus you'll be more relaxed, you'll appreciate the time with them more. You'll have more time and emotional energy to understand and respond to how they are doing as well as how you and your partner are feeling, and your instincts will get better and better.
So much of the parenting advice I see dips into micromanaging and min/maxing to an almost paranoid degree. Just learn about what could kill them in the first year and avoid that. Really, six months and under is the true window for SIDS with freak occurrences. Definitely be on the lookout for any poisonous cleaning products While you’re at it and put them high off the ground.
The pro parents who did it all before you are super annoying. I’ve had to politely listen to questionable advice many times. I much prefer people like you who get it. You got to trust your instincts about your own kids. There is broad advice which applies to everyone but everyone’s kid is a little different from the norm as well and as a parent we know our kids better than anyone else.
A lot of modern, new wave parenting to me feels an awful lot like meddling in natural child development. Like too much of a good thing, helicopter parenting.
That came out way more depressing than I expected and I'm not sure what conclusion I was going to arrive at.
Perhaps they really were the best ways to get some kind of outcome like an aggressive man for fighting wars or protecting himself from violence or a hard worker able to tolerate tedium and not be too aspirational despite the personal emotional cost. Or perhaps even the emotional problems wouldn't exist if the rest of society was compatible with those ways?
I'm synthesizing here, but AFAICT a catatonic-like state is typical of small children in severe distress. (Anybody remember the Moth Radio Hour story about the man whose kid immediately went catatonic when they were surprised by burglars? IIRC, he was told this response was common of young children.) So if a baby suddenly inhales a large amount of water, they may immediately go from normal to non-responsive (possibly retaining muscle tone?), even though they're not yet physiologically drowning, and even though with lesser amounts of water they would normally cough and cry. This [lack of] behavior may be related, if indirectly, to the phenomenon of SIDS. An infant's physiology hasn't developed the various mechanisms to jump start respiration when something goes awry. (One unproven hypothesis behind SIDS is that an infant's breathing is partly moderated and even induced by their caretaker's breathing, such that if they can't hear, feel, or otherwise sense--some theories implicate carbon dioxide levels--another's breathing their own rhythm may be disrupted, or if disrupted less likely to resume. Thus co-sleeping may be better for infants, reducing SIDS risk, ceteris paribus--i.e. absent counter-indications, such as a parent who smokes or drinks.)
So with babies not only do you have to watch them to make sure they aren't presently, visibly drowning, you have to make sure (to some reasonable, mentally healthy degree) they couldn't possibly be drowning--i.e. they didn't or couldn't have inhaled water; that they're active, attentive, etc.
We attended an infant cpr class via zoom, learned nothing. We at least got the message about SIDS, but the lack of tribal knowledge in the first six weeks was pretty brutal as first-time parents.
For my third, they made us watch a series of videos on a range of topics over about 2 hours, which made me think "Yes, of course, this should be the absolute minimum required for a new parent".
We had great parenting lessons, and more importantly, got a phone number "if you have any question or problem, call us".
My wife had a problem breastfeeding: it hurt her, a lot. She asked the nurse what to do, and the nurse was like "dunno, happens to many mothers, use a formula if the problem persists". We used that phone number instead, a lady came to us "show me how you feed the baby... ah, I see, the baby is under a wrong angle, here is how you should do it instead". Problem solved. Lucky us, but less lucky all the mothers who asked the same nurse, received the same answer, and didn't have a friend on the phone. (It also makes me wonder about the utter lack of curiosity with some people. Like, the nurse probably keeps getting the same question regularly for years, and she can't even, dunno, use google, or ask a colleague?)
I recommend trying a child carrier with a little baby. Not the giant type where you wear a huge metallic construction with the seat for the baby, but the ones made from cloth, where your child is on your body, vertically, facing you. -- You can walk around your house, carrying your child with you, and both of your hands are free. You can walk outside in winter, and don't have to worry whether your child is sufficiently dressed. You feel your child's heatbeat and breath, so you don't worry about SIDS. When the child doesn't want to sleep, you can take a walk outside, and maybe read a book. (Then the tricky part is removing the child from the carrier without waking it up. I learned to lay down on my back, unfasten and open the carrier, roll over and leave the child on the bed; still only about 50% success rate.)
Yes, you can use absolute qualifiers like "never" and "always" to stupid proof general advice to a greater extent than you can with phrases like "common sense" and "where reasonable" but that doesn't automatically make the advice any more useful..
I'm perfectly fine with the size of the drowning risk that comes with spending ~1min removing something from the oven when the timer goes off and other reasonable allowances like that. Of course I'm not gonna stop and watch TV with an infant in the sink. And if traffic's going 85 I'm going 85 but I won't be the first person going 85.
Not everyone knows that it takes 20 seconds for a baby to drown in a bathtub.
> I'm perfectly fine with the size of the drowning risk that comes with spending ~1min removing something from the oven when the timer goes off
Completely making up numbers here, say you do this for every 20-minute bath, your child bathes 1x/day, and they fall over in such a way that they might drown were you not there once every 10000 baths. Doing the math... 5% chance of being absent at the critical moment * 1/10000 baths * 365 baths/year = 0.18% chance of death in first year of life.
You may be willing to take that risk, but given the 4 million infants born each year in the US, that would be 7,300 infant deaths from drowning in the bathtub annually -- so as a societal rule, saving 7,300 infants a year seems worth the use of the word "never".
The actual number of deaths attributed to bathtub drowning each year is much lower; I'm glad the vast majority of parents appear to take "never" to heart.
When you say "the vast majority of parents appear to take 'never' to heart" I can't help but suspect that missing factor is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
If you don't perceive of a 1-minute absence as a problem, presumably you are much more likely to step out of the bathroom.
