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> In my experience, "sleep training" is just a more palatable euphemism for "cry it out". My view is that however you slice it, you are conditioning the baby th

by zamfi 6y ago

> In my experience, "sleep training" is just a more palatable euphemism for "cry it out". My view is that however you slice it, you are conditioning the baby that no one will respond to its distress. 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.

plutonorm 6y ago
You have kids. You step up. Yes it's hard, but it's your absolute unshakeable duty to do your best by them. Putting them down to sleep away from you and then expecting them to suck it up and deal with it when they get distressed is one of the most idiotic things that I hear otherwise intelligent people say. To a child, separation from their parents is the most stressful experience possible because in the wild separation means death. What is the most dangerous time of day? The night time. So you compounding the most stressful thing you can do to your child by doing it at the most dangerous time. The idiocy of people beggars belief.
- zamfi 6y ago
  > Putting them down to sleep away from you and then expecting them to suck it up and deal with it when they get distressed is one of the most idiotic things that I hear otherwise intelligent people say 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.
  - plutonorm 6y ago
    Fine, don't use common sense. My parents and my parents in law were against breast feeding. I mean literally against breast feeding. Why? Because psychologically it was impossible for them to even think that they might not have done the very best for their kids. You are probably caught in the same trap. 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. But at the end of the day, these things are not going to hurt the average child. But we should have guidelines that improve the average outcome for the average child. And anything that deviates from what we have adapted to over millions of years is likely to be a bad idea.
    - zamfi 6y ago
      > And anything that deviates from what we have adapted to over millions of years is likely to be a bad idea 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.
NovaJehovah 6y ago
A 'euphemism', according to Merriam-Webster, is "the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant." "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.
- zamfi 6y ago
  I know what a euphemism is, I am telling you that the two are not equivalent -- "sleep training" in the form of, e.g., Karp, is not the same as "cry it out", does not involve what you say, and this is not a euphemism. 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.
  - NovaJehovah 6y ago
    > I am telling you that the two are not equivalent 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.

by zamfi 6y ago

plutonorm 6y ago

You have kids. You step up. Yes it's hard, but it's your absolute unshakeable duty to do your best by them. Putting them down to sleep away from you and then expecting them to suck it up and deal with it when they get distressed is one of the most idiotic things that I hear otherwise intelligent people say. To a child, separation from their parents is the most stressful experience possible because in the wild separation means death. What is the most dangerous time of day? The night time. So you compounding the most stressful thing you can do to your child by doing it at the most dangerous time. The idiocy of people beggars belief.

zamfi 6y ago
> Putting them down to sleep away from you and then expecting them to suck it up and deal with it when they get distressed is one of the most idiotic things that I hear otherwise intelligent people say 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.
- plutonorm 6y ago
  Fine, don't use common sense. My parents and my parents in law were against breast feeding. I mean literally against breast feeding. Why? Because psychologically it was impossible for them to even think that they might not have done the very best for their kids. You are probably caught in the same trap. 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. But at the end of the day, these things are not going to hurt the average child. But we should have guidelines that improve the average outcome for the average child. And anything that deviates from what we have adapted to over millions of years is likely to be a bad idea.
  - zamfi 6y ago
    > And anything that deviates from what we have adapted to over millions of years is likely to be a bad idea 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.

NovaJehovah 6y ago

A 'euphemism', according to Merriam-Webster, is "the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant." "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.

zamfi 6y ago
I know what a euphemism is, I am telling you that the two are not equivalent -- "sleep training" in the form of, e.g., Karp, is not the same as "cry it out", does not involve what you say, and this is not a euphemism. 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.
- NovaJehovah 6y ago
  > I am telling you that the two are not equivalent 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.