Your comment did remind me of something, though – when my son went through the stage I’ve described above, he *would* settle if I lay right down on the bed with him and fell asleep with him. There was no middle ground where I could sit next to the cot and aim to edge further away each night – that made him cry for a lot longer than simply leaving him be, because, as I said, it gave him mixed messages and left him with the hope that I’d pick him up for more playtime, and I think that *that* would have been the cruel way to do things. But, if I’d been prepared to spend all evening every evening just lying next to him while he slept, I could have got him to sleep without crying. That would have meant leaving my husband without his chance for a bit of time getting child-free adult-conversation, company, and support, for years on end. I think that that would have been far more harmful than leaving my son crying for five-minute intervals for a twenty-minute time period (which is what it took), and I don’t see why my husband’s need for company and support should be so completely ignored just because he’s old enough to talk about what he wants instead of crying about it. On that point I guess you and I will just have to agree to differ.

But with my daughter, there just weren’t other options. She would not go to sleep without me leaving her in her cot to cry. End of story. And I don’t think your analogy in the comment really covers the situation, because you’re talking about a situation where meeting the needs of a second party hurts (unarguably, indisputably hurts) a third party. What I’m talking about is a situation where it turns out that what you think would be best for that second party actually turns out not to be the right thing for them. The closest analogy I can think of is that of a Jehovah’s Witness who believes blood transfusions are just plain wrong, who can back that up by telling you all the associated risks (which, unlike your claimed risks of sleep training, actually are proved risks)… and who then has a child with haemophilia who needs regular injections of blood product. Sure, in that situation the Jehovah’s Witness could try everything possible to avoid giving her son blood product (which is no bad thing, because it does carry some risks and it’s worth minimising the amount that you have to give). And maybe she could think of creative ways to stop her son from getting hurt or to minimise the bleeding if he did. But, ultimately, she’s going to come down to the choice between sticking to her dogma or accepting that her dogma doesn’t cover her child’s case and is, in this case, doing more harm than good.

Some thoughts I had:

Not every child needs the same amount of sleep.

Not every child has the same needs for attachment (some need a little, some need a medium amount, and some need A LOT).

My 2 older children needed considerably less as infants than I would have ever guessed or would have ever liked.

We had to pace dd1 in the wee hours of the morning for 3 months straight because we didn’t know about co-sleeping. But somehow, miraculously, without CIO methods, she tolerated sleeping in her crib by 4 months and soon after slept through the night. But she hardly napped during the day because she was active and alert. She probably slept 2-4 hours less than other children her age.

She had huge separation anxiety from 3 months on and no one else could hold her for about a year. Then she turned into a shy but happy toddler and a very shy but happy preschooler and eventually grew into a very confident little first grader.

Dd2 was co-slept with from day 1, she slept better with me from day 1 and into her crib without CIO, but then about 10 months, she started crying when I put her to bed and would get so upset about it I just stopped and pulled her into bed with me and she quieted down to sleep. She also had separation anxiety from a few months on…but grew ever more anxious into her toddler and preschool years. By the time she was in preschool, I found out she had selective mutism (a severe social anxiety that caused her to shut down her speech in social settings like preschool). Through trial and error, I found that the only emotional self-regulation she could do was through me.

The more I pushed her away to try to get her to stop needing me so much, the more severe behavioral problems became. People tried to tell me it was because I wasn’t firm enough in pushing her to be independent from an early age.

No, the only thing that pushing her to be independent did was scare the poop out of her and made her distrust me and make her escalate. I would have created a RAD situation if I stuck to what mainstream advice would have told me to do (CIO, TO and the like).

Pushing a child before they are ready to be independent can have a deep effect on them. I’m not going to accuse anyone who uses CIO will have what happened to my daughter happen to them (because obviously it didn’t cause it in our situation), but with HIGHLY SENSITIVE children like my dd2, it may very well affect them in some profound way.

Children with symptoms of SPD (sensory processing disorder) also may be more dependent on their parents for longer periods. They are developmentally delayed (sometimes only temporarily that SPD therapy activities can help with ). For those highly sensitive/SPD children, emotional regulation can’t be achieved on their own so they need longer time to develop those skills.

The upside to having a child like her? She’s highly gifted and highly creative. And at 5.5 years of age, STILL needs me to lay down with her at night to help her sleep. She just has a huge imagination and is afraid of the dark. Only now, it takes about 5 minutes for her to fall asleep and then I put her into her own bed.

It reminds me of my own childhood, when I was about 10 years old and begging my sister to let me sleep with her in her bed because I had lots of nightmares due to the fact I was highly sensitive/highly imaginative too.

To this day, I STILL sleep better having my dh in bed with me. I can’t stand sleeping alone.

Oh…and for what it’s worth, sex is awesome and very restorative for me! The only thing that ever really prohibited it after childbirth was my episotomy. It delayed enjoyment of if for me for about 4 months, but other than that, I was always raring to go about the 6 week mark in my 2 subsequent deliveries. But hey, that’s just me.

Anyway. Thanks for the interesting discussions as usual

I agree with you on sleep, but if I may, I would like to say something about sex.

First of all, I am not quite sure from where you got the idea that “sex makes us happy”. For sleep I can almost accept it as a somewhat careless formulation of a valid point. For sex, I think it is a lot more complicated than that.

I don’t think this is merely nitpicking, because the implication that follows rather unfortunately from your analogy is that there may be at least some level of egoistic consideration which is justified in obtaining that happiness. Wherever it lies, there is some tradeoff as regards sleep, because if you don’t sleep at all, your baby will also suffer from your crankiness. In relation to sex, however, this does not apply. The problem with the spectrum of aggressive sexual couplings at some point of which we call it “rape” is that at ALL points on that spectrum (including consensual, mutually aggressive sexual couplings) it is an antithesis of what sexuality is about. Behaving like this sexually amounts to dissipating ones vital energy in a neurotic manner because ones body is unable to bear the sexual charge. When in pursuit of sexual release you objectify the other, you cut sexuality from your heart and in my opinion it doesn’t make you happy. I also don’t think, to put it mildly, that it contributes to making you a better parent. It’s, you see, merely another manifestation of the narcissism which is the problem in the first place.

Unlike one or two others on this thread, I do of course appreciate that yours was an innocent analogy which made a valid point, which I have merely taken as a pretext to make what I believe is an equally valid point. I hope this is pardoned in advance! Your calm responses to the aggression you encountered show me that you yourself are well anchored in your heart, and this is not only useful for parenting but, as we see here, also for life.

Some people take the opinions of others way too personally. No one is being forced to read your words and then follow through.