Sometimes a solution is so obvious it's sure to get ignored.

What do you mean? Hard to understand what you're describing.

My brother and his wife did not sleep train their boy and co-slept with him. They had endless issues with sleep that continued past 2y old, were constantly exhausted, and eventually alternated who slept with him. We sleep trained our boy, same age, had very few issues even from very young.

Children are so different, from so early, it's not at all obvious what outcome for a particular kid is because of different strategies taken and what comes from their individual natures, or other aspects of their environment.

Co-sleeping's known to increase the SIDS risk, so it's another reason people are sometimes reluctant to do it, even if it would make the baby more comfortable.

The SIDS risk being parents rolling on top of and crushing / asphyxiating the baby. We just gloss over most of this sort of death by calling it SIDS to avoid having to charge the parents with a crime.

Do you have children?

I'm convinced most of the issues with rolling on babies is people who take medication or drink. Maybe I'm wrong.

SIDS is totally different.

I believe those cases are included in SIDS statistics. I can’t find it but NPR had a long informative show with a doctor talking about SIDS, she mentioned that if you take out overweight/drunk parents the risk of SIDS from co sleeping is actually very low

EDIT: Another important factor is where the sleeping occurs. A bed is very safe, a couch is not. She pointed out that an exhausted parent lying down with the child for an intentional nap is much better than them falling asleep sitting up on the couch.

You would be wrong. I suppose it's anecdata but a member of my family who works in pedatrics sees this regularly unfortunately. Usually it's these new-age parents that think co-sleeping is somehow beneficial. You fall into a deep enough sleep, it takes almost no time at all to seriously injure or kill your child.

Frankly, co-sleeping with a baby is irresponsibility of the highest form. It may have worked for the GP but for every one that it works, another 100 show up to my family member's office or to the morgue. There's no conspiracy in why part of the "how to handle a baby" guidelines they give new parents is "never, ever, EVER co-sleep". Its far safer to assume that the new parent is not in the less-risky population and will in fact eventually cause their child's death.

I coslept with all 7 of my children.

And you'd maybe need to do it with 700 more to kill one, but it's still a pretty substantial risk. They have bedside basinets where you can still drape an arm over - it seems like a good tradeoff to me.

The downvotes are by new age pseudo-intellectuals that frequent this forum. Congratulations. Medical science says you're not smart.

Nearly the entire world except America and Western Europe "cosleeps" with their babies. And this has been happening for thousands of years. Unless you are morbidly obese(which again quite a lot of Americans are), you won't accidently kill your child while sleeping.

I've had to roll my wife off of our dog before, and she doesn't take sleep medication or drink. The dog would have been able to protest enough to get her to stir on her own, and probably has - I was just coming to bed at the time.

A baby would not have been able to. Some people are hard sleepers, and even if you're usually not you probably still have days where you are.

parents ARE charged with a crime when they crush / axphyxiate the baby to death.

SIDS happens also when baby is alone in bed. You relating it to parents rolling on baby tell me you don't know much about the argument.

LOL, every parent has a different set of anecdotes! We had sleeptime issues as well as a number of our friends. We did a gradual approach where we sat in a chair nearby the bed, then gradually moved the chair away, over about a week. Everything was fine after that.

I'm not sure if you're arguing for or against it, but for those who don't know, this is at its core sleep training. It doesn't require a parent to just throw their child into a crib, slam the door, and put in ear plugs. Anyone who ignores the needs of their child is cruel. That said, sometimes a child's needs are met and they just need to learn to go to sleep without someone patting their back.

I think parenting is the worst possible space for N=1 anecdotes. I have two sets of friends who did what you did and have never slept alone or through the night for coming up on five years. For our oldest, also coming up on five years, we did like one night of sleep training at 18 months and immediately started sleeping through the night like magic. For our youngest, we never had to do anything, he just always slept through the night no problem. All of these anecdotes mean nothing, just like yours. Parents need to experiment and figure out what works best for them and their kids, and everyone who isn't them needs to butt. out.