Babies can be washed in sinks, with the drain open and the water running. (don't let them kick the water temperature control though) Babies can be washed in a normal shower, held in the arms of a parent.
Seatbelts... yes. Choking first aid... yes.
Healthy eating, talking to them frequently... probably?
Lots of sunlight and fresh air... maybe?
Regardless, I perceived the emotional bonding with the mother & father to far outweigh anything else and so we shared our bed with our children until they were perhaps 1 year old or so. And even after, they moved into their own small bed just a foot from ours in the same bedroom for another year or so.
I guess that was my "instinct". Although we received a crib as a gift, it just sat in another room, empty.
Consequently, exhausted parents accidentally fall asleep on the couch holding their babies when they would have been better off just lying down and napping.
This seems unlikely. 10% of babies share a sleep surface with parents, up from 6.5% in 1993, yet SIDS deaths are down over the same period:
https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20180212/baby-suffocation-de...
https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20180212/baby-suffocation-de....
[0] https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/research/science/backsleep...
I'm fairly certain this isn't true. I would expect there to be a lot more flat-headed babies and people around. I don't think I've ever seen one. Not telling you what to do, just pointing out I don't think that part is factual.
And if you think my anecdote is enough, Google will provide you with plenty, e.g., [0].
[0] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/plagiocephaly-brachycephaly/
Not a study, but I believe this was the article that got her started down the rabbit hole of looking more deeply into this research. We were both surprised to learn that SIDS is significantly more prevalent in western societies that do not have cultures of co-sleeping, and that SIDS primarily occurs when babies are alone. I am struggling to find the article that discusses the breathing component directly, but this touches on it with reference to poor neurological development of human babies and associated weak physiological regulation.
This was the a ha! moment:
“SIDS-deaths are a phenomenon of infant sleep in Western post-industrialized cultures, normally occurring while infants are alone. … Immigrant groups who maintain their ‘traditional’ sleep ecology in ‘Western’ environments typically exhibit substantially lower SIDS rates than the host community.”
This UNICEF page compiled good research on co-sleeping too. [1]
[0] https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2014/1/146/1846850
[1] https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/news-and-research/bab...
I think sleeping with or not with your kid, is a much more complicated question and probably one where your instinct is right. After all, with a baby in the bed you can't help but be aware of its comfort, needs and amount of movement.
If you don't fall into the "bad parent" category you'll be fine.
We used a baby motion sleep mat for peace of mind for SIDS, the thing was so sensitive it could detect the breathing, but if the baby moved off the mat even a little bit it sounded an alarm.
Unless a baby has colic, and we used baby dophilus for all our children to avoid any stomach or intestine issues, new babies aren't very fussy sleepers. The fussy sleeping usually happens when they get older, but by then they were accustomed to sleeping in their crib.
We never once had a crying fit, we also never forced them to sleep, sometimes, just like adults they aren't ready for sleep, those moments were few and far between and we just surfed through those times.
By 6 months all 3 children were sleeping through the nigh.
Every soon to be new parent we coached on this method had the same success, probably 40+ babies.
It is a foot attachment that basically watches heart rate and oxygen level all night, and freaks out if something is wrong.
Only a very few accidental freakouts (like kicked off foot), but gave a lot of peace of mind. Not cheap but seems pretty solid engineering wise.
What does have a strong scientific basis: the importance of sleep hygiene.
Children don't need perfection or goofy hunter-gatherer hacks from their parents. They need love, support, and a measure of reasonable consistency[1] from them.
[1] This is why having alcoholic parents can be so disruptive... children get a different experience sober vs intoxicated.
This is misleading. You're correct that there is not conclusive scientific evidence either way, but there are decent studies that support the cortisol theory. Not necessarily that it will "damage their brains", but that cortisol levels spike during sleep training and remain elevated even after the baby learns to stop crying at night. We know that, in general, elevated cortisol levels are bad for humans.
The studies that claim to support sleep training are all terrible, unless there are new ones I haven't seen. The most-cited ones use self-reports from the parents themselves to measure "wellbeing" of the infant, which is plainly ridiculous.
I'm glad you feel it worked out well for you. I honestly hope it doesn't cause problems, because it's very widespread. Based on our reading of the available evidence, we weren't willing to take the risk. Our lives certainly would be easier if we reached the opposite conclusion.
You claim to be doing a lot of "research" in other posts but also drawing on your "experience" -- "sleep training" is not "cry it out", and in fact modern sleep training is explicitly about telling your child that you ARE going to respond to distress (and in fact, you do, at time intervals) but that being alone in a room at night time when it's time to sleep need not be cause for distress.
Whether it works that way is a separate question, but it is not a "euphemism".
Even assuming it is the case that cortisol spikes are long-term harmful (though it's unclear that sleep training causes a disproportionate amount of this), the balance of harm from sleep deprived parents to cortisol spikes from sleep training is also not obviously in favor of one over the other.
If we structured our society so that parents had more support when their kids are very young, we would not have to make these tradeoffs in quite the same way, which is the ultimate point of this piece.
> [Quoting another of your posts] > Like anything else in life, you can do a good job or a bad job at being a parent. If you're prioritizing your own convenience or ego or career over the wellbeing of your child, then you're a bad parent.
Sure, some people are like this, but few, and fewer still make a conscious choice here. Your consistent shaming in this thread of straw man parents who are prioritizing work over some critical aspect of their children's wellbeing, without recognizing the hardcore tradeoffs involved in "Western" society child raising, is unlikely to change anyone's mind.
