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I'm more interested in the long-term psychological effects of sleep training and how it affects a child's perception of "secure attachment" [1]. We sleep traine

I'm more interested in the long-term psychological effects of sleep training and how it affects a child's perception of "secure attachment" [1]. We sleep trained our oldest and did not our youngest and their personalities couldn't be more different. Of course, this may be entirely unrelated, but it's still something my wife and I have wondered about as we've learned more about it. [1] https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/psychologists/what-is-secure-attachment-psychology-definition-and-applications/ https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/psychologists/what-is-secu...

lazide 4y ago
The same happens regularly without sleep training too, so ymmv obviously. One thing I will note - if the kid doesn’t sleep and wakes up the adults for years, that impact pretty clearly ruins the adults, and has severe impacts on the kids too.
- ramijames 4y ago
  Haven't slept in ten years, can confirm: am ruined.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
mfer 4y ago
We sleep trained both our kids and their personalities are so different.
jmnicolas 4y ago
Even cats have wildly different personalities so I don't think sleep training human babies have anything to do with their personalities.
- rspoerri 4y ago
  Did you sleep train the cats?
  - DaveExeter 4y ago
    That's not necessary. Cats are expert sleepers!
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    I think the point the previous poster was trying to make is that people have wildly different personalities, and that any observation with a sample size of 2 is basically useless to draw any conclusions from. I'll also add that different people respond very different to things; maybe for some babies sleep training might have long-term effects, and for some it doesn't. Certainly if I look at my own shitty childhood, me and my brother responded quite differently. He was affected much less than I was.
  - paganel 4y ago
    Not the OP and not sleep training, no need for that, but I did manage to poopy-train our cat, meaning he only takes a poo when we are awake. The same goes for when we are eating, he's not taking any poo during those times, either. Pretty smart cat, if you ask me, he also managed to teach our dog to play certain kind of games between the two of them.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    Sort of. We initially fed our cat on demand, but at some point switched to feeding it at set times during the day. The cat adjusted to that, and suddenly all his daily activities - including playing and sleeping - started following a consistent schedule.
Hnrobert42 4y ago
I am also interested. Buried in the article is a note that by age 6 there was no appreciable difference in children with sleep interventions and without. While this article shreds a lot of studies on sleep training, it goes on to cite a lot of others without evidence of equally scrutiny, so who knows.
agitators1 4y ago
> I'm more interested in the long-term psychological effects of sleep training There don’t appear to be any.
yawnr 4y ago
Which kid do you like more..? ;)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sjducb 4y ago
It's important to understand that the attachment theory was developed to explain why children of drug addicts are so messed up. It was then expanded to children who suffered other kinds of abuse. When you try to expand attachment theory to try to understand healthy kids in non abusive situations the effect size is usually smaller than the experimental noise.
- getpost 4y ago
  >attachment theory was developed to explain why children of drug addicts are so messed up Citation? As far as I know, the roots of Attachment Theory are in the World War II work of John Bowlby, investigating the effects of children separated from their parents when major cities were evacuated during the Blitz. It is much later that the association of insecure attachment and addiction was scrutinized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby
jrochkind1 4y ago
The OP overview did mention some studies. (The OP overview is a really good model for a popularly-accessible summary of research on a complex topic! it lists so much stuff!) I'm not saying this necessarily should eliminate all worry you have about attachment (personally sleep-training seems like a bad idea to me too; I'm not a parent however), but as far as what research is available, from the OP: > Of the few studies that have looked at the short- to longer-term outcomes of sleep training, none have found an effect on a baby's attachment or mental health. Hiscock's study, for example, the largest and longest longitudinal study done on sleep training, found sleep-trained children were no more likely to be insecurely attached to their caregiver at six years of age than their peers. (Experts like Hiscock say they aren't aware of any studies that look at potential long-term effects of cold-turkey cry-it-out, just at modified extinction. They also examined healthy babies at least six months old. So these findings aren't necessarily applicable to infants trained at younger ages, or in other ways.) > Like other longitudinal studies, Hiscock's lost touch with a number of families when it was time for the final follow-up: 101 of the original 326. That means it is theoretically possible that the sleep training did affect some children in either a negative or positive way long-term, but that their experiences weren't captured. It's more likely, though, that any effects of a single intervention simply "washed out" after six years, says Hiscock. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230830539_Five-Year_Follow-up_of_Harms_and_Benefits_of_Behavioral_Infant_Sleep_Intervention_Randomized_Trial https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230830539_Five-Year...
sanderjd 4y ago
Oh come, there's like a billion variables in kids' personalities. My kids couldn't be more different from one another and we pretty much did all the same stuff with them.
phalangion 4y ago
We didn't sleep train our oldest, but we did our other three. All of them are very different people (ages 5-13). Every kid is different, and I don't think you can attribute it exclusively (or even primarily) to any one thing most of the time.
anthonypasq 4y ago
this is the classic delusion that most parents have about the actual power they have to shape their children's behavior. I think you'll find out you've had much less of an effect than you think.
russdill 4y ago
I would be somewhat shocked if two siblings had matching personalities.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
It's hard for children not to be very different from their siblings - after all, your oldest one spent their first N years with just you and your partner; the younger one spends that time with you, your partner, and their older sibling. It's something I fully realized only recently, once I spotted my younger daughter sprinting for toys her sister played with, moments after the latter left for kindergarten, and repeating the exact same kind of play she saw her sister do - which was mostly 3 y.o.-level creative reinterpretation and misuse of toys. After that, I started to pay more attention, and noticed that our younger daughter repeats just as many behaviors of her sister as she does of my wife's and mine.