Yep, the thing I always tell new parents when asked about kids is that every single kid is different. Your kid might be a good eater and a bad sleeper. Maybe the reverse. They might be extremely needy or be completely chill and independent. This is especially obvious when you have multiple kids of your own. Some knowledge generalizes, but a lot of the personalized experience is different (e.g. what they respond to in terms of incentives or "training"). I was always about 10/90 in my opinions of nature vs nurture (90% nurture, 10% nature) but after having kids its so obvious nature is much higher than I thought. Not sure what the end ratio is, but I'd say at least 50% nature.

You make a good point, each child is different. It's almost as though children are people. Maybe there's some kind of a lesson in that, but I can't see it.

> everyone who isn't them needs to butt. out.

Exceptions:

• if somebody asks for advice.

• if somebody mentions they're about to try an arsenic-, lead- and powdered asbestos-based nasal spray on their kid.

The capacity of the parents is also a bottleneck: time spent paying attention to your uninformed advice is time spent not paying attention to the child(ren). Unsolicited advice is not relaxing, and doesn't help put food on the table; it probably doesn't help.

Though, I think posting on an internet forum might fall into the "if they're asking for advice"; most people visiting such websites are there because they've looked something up, and they expect to be wading through anecdotes.

Agreed! Kids vary significantly, and much advice I’ve read about sleep doesn’t apply to our kid.

You’ve just gotta do what is best for your family, not what is best for some internet stranger’s child.

Sometimes? Yeah. And random advice spamming doesn't help, and just makes it worse. MDs tend to be the worst at this, but there are exceptions.

However, sometimes the parents are doing things that are unintentionally dangerous, or are so sleep deprived and exhausted they're being abusive and can't process that and get themselves to a better place on their own.

It's more common than not, from what I've seen. As is denial and avoidance on the topic.

Ideally, they would have experienced parents who know them (grandparents) who would be intimately involved and give breaks, intervene in important situations, help them with known working parenting techniques in the situation, etc.

But 1) a lot of folks don't have grandparents who could positively contribute here no matter what anyway, and 2) socioeconomics means it's nearly impossible for this setup to coincide with HN demographics except for certain specific ethnicities, and 3) a lot of boomer parents - the demographics involved - are explicitly not interested in that kind of thing, and a lot of current folks in the child rearing age range have been left adrift with nothing but pop-sci articles to guide them.

It's a shitshow, but I guess that's always been the case.

This is the only good comment in this entire thread.

This resonated with me. The only two bits of advice I ever give to any new parent are:

-everyone has an opinion about parenting, and many are not afraid to share it

-don't compare yourself to someone with an older child. You will start out a level zero parent, but you get a level zero baby. You'll level up with them. No one starts out a level 20 parent.

N=1 anecdotes are exactly the things that give new parents a range of ideas to mentally try out and see what fits.

I'm all for that! But what I'm talking about is people (like the person I replied to) that present their N=1 anecdote as the gospel of how to parent right.

As with all things, if it is applicable or not requires a comprehensive understanding of the actual situation, the people involved, and fair and balanced judgment and reasonable plan of action that adjusts to circumstances.

It is extremely difficult doing so in a high stress environment.

No 'cry it out' plan I've ever seen or heard of would recommend them crying for a very long time. It's really easy to just give up, at the point many parents find themselves doing sleep training, as it's not something folks want to talk about, and the sleep disruption is likely already been going on for a very long time and they're already exhausted.

We co-slept with both of ours as well. We still do with my youngest who’s just shy of two.

He’s having eczema problems currently. Having him in the same bed as us means I can notice if he’s scratching and intervene, otherwise he’d keep scratching until he’s bleeding.

Not our experience with co-sleeping at all: our sleep quality was terrible and the transition was extremely tough and prolonged. Congrats on getting lucky! :)