Parenting in American society is damn hard. It's damn hard even without zealots who are so sure that they know the right way to do certain things -- that's why you're being downvoted, not because people disagree that you should "step up" and do what you can for your kids, but because they agree, and you're shaming them for it.
"Sleep training", in all its forms, means ignoring your crying infant for significant periods of time until they get used to the idea that no one is coming and stop crying. Whether it's done in one night or dragged out over a longer period of time, the result is the same, and the method is more-or-less the same. But we don't call it "ignoring a crying baby training" do we? No, we made a nice and harmless-sounding name for it. There are even consultants you can pay who will tell you it's perfectly fine so you don't have to feel an ounce of guilt.
Fyi, I got plenty of upvotes too.
That said, given that you merely restated what you previously claimed without addressing anything I said except for the word "euphemism" -- and to be clear, I address the "ignoring" part in my post, which you ignore -- I really don't understand what you think you are contributing to this conversation.
Your opinion on sleep training is clear. Many people agree with you. And...what? Therefore, sleep training is bad and people who try it should be ashamed? Frankly that just doesn't follow.
Well, that's where I disagree. I think they are functionally equivalent.
> I address the "ignoring" part in my post
You address it by claiming that sleep training doesn't mean ignoring a crying baby. If there are sleep training methods that don't involve this, I doubt they would work with most kids. Realistically, if you are committed to sleep training, you're going to have to ignore some crying unless you have a really mellow baby.
> sleep training is bad and people who try it should be ashamed
Well, yeah. I get why people do it, but I think it's very likely to be damaging to our kids and our society. So I'd rather that people stop doing it. I know that plenty of folks have already drunk the kool-aid and are unlikely to be convinced (doing so would likely mean confronting some uncomfortable feelings). But there are sure to be brand new parents or soon-to-be parents reading this thread, and I'm hoping to convince some of them that there's a better way.
Crying is pretty much the only consistent part of infancy, and if "crying for hours until they fall asleep" and "crying for 10 minutes at a time with parental reassurance" are both equivalent in the "ignoring a crying baby" category, then I'm not sure how one would ever handle a tantrum or meltdown.
When a toddler wants a cookie and is crying for it, what to do? The only way to stop the crying is a cookie, but clearly giving the toddler all the cookies is not what's best for them.
A child might cry and not get what they want, but still be having the better long-term outcome.
> But there are sure to be brand new parents or soon-to-be parents reading this thread, and I'm hoping to convince some of them that there's a better way.
Yes, I absolutely hope there are new or soon-to-be parents reading this, but in my experience offering shame without offering an alternative, compassion, or evidence supporting the belief doesn't cause behavioral change, but does cause stress.
May I suggest that you lead with compassion, sources for research, and alternatives, if what you desire is behavioral change? In my experience, parent shaming often comes from people who believe that they have a duty to convince others of their personal beliefs but don't offer evidence to support its broad application beyond "common sense" (not you, others in this thread) or unsourced claims to "research" -- and who try to convince others instead by implying that parents who do anything differently have bad motives, or don't care about their kids, or haven't done enough research, are uninformed, or have some other character flaw that is the reason they're doing it "wrong".
To parents reading this thread: please recognize that there may be shockingly many people in your lives -- including some total strangers! -- who will try to shame you into parenting a particular way, and, as hard as it is to do this because you're already exhausted and doubting yourself, PLEASE ignore these people. Their crusade sheds more light on their personalities than on your parenting. Listen instead to the people you trust, who are willing to listen to you and engage in dialog, and who have your own interest at heart.
Tantrums, meltdowns, or a kid crying because they want something are completely different, or they should be. The best response, based on the reading I've done and my own experience, is neither to ignore them nor to give in, but to empathize with them and comfort them, then (if they can understand you yet) calmly explain what the rules are, why they can't have a cookie now, etc.
The issue isn't the crying itself. They might cry for 10 minutes about the cookie, but you'll be holding them and engaging with them, not ignoring them or leaving them alone.
My purpose isn't to shame anyone. I just gave my opinion on some practices and attitudes I believe are harmful. I think you and others are reading that in because if I'm right, then maybe you'd feel some shame for doing things the way you did. It's a touchy subject that can provoke strong emotions. I don't personally hold it against anyone or think less of them though. It's not easy and everyone makes mistakes. I've made tons.
The research is easy to google. There's really not that much of it. Anyone can be up to speed on it in a few hours, probably. You're taking issue with my characterization of it, but you don't cite anything yourself, so /shrug. I've made some fairly specific claims, so feel free to prove me wrong if you can.
I more or less agree with your last paragraph. If you don't do sleep training, lots of people, likely including your pediatrician if you live in the US, will try to push you into doing so, so that cuts both ways. But I would argue that you shouldn't uncritically listen to any other people, even people you trust. People can be lovely and trustworthy but have terribly misinformed ideas about parenting. Instead, take the time to educate yourself. Keep an open mind and form your own conclusions. It's worth spending some time on.
This is exactly the kind of "common sense reasoning" put-down that makes parenting so challenging.
Do you actually know -- I mean, have actual evidence of harm? Obviously it "sounds idiotic". But bloodletting to reduce headaches also makes "common sense" -- or at least did pre-modern medicine.
The critical part here is that sleep training does not happen in the absence of other effects. If the alternative is heavily sleep-deprived parents, is a few nights of distressed sleeping worse than 3 extra months of extremely exhausted parents? To me this is much less obvious.
That would include agriculture, urbanism, clothing, and living outside of Africa. Are you fighting those too?
Times change, the world changes, our physiological processes are not in sync with our current lives. We have tons of hangovers from our biological past that we suppress for modern society to function. Whether that's good or not is an open question, but unless you plan to raise your kids in a small-group tribal culture on the savannah, you will be deviating from what we have adapted to.
