> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
I am happy to entertain evidence on all sides of the sleep training debate, and I would love to know whether it is long-term harmful or beneficial. And to be clear, I’m actually not making a claim either way about harms around sleep training, only pointing out that there are tradeoffs in every decision, that it’s hard to really know whether sleep training is harmful in any particular circumstance, and that strangers shaming parents for choosing something they think is harmful without considering context is one of the most obnoxious parts of parenting.
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.
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.