lazide 4y ago

The same happens regularly without sleep training too, so ymmv obviously. One thing I will note - if the kid doesn’t sleep and wakes up the adults for years, that impact pretty clearly ruins the adults, and has severe impacts on the kids too.

ramijames 4y ago
Haven't slept in ten years, can confirm: am ruined.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

mfer 4y ago

We sleep trained both our kids and their personalities are so different.

jmnicolas 4y ago

Even cats have wildly different personalities so I don't think sleep training human babies have anything to do with their personalities.

rspoerri 4y ago
Did you sleep train the cats?
- DaveExeter 4y ago
  That's not necessary. Cats are expert sleepers!
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  I think the point the previous poster was trying to make is that people have wildly different personalities, and that any observation with a sample size of 2 is basically useless to draw any conclusions from. I'll also add that different people respond very different to things; maybe for some babies sleep training might have long-term effects, and for some it doesn't. Certainly if I look at my own shitty childhood, me and my brother responded quite differently. He was affected much less than I was.
- paganel 4y ago
  Not the OP and not sleep training, no need for that, but I did manage to poopy-train our cat, meaning he only takes a poo when we are awake. The same goes for when we are eating, he's not taking any poo during those times, either. Pretty smart cat, if you ask me, he also managed to teach our dog to play certain kind of games between the two of them.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Sort of. We initially fed our cat on demand, but at some point switched to feeding it at set times during the day. The cat adjusted to that, and suddenly all his daily activities - including playing and sleeping - started following a consistent schedule.

Hnrobert42 4y ago

I am also interested. Buried in the article is a note that by age 6 there was no appreciable difference in children with sleep interventions and without. While this article shreds a lot of studies on sleep training, it goes on to cite a lot of others without evidence of equally scrutiny, so who knows.

agitators1 4y ago

> I'm more interested in the long-term psychological effects of sleep training There don’t appear to be any.

yawnr 4y ago

Which kid do you like more..? ;)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sjducb 4y ago

It's important to understand that the attachment theory was developed to explain why children of drug addicts are so messed up. It was then expanded to children who suffered other kinds of abuse. When you try to expand attachment theory to try to understand healthy kids in non abusive situations the effect size is usually smaller than the experimental noise.

getpost 4y ago
>attachment theory was developed to explain why children of drug addicts are so messed up Citation? As far as I know, the roots of Attachment Theory are in the World War II work of John Bowlby, investigating the effects of children separated from their parents when major cities were evacuated during the Blitz. It is much later that the association of insecure attachment and addiction was scrutinized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby

jrochkind1 4y ago

The OP overview did mention some studies. (The OP overview is a really good model for a popularly-accessible summary of research on a complex topic! it lists so much stuff!) I'm not saying this necessarily should eliminate all worry you have about attachment (personally sleep-training seems like a bad idea to me too; I'm not a parent however), but as far as what research is available, from the OP: > Of the few studies that have looked at the short- to longer-term outcomes of sleep training, none have found an effect on a baby's attachment or mental health. Hiscock's study, for example, the largest and longest longitudinal study done on sleep training, found sleep-trained children were no more likely to be insecurely attached to their caregiver at six years of age than their peers. (Experts like Hiscock say they aren't aware of any studies that look at potential long-term effects of cold-turkey cry-it-out, just at modified extinction. They also examined healthy babies at least six months old. So these findings aren't necessarily applicable to infants trained at younger ages, or in other ways.) > Like other longitudinal studies, Hiscock's lost touch with a number of families when it was time for the final follow-up: 101 of the original 326. That means it is theoretically possible that the sleep training did affect some children in either a negative or positive way long-term, but that their experiences weren't captured. It's more likely, though, that any effects of a single intervention simply "washed out" after six years, says Hiscock. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230830539_Five-Year_Follow-up_of_Harms_and_Benefits_of_Behavioral_Infant_Sleep_Intervention_Randomized_Trial https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230830539_Five-Year...

sanderjd 4y ago

Oh come, there's like a billion variables in kids' personalities. My kids couldn't be more different from one another and we pretty much did all the same stuff with them.

phalangion 4y ago

We didn't sleep train our oldest, but we did our other three. All of them are very different people (ages 5-13). Every kid is different, and I don't think you can attribute it exclusively (or even primarily) to any one thing most of the time.

anthonypasq 4y ago

this is the classic delusion that most parents have about the actual power they have to shape their children's behavior. I think you'll find out you've had much less of an effect than you think.

russdill 4y ago

I would be somewhat shocked if two siblings had matching personalities.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

It's hard for children not to be very different from their siblings - after all, your oldest one spent their first N years with just you and your partner; the younger one spends that time with you, your partner, and their older sibling. It's something I fully realized only recently, once I spotted my younger daughter sprinting for toys her sister played with, moments after the latter left for kindergarten, and repeating the exact same kind of play she saw her sister do - which was mostly 3 y.o.-level creative reinterpretation and misuse of toys. After that, I started to pay more attention, and noticed that our younger daughter repeats just as many behaviors of her sister as she does of my wife's and mine.