Oh, and: > And as the evidence comes in for sleep training or separating from your child at night, as it did for artificial milk, you will probably adopt the same psychological defence
The evidence for artificial milk is quite mixed, actually, but the harm of making mothers who can't breastfeed feel absolutely ashamed and guilty is very real.
It's not about "common sense" -- it's about making tradeoffs, and everybody has to. For some, that's sleep training, for others, formula, for others, giving up a career to care for children, etc.
It's one thing to believe people are making a mistake in how they raise their children. It's another thing entirely to shame them, or assume ill-intent, incompetence, or cognitive dissonance as the reason they make different choices than you.
There's way too much lack of empathy in this thread, from people who are sure they know better -- and the harm from that is very, very real.
If you go to a psychologist with a pretty broad spectrum of issues it turns out a lot of the problems are created when you are very little. An unsafe bond is hard to quantify and by stubbornly demanding that it is quantified I think it is more clear that you don't want to entertain the idea than that you are actually skeptical.
You already know you value the parents more than the child, and you more or less know what cannot be provided by the other party. So that's what you demand, and then when things turn out as you know they will you point at it and say "See? You're being unreasonable". That's bad-faith arguing.
That said, I’m aware of work showing that a poor attachment is harmful, you are making the leap from sleep training to poor attachment, and then claiming that, because I’m requesting evidence that is hard to provide, that I’m arguing in bad faith and not interested in the truth.
Your attitude in this post, as has been repeated ad nauseam elsewhere by many others in this thread, implies that if one doesn’t accept “common sense” explanations of harm and question what others consider obvious, that one must have already made up my mind. I have not, and I don’t consider common sense arguments very strong.
In your post, you are making assumptions about my beliefs, questioning my motives, implying that I’m requesting evidence merely as a dissembling technique, and putting words in my mouth. That is bad-faith arguing.
People use your exact, extreme language to justify every other superstition they have about raising their kids.
Combining those factors allows for a much more nuanced approach than a simple, “crying == trauma” boolean.
Parents can easily get enough sleep as well. It's called "sleeping when the baby sleeps". Infants sleep like 15 hours per day, so it isn't hard. You just can't conform to any kind of a schedule--that's the tradeoff, not getting enough sleep.
"Sleep when the baby sleeps" sounds good but is not really how sleep works; sleep quality is very sensitive to cycles and time of day (it's also a very personal thing, with big differences between individuals). It also doesn't work at all for working parents. And even in households where one parent doesn't work, the other one does, and it is important for both parents to be rested.
Of course you can pull this off, I'm not saying anybody is going to die or anything, I'm saying there are very real advantages to more predictable and consistent sleep. For us, we were very hesitant (or maybe just lazy) about sleep training, but our ~15 month old was noticeably happier after being able to sleep through the night.
I did this with a puppy (when they're little they'll wake you every 90m at night) instead of putting her into a cage and once you figure it out it's really not that much worse than sleeping through the night. Perhaps doing that for a few months is measurably different from doing it for a year or so, but I seriously doubt it as chronic sleep deprivation (which I would have had if I had not adapted to the schedule) starts being very harmful very obviously quite a bit before "a few months".
Like anything else in life, you can do a good job or a bad job at being a parent. If you're prioritizing your own convenience or ego or career over the wellbeing of your child, then you're a bad parent. Don't rationalize it with clichés like "love is all that matters" or search for online echo chambers of fellow shitty parents who will soothe your cognitive dissonance while your kid suffers. Make whatever sacrifices you need to, put the time in, and do better.
I'm not downvoting you but I strongly disagree. You have an obligation to do an adequate job of this. I think it's also important not to become a slave to the idea that you must always do more because it's "supposed to be hard." Doing a great job of raising kids doesn't have to be a grueling slog, and I suspect that people who think it does aren't doing as good a job as they think they are.
I don't think it necessarily has to be hard, but people often make it harder than it needs to be because they're unwilling to make personal sacrifices.
I just don't think we should give people participation trophies. If you're not doing a good job and you know it, you should face reality and fix it, not be told "there's no right or wrong way".
For what it's worth, I definitely agree with gdubs point of view. I'm less clear on what you're saying though. When you say "unwilling to make personal sacrifices", does that mean unwilling to ever make any sacrifice? Or does it mean unwilling to make some under certain circumstances?
In my experience, my kids' sleep seemed to actually improve when engaging in the "extreme" practice of sleep training. That seems consistent with gdubs. How then, am I not "doing my best"?
I understand why people do sleep training. We were on the verge of it ourselves until we learned more and were confronted by how hideously wrong it felt on an emotional level. Everyone in the US pushes you toward it, particularly pediatricians. But I think that most parents know deep down that it's wrong, and that they are doing it for themselves, not the baby.
I don't think we should pretend it's all the same. These things matter.
I'm definitely not in that group. I have no such deep knowledge of it being wrong. I really believe it's actually better for some kids. Like mine for instance. It's not a compromise for me.
I believe OP is saying not to worry about what other people are telling you about how to parent. I didn't infer any relativism from the post.
What I'm reading from you is that sleep training is bad for kids. And that its practitioners just aren't trying hard enough. But I really believe that for some (like my family) it's actually better.
So by the same token, just because you're suffering more doesn't mean you're doing a better job.
I still think you have to be misinformed or deliberately ignorant of the evidence that's out there to hold this position though. I also think the reason people don't dig deeper is that they, perhaps unconsciously, would rather not discover something that is uncomfortable and inconvenient for them.
> I don't think it necessarily has to be hard
That's not necessarily coming through in your message, for what it's worth.
