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The control group should still be sleep deprived for 6 months and see what that does to their brain.
by jonplackett 5mo ago
The control group should still be sleep deprived for 6 months and see what that does to their brain.
- mynegation 5mo agoAs a father of a newborn never have I ever seen an HN comment so incisive and to the point.
- LeifCarrotson 5mo agoAs the father of a 9-year-old I have to warn you: the sleep deprivation does not end at 6 months.
- pplante 5mo agoAs a father of three, ages 4, 5.88, and 9 I can concur that the sleep deprivation doesn't improve much. Especially if they are neurodivergent.
- dotancohen 5mo ago> ages 4, 5.88 ... if they are neurodivergent. I think they may have learned something from dad.
- solnyshok 5mo agoas father of seven...
- murderous_juice 5mo ago[dead]
- rubslopes 5mo agoHappy birthday to the youngest and oldest!
- ozozozd 5mo agoWait, the 4 year old and 9 year old were both born today? Or is 5.88 a typo? Or different architectures where floats can’t be represented?
- Schiendelman 5mo agoMaybe they're more dense so they don't float? ;)
- Aurornis 5mo agoAs a father of multiple kids younger than that, I have a very different experience. I’m sorry you’re going through this, but I’m slightly taken aback by this comment because this isn’t a common feature of having older children. The only parents I know having sleep deprivation problems have very young children. I have a lot of parent friends and I’ve never heard anyone claim that sleep deprivation continued until older ages, let alone that it’s common.
- SoftTalker 5mo agoYeah it moves from waking up in the middle of the night to having fights about going to bed and getting up in the morning...
- Aurornis 5mo agoLike I said, I have kids too. But enforcing boundaries and sleep schedules is lot different than claiming a decade of sleep depreciation. Kids sleep longer than we do as adults. I’m not losing sleep by getting them up in the morning unless I stay up late on my own, because we both have things to do in the morning.
- sm0olr 5mo agoMy wife and I have a 7 month old and have learned that other parents do not like hearing about babies who sleep well. We don’t bring it up deliberately, but it comes up in conversation naturally sometimes. I have a lot of friends who say their 2+ year olds still don’t sleep through the night and say we’re lucky. The luck attribution really downplays the rigidity of the schedule and routines my wife and I have kept for the little dude for MONTHS. It is the same schedule every single evening barring extenuating circumstances. But nobody wants to accept that we actually put effort in day after day to protect and foster the sleep schedule.
- ozozozd 5mo agoYou may be attributing way too much to what you are doing. And that will make it hard to accept the inevitable negative chance outcomes that will be entirely out of your control. I know parents whose first kid slept through the night at 3 months, and their second one not sleeping through the night at age 3. Skill issue? I don’t think so. And these people are such routine enforcers that they described themselves as “stubborn.” And then there is sickness. Amount of sun and physical activity the child gets during the day, which will depend on geography and the kid’s personality. Our 6 year old daughter sits down, and does a ton of art. Her 2 year old sister runs laps around the house for fun. Her favorite activity is running and slamming herself to the couch. Do you think these kids get similar physical activity? What if I told you they go to sleep around the same time and have no trouble waking up? Edit: Forgot to mention night terrors. Doctor told us about it for the first one. Had no idea what he meant, and didn’t even care to look it up because it didn’t happen. Until the 2nd one hit 15 months or so. Imagine a barely 1 year old in an extremely confused state while asleep, sitting in her bed, screaming, sometimes hitting her head on the sides of the bed, getting more agitated if you pick her up. I read that it can last up to 30 minutes. Thank god ours were no longer than 5 minutes. It’s horrific when it happens for the first time. Straight out of the Exorcist movie.
- apaprocki 5mo agoThe battlefield changes as kids age. It’s impossible to have any realistic discussion about sleep habits without discussing the elephant in the room. What is your device policy and how do you manage screen time, what your bedtime routine is (you better have one!) and how good you are at sticking to the timing on a daily basis.