In my opinion, sleep training generally falls in this category. People do it because they're exasperated and neither parent is willing to do something hard--like live with sleep deprivation or put a career on hold. They generally don't do it because they genuinely believe it's best for the baby, though they will try to come up with rationalizations to that effect after the fact.
I think this is where you're going wrong. You're putting motivations into other people's heads based on having prejudged them. I certainly did sleep training with my kids because getting them on a regular sleep schedule is good for EVERYONE, not just me. Ever since, we have been extremely consistent about bedtimes, and now we have kids that have no problem going to bed at the appropriate time so they're not exhausted when they have to get up for school in the morning. Yes, it made/makes life easier for me as well, but the root reason to do it is a firm belief that establishing good sleep habits is good for them.
Counter data point. My wife is Argentinian.
I'd say the values you see in her family primarily is "love does come first" and strict boundaries on kids. E.g. the adults are talking, go away.
When I compare that to my own nieces and nephews, they have little boundaries, are quite lethargic and can be quite arrogant. Yet their parents would all describe themselves by your standards.
We also tend to put our elderly in homes, an idea that is abhorrant to my wife.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is ideals are nice. But it's purely theory, mostly to serve your own sensibilities.
If your parenting philosophy is not based on any research or learning about what's best for your child, but instead on what's easiest and most convenient for you, then you're probably doing it wrong. That doesn't mean you can't set boundaries for kids who are old enough to understand them.
I think the way we discard our elderly is closely tied to our self-absorbed approach to parenting. If you don't put in the time and are unwilling to make sacrifices for your kids, you shouldn't expect them to be there for you when you need it.
This post mentions a few of the main ones (I'm not vouching for the post's content): https://www.laleche.org.uk/letting-babies-cry-facts-behind-s...
Just raise your kids with love and patience, don't listen to armchair child psychiatrists.
You're the one advocating for an approach that is unnatural, brand new in human (and primate) history, and that causes both babies and parents visceral emotional distress. If I'm wrong about the research, why can't you prove it?
This reads like an expectation mindset that with high probability will end up hurting you, your kid and your relationship. Somewhere here belongs the put-oxygen-mask-on-yourself-first metaphor
But this comment makes me think of what is more likely familiar to members of this forum, where parents use their children to serve their own ego, trying to do everything to yield the best "Success" for their child where success is defined by the parent. For so many of us (professionals in the tech industry), the "wellbeing of your child" is not really a question--we know we'll be able to provide food, shelter, etc. People will say they do other things for the "wellbeing" but what they really mean is living out their own failed life goals by putting that baggage on their kid.
So yeah, you got downvoted. It's possible you meant to make a more sympathetic point, but my first impression is that the comment espouses an actively harmful idea about the relation between parent and a child.
Mental health, substance abuse, and suicide statistics, including among the middle and upper classes, would seem to strongly indicate otherwise.
> It's possible you meant to make a more sympathetic point, but my first impression is that the comment espouses an actively harmful idea about the relation between parent and a child.
So "try hard, make sacrifices, and do your best" is now considered problematic? The relativism in this mindset is absurd. Nobody here would claim that there's no right or wrong way to design a distributed system, or that there are no right or wrong ideas about religion, but we have to pretend it's the case with parenting so we don't hurt anyone's feelings?
EDIT: And best-efforts at laying out everything for your kid are more than potentially-wasted energy. It's smothering, controlling behavior of someone who should have the right to live and make their own choices and mistakes.
Throwing your hands up because something is hard and there are no obvious answers is not a recipe for doing a good job at... anything.
GP is trying to survive in the world in which they find themselves. Will sniping some guilt at them summon up some hidden parenting strength?
The problem I have with this attitude is the pronoun. If you have some standards, great but please try to keep them to yourself. There's a lot of toxic "you should do this, you should be like that" type of talk in parenting circles, a lot of which is frankly condescending and non-actionable and add a lot of unnecessary stress, especially for insecure people.
People like to armchair-coach about what a parent ought to be doing, while completely ignoring that the parent's emotional well-being is a pretty big component in a healthy relationship w/ their kids.
This is exactly why others are saying to ignore unsolicited advice: because a lot of it isn't actually advice.
I understand that this is a sensitive subject, but there are people reading this thread who are about to become parents, and they need to know the truth.
No offense, but that's still kinda condescending. I have 2 kids myself but I don't go around preaching. Stuff like post partum depression, pre-existing chronic conditions, overbearing grandparents, domestic abuse, etc are all real things and you and I are neither psychologists, pediatricians, nor social workers so best to leave the advice giving to licensed professionals.
The "licensed professionals" I've talked with about this, like my kid's pediatrician, gave me terrible advice and were either ignorant of the research that's been done, or grossly distorted it to fit their bias.
I mean, parenting being hard is neither here or there. You said it is "hard" yourself. There are parents that think parenting is wonderful and can't see themselves do anything but raising kids.
> If I'm doing something harmful to my child, I want to know about it.
That's great, and it's exactly what I meant when I said I took issue w/ the "you" pronoun: wanting better for oneself is very very different than telling others what ought to be what.
Medical professionals are known to make recommendations based on probabilistic heuristics (i.e. 95% of cases with certain circumstances fall into the same bucket so they usually assume said bucket) and this is why celebrity doctors like Dr Mike say that it's important to build rapport and have an open dialogue with the physician, armed with all the knowledge you are able/willing to muster yourself.
The thing w/ online advice is that people seeking help on the internet are often already very apprehensive and vulnerable and having a flood of strangers on high horses passing judgment doesn't necessarily help. The irony is that if we're in "I did my research and know better than professionals" territory, then the problem is that everyone and their mothers also claim to have done "research" too and "how dare they question my self-acclaimed expert authority", and that type of thread derails real fast.
Many of these parents are well-meaning but are in fact woefully underprepared to effectively provide help that is clear cut among medical professionals (e.g. dealing w/ a fever), and they often are eager to offer quick takes on topics where the research is mixed, non-existent, poorly done and/or where it doesn't really really matter (stuff like optimization advice for parents worrying about late blooming in development milestones like potty training). And then there's topics like spanking, where it's pitchforks galore, and the signal-to-noise ratio is basically zero.
But, ultimately, the experts are divided on this issue, and the research is available for anyone to look into on their own. I gave my interpretation. Anyone else is free to give theirs. People can make up their own minds.
My experience is that it’s usually the sleep training people who handwave away the research, relying instead on appeals to convention (in the US) or emotional lectures about “shaming” the poor, helpless parents. But again, people can decide for themselves.
Also, for the record, I’m in the group that loves being a parent. It’s my favorite thing in the world and brings me joy every single day. It has been hard at times, but that never reduced my enjoyment.
Sounds like you have no clue. Try looking after 3 babies then come back an talk to us.
IMO, you are coming across as someone who views themselves as morally superior and so feels entitled to try to control others via shaming them. This is probably not who you are in real life. But IMO this is the major reason why you have been so consistently downvoted in this thread, it is not mere disagreement on the sleep issue. Even if the evidence is easy to Google, linking to it and basing your argument on that would have gone a lot farther.
If you are sincere about taking the hard road (which I have no reason to doubt), I would do some self reflection about why your communication style has not been effective here.
I definitely don’t see myself as morally superior as a person—far from it. But on this topic, yes: I believe that there are some things people do, like sleep training or putting their career ahead of their kids, that are morally wrong and psychologically damaging. That’s why I’m taking the time to post.
I don’t view downvotes as any indication of comment quality on controversial issues. They generally just reflect the tribal belief breakdown of the community. And anyway, I got as many upvotes as downvotes across all my comments itt—probably like 100 of each based on the swings up and down I saw (no way to know for sure). So it appears HN, or the portion with any opinion on these matters, is more or less evenly divided.
> it’s not like I was throwing out insults
> I don’t view downvotes as any indication of comment quality
I am not saying you are being downvoted because people feel shame, I said you are downvoted because you are shaming them. You are accusing others of knowingly harming their kids, because they don't care about them as much as you do.
I don't think this is fundamentally different from an insult in its role in a conversation, and in fact most people would find this incredibly insulting. Insults and shaming/humiliation are attempts to change people's behavior by punishing them or threatening to, but they don't work for convincing them of the correctness of your position. If you are in a position of power over someone you can control their behavior with threats while they still feel you are in the wrong, but of course if it's too often you may end up resented tremendously.
In this conversation you seem to be presupposing that deep down, most people view you as correct already and so don't need to be persuaded, only shamed into the right direction. I think in most things in life this is a risky assumption.
You’re the one that keeps using the word “shame”. That was not my purpose. I responded to the implication that there can be no good or bad parenting practices as long as one parents with love. I think that is wrong, and dangerously so. In the past, similar arguments were used to justify physical abuse.
Sleep training is very difficult for most people to do emotionally. There is a natural visceral reaction against it, and feelings of guilt are ubiquitous. That’s my basis for thinking that people already have a feeling it’s wrong, not intellectual arrogance.
I don’t think people end up doing these things because they “don’t care” about their kids—again, those are your words, not mine. It’s more likely that they are being misled and/or suppressing uncomfortable feelings. They might be going along with what a partner wants to do or emulating other parents they know. Or maybe they’ve never been presented with a clear argument against it. There are a million potential reasons.
One thing to note about your argumentation style here is that you didn't merely question their morality. You assumed that deep-down, they actually agree with you but were acting immorally anyway, and you continued from there. The news flash is that no, people don't believe that what they are doing is wrong. The fact that they find it painful does not mean that they know deep down it's wrong, as you erroneously claim. Doing the right thing can just be painful sometimes.
> I certainly have more respect for someone who does sleep training because they think it's best for the child, rather than for themselves. Of course, everyone will say that's why they're doing it
> I also think the reason people don't dig deeper is that they, perhaps unconsciously, would rather not discover something that is uncomfortable and inconvenient for them
> I just hope they won't do something that they know is worse for the kid because it's easier for them. In my opinion, sleep training generally falls in this category.
> People do it because they're exasperated and neither parent is willing to do something hard
> They generally don't do it because they genuinely believe it's best for the baby
> If your parenting philosophy is not based on any research or learning about what's best for your child, but instead on what's easiest and most convenient for you
> our self-absorbed approach to parenting
> because you might reach conclusions that conflict with a self-serving parenting philosophy is just another excuse.
it makes it seem like you are attacking the character of those that disagree with you.
> Your argument seems to be that questioning the morality of anything an otherwise well-meaning person does and might be sensitive about is “shaming” and “insulting” and an attempt to “control” the person. That strikes me as very opposed to the principles of free speech and open debate.
I am saying there is a difference between casting aspersions about the character of people who disagree with you, and trying persuade them that your position is correct. I see you added a link recently for some of the evidence that you found convincing. If the purpose of you posting here was to change peoples minds, that probably would have been more effective.
And no, I don't think ad hominem attacks are the same as free speech and open debate. And I don't think resorting to them so easily instead of other types of argument is a small thing either.
None of those statements are “ad hominem attacks”. I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. I’m arguing against specific practices, attitudes, and beliefs. You’re attempting to tone police, which is much closer to an ad hominem argument than anything I’ve said, in that you are objecting to style instead of substance.