- senectus1 5mo agoMy son started sleeping through at 6 weeks... my daughter on the hand took more than twice that to start sleeping through. she was hard work.
- jonplackett 5mo agoYeah it comes and goes doesn’t it. My 8 year old started waking us up twice a night for a week a while back! But subjecting non-parents to 9 years of sleep deprivation would definitely be against the Geneva convention.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5mo agoIt does depend on the child and you have to make compromises. My daughter would sleep only on humans, so we started napping with her on our bodies at some point. That's how we gained back sleep, lol
- ray_v 5mo agoCongrats and guard your sleep hygiene as much as possible (practically impossible advice to follow in most cases). I went through a really rough period because of the lack of sleep. I noticed that hydration during that period was also challenging, so I wonder if this is related to the brain shrink effect. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323595 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323595
- jonplackett 5mo agoAh thanks! This is the nicest response to a comment I’ve received. Hang in there with the 6 month old. It gets easier every month. Mine are 4 and 8 now. Sometimes I really miss having a tiny baby - but I do like sleeping now.
- gentooflux 5mo agoWithout all the oxytocin you get from hanging out with a newborn that would be awful
- dotancohen 5mo agoCompletely correct. With all three of my children I was sleep deprived the first few months. But never in my life have I felt better. For all the difficulties, children are rejuvenating and fun and provide purpose to life.
- herpdyderp 5mo agoThese brain chemical rewards apparently do not work on me, my (still young) kids provide no such rejuvenation. Luckily I'm a deep sleeper so I have no sleep deprivation problems.
- kqr 5mo agoThis may change with age. My children were cute but didn't engage me much emotionally while they were still mostly crying, pooping, and trying their best to hurt themselves. Once they became more multi-faceted that changed.
- andsoitis 5mo agoWhy? Isn’t sleep deprivation a consequence of having a child?
- karamanolev 5mo agoThey should be sleep deprived the same way for it to be a real control group, at least in the context of "becoming a father". Otherwise it's just "being sleep deprived for 6-12 months has X effect", which is much less informative. We already know being sleep deprived for long stretches is really bad.
- andsoitis 5mo agobut then you're not comparing what it is like to be father with what it like to not be a father. such an experimental design would miss the forest for the trees.
- Markoff 5mo agoI'm pretty sure you can be father and have someone to take care of the baby in the night, your wife or paid nanny can do it, so omitting sleep deprivation from title is just sensational clickbait
- IncreasePosts 5mo agoYes, so then that way you would know if there's something special about raising children that causes cerebellum shrinkage, or if it is just run of the mill sleep deprivation that causes it
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- functionmouse 5mo agoParents are supposed to sleep when the baby sleeps. Industrial work culture does not allow this. One of the many things leading the "Western" lifestyle to extinction.
- homeonthemtn 5mo agoThis is funny in how cut and dry it is. My friend, do you have kids? It's my theory that crying evolved as a trait because it forces parents to go find some place safe lest a predator finds them, thus ensuring the helpless kid can grow in safe environments. Note that there is no mention of sleep in there. That's bonus round if you get it.
- irishcoffee 5mo ago[flagged]
- watwut 5mo agoNon western parents gets woken up in the night and sleep deprived ... and then have duties during the day while the baby sleeps
- dbacar 5mo agoThe babies I know yet don't sleep like adults which means that you will be up at night at random hours that you are not used to and I think this has nothing to do with industrial work culture. That 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep is just a "dream" :). I recall, as a twins dad, I did not have 2+ hours of uninterrupted sleep till they are 2 years old. (This depends on the kid though).
- ozlikethewizard 5mo agoPrior to the industrial revolution polyphasic sleep was pretty standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
- dbacar 5mo ago
- m463 5mo agoreducing exercise does this kind of thing too. I assume new dads also stop exercise (of all kinds).