To use another example: if I explained your behavior in this thread by claiming that you are a narcissist who holds yourself above others and so feels they have the right to (verbally) punish others, has trouble seeing any personal faults, and easily sees character flaws in others, that would be an ad-hominem. I have not done that, because I don't know you and your motivations, it wouldn't be constructive, and most people aren't narcissists. But similarly, most people care about their children, and arguing that they disagree with you because they don't care enough is not constructive.
It’s kind of funny, because ad hominem is exactly what you yourself are doing. You aren’t objecting to the substance of any of my points—you’re just complaining that I wasn’t considerate enough of everyone’s feelings in my delivery and that it makes me a jerk. Even a narcissistic jerk apparently—pulling out the big guns!
I also never said that people who do sleep training “don’t care about their children” and it’s rather dishonest for you to keep repeating it. I think there is often a self-absorption issue which is encouraged by our culture, but it’s not the same thing.
One honest suggestion I'd like to offer you is to consider that the studies that support the "letting babies cry is harmful" side of this argument may be just as questionable as any other quasi-scientific advice new parents get. The "La Leche League", which you linked to, is definitely guided by some dogmatic principles that I think are a little on the nutty side and I don't consider them very trustworthy. It's been a long time since I researched this so I don't have all the evidence handy, but I recall that their favorite study to cite about the harm of sleep training is the canadian "Early Years Study", and if you look at the source of this study, it does not mention sleep training at all. In fact, the only references to babies crying in the entire study is a hypothetical situation where the baby is stressed because the mother is letting it cry and the father is yelling at the mother in front of the baby. This is an example of La Leche using a study to push an idea that the study absolutely does not support. Just be aware. Read the references, decide for yourself, and take everyone's input (including mine) with a grain of salt.
Edit: and don't forget to give yourself a break, because all you need is love. :P Sorry, couldn't resist.
I also agree about La Leche League being a biased source. I only posted that because it includes references to a broad swathe of the research on both sides all in one place. I don’t endorse the post itself.
It would be cool if someone compiled a big google doc of what’s out there. I should have done it back when I was in research mode, but at the time I didn’t know what to think and couldn’t have anticipated becoming an anti-sleep training person. Before diving in, I was the one trying to convince my partner that it’s ok. Seeing all the research changed my mind and, honestly, left me horrified that this is the advice pediatricians are giving to new parents.
To be able to work, we need to sleep. For us to sleep, our kids and the baby needs to sleep.
So we put the baby in his own room on day three. Always had him sleep in his bed in his room. Didn’t let him sleep anywhere else (or when he fell asleep, put him in his bed). When in his room, he was there to sleep, not to play. So in short: sleep = bed = sleep = bed.
He slept on his own through the night after seven weeks, with only two half awake feedings lasting maybe 15 minutes.
Maybe in 1950 the wife was raised to not expect a career and could be up all night taking care of a crying baby, and the man could sleep and then on his own earn a living wage for the family during the day?
Maybe in 10.000 b.C. parents could be up all night taking care of a crying baby and “the village” could then take care of the baby during the day while the parents slept?
Maybe maybe maybe, but in 2021 there is almost no viable alternative apart from making sure your baby sleeps through the night sooner rather than later.
(To avoid possible confusion, I am shaming the society, not you.)
I would still argue that society needs to figure a way to balance this out for both the male and female partnership(IE figure out a way for men to participate in equal fashion for that year) but that hasn't happened. As it is, we're grateful for this much compared to what many have.
The problem is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_Joneses
You forgo a lot to keep up with the Joneses. Family time gets cut.
If that's the choice you really wish to make, OK. If not, cut costs until you can live a different sort of life. Hints: entertainment, restaurants, high rent, excessive travel, single-use items, services, the expenses due to that extra job, etc.
I think characterizing mothers (or perhaps all parents?) who choose to work rather than stay home to care for children (and taking the consequential career hit) as "Keeping up with the Joneses" is a pretty blinkered view of human motivations, quite reductive, and frankly insulting.
It's often a choice for parents to both work. But many parents choose to stay in the workforce because they derive meaning from work and a career, not so that they can enjoy entertainment, restaurants, single-use items, and excessive travel. In fact, some parents are forced to leave the workforce because childcare can cost more than their after-tax income (think an infant and two kids in daycare / with a nanny).
My point was basically, if both parents have daytime obligations necessary to support the family, it’s very logical that they try to get the baby to sleep in the night ASAP
In that regard, having babies sleep in your bed, or having babies that cry though the night and accepting that as natural is a luxury (or problem) some families cannot afford.
What you describe isn't a "hunter gatherer society" issue. It's an innate human/pre-human/primate issue. Throughout human existence and our pre-human ancestor's existence, the infant/baby is with the mother 24/7 for the first few months/years of its life. This is something that stretches back millions of years. We really don't know what effects separating the baby from the mother at such an early age does for its emotional, psychological, etc development. Not to mention the mother's emotional, psychological, etc well being and of course the mother-child bonding.
> The baby cried and cried and cried.
It would be shocking if it started to lecture you on the pros and cons of the modern geopolitical world order. That a baby cried is par for the course.
> Just raise your kids with love. Be compassionate, and patient.
Unless you need a good night's sleep? This is comes off as new age nonsense we just love in the US. It's trite and meaningless. Of course you raise it with love, it's your kid. Rather than the obvious, we should raise kids so that they are well prepared to compete and fend for themselves in the real world.
1. I have no idea what I'm doing
2. Neither does anyone else.
3. billions of parents have gotten through this before you, you will too.
This, right here is the most important lesson we learned from our experience. There is no right or wrong way and others judging/criticising you for your parenting style have no clue what crazy cocktail of genetics+environment+hidden factors are affecting your family.
Right and i would add, give them as many time with you as possible. Some of my greatest memory's was strolling around my dad workplace, when he had work todo. Children's don't need parent's as entertainment, but as adventure preparers.
Children in the West today already spend more time with parents than at any point in the past:
https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-ti...
Quality time with parents is important, of course, but we have become so focused on parental time that children are sacrificing solo time where they learn independence and initiative, and peer time where they learn to create their own identity and cooperate. Also, this places an unsustainable burden on parents who are expected to work full time as well as be parent, teacher, playmate, and cruise director for their kids.
That's not what the article says. It compares to just 50 years ago, which is well into the industrialized world of two working parents in the office away from home.
Just a bit farther back, like with my grandparents era, kids grew up on the family farm, with their parents 24x7, learning by example from them.
Nowadays it's totally the opposite (and it's completely insane)
ortho: rigid, straight, correct
doct: teachings, learnings
ic: of, or pertaining to
So orthodoctic seems to have the meaning of "pertaining to rigid or correct teachings".
I was more generous in how I interpreted the article: the need for sleep-training is a consequence of the child having a whole different room to themselves. Parents in other cultures who share the room (or the bed) do not get the same level of extreme sleep deprivation and, as a consequence, will not need to sleep-train.
To me, the article is not questioning how good the parenting in the west is - it's contrasting it with parenting elsewhere (and tracing the roots of the parenting practices)
That was my direct experience as a kid growing up in a non-Western society (I'm 40 now, am from Eastern Europe). When I first read about the Western tabu of parents not being allowed to sleep in the same bed with their children anymore I was a little surprised at first, and then saddened for those kids: "do you mean 3-year or 5-year old me should have slept all alone in his bed at night with no parent close to me? That is pure madness!"
More than that, one of my most vivid memories as a kid was sleeping with my brother and my two grand-parents in the same 3x4 meter room (give or take), my brother with my grandma and 6-year old me with my grandpa (there were two beds, a stove, a TV set and a small table in that room). I can still remember my grandpa peeling apples or pears and sharing them with my brother and me, just before we all went to sleep while we were watching some TV, very, very nice memories (in fact my nickname is taken from a Soviet TV series we were watching then [1]). Afaik neither me, nor my brother (who is 2 years older than me) were making any unwanted sounds while we were asleep at night.
Extinction is extreme, as one is basically abandoning the child to cry. They're scared, they don't know what's happening and they're alone.
Sure, they're (probably?) not gonna suffer long-term damage, but it's just an asshole thing to do. In the book recommending this method all parents had their instincts screaming that they're doing something wrong and they were feeling guilty even if it worked.
Some kids are just nuts. Ours both were. We went from an hour-long party of rolling, chanting, screaming, head-butting the wall, pulling the hair of any nearby parent, multiple times a night, to... asleep in 10mins. It felt bad at first until we saw how much his mood improved in the daytime because he wasn’t exhausted.
This article lists 6! https://www.todaysparent.com/baby/baby-sleep/most-popular-sl...
> the most extreme version of which involves leaving a baby on their own to "cry it out", in an effort to encourage their babies to sleep for longer stretches so their parents can get some much-needed rest.
I'm not a parent but that sounds pretty sensible to me. Odd of the BBC to call it "extreme".
Next night, 10, 15, 20, 30, 30, 30...
next night, 15, 20, 30, 30, 30....
At some point it went up to like 30 mins for first check, then an hour for subsequent checks. I think if we'd gotten to that point we'd consider trying something else cause that's a lot of crying.
But in practice we never had to really adhere to most of the structure because iirc it was like:
Night 1: 5, 10, 15, asleep. Night 2: 10, 15, asleep. Night 3: asleep. Night 4: 15, asleep.
Then he was sleep trained and has slept like a rock with 0-30 seconds of fussing (usually 0) (and ~never crying) since.
The big thing he says for going to sleep is to set up the desired sleep associations (eg, alone in the crib in a dark quiet room if that’s what you choose) and then ensure the child falls asleep in that situation and it doesn’t change while they sleep. So for instance, don’t let them fall asleep on your lap then move them to the crib, because when the next normal sleep cycle ends and they partially wake up, they will discover something is different and get upset.
Sounds like childrearing done by a robot.
Sleep training appears to be standard for all the parents I know, in the U.S. and otherwise. I think it's more likely that the author of the article has extreme views on parenting that they're tying to impose on others.
Mileage varies, know of one couple who did sleep training and had success with it.
Other couples shared a bed with their kid until it was about two and when they moved to a different apartment they took the opportunity to explain: hey you have your own room now.
We have three kids and we sleep trained them. (Not a pediatrician, standard disclaimer.) This article calls it an ‘extreme’ practice. For us, ‘extreme’ was the sleep deprivation we experienced with baby number one as we tried every ‘no cry’ method in the book. The baby cried and cried and cried. Once we started sleep training, there was a bit of crying and then - a sleeping baby! Through the night! Total amount of crying went from hours to zero. The kid became happier — they weren’t sleep-deprived anymore. And neither were we. I no longer felt like I was going to drop the ball due to extreme exhaustion.
Babies two and three had the benefit of our experience, and they barely cried at all. The third one would lay down eyes-open and fall asleep. “So it actually does happen! — I thought the books must be lying.”
By all objective measures our kids are happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. But that doesn’t mean we still don’t get the stink eye from people who think it’s a cruel practice.
Just raise your kids with love. Be compassionate, and patient. Find a doctor you trust. Don’t let people add to an already stressful endeavor.