this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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That's the nature of the relationship right out of the box (so to speak). Part of it is distinguishing between "I really need something" and "I don't want to do this." Our youngest is 2 now and it takes time to get there, but he goes to bed at 8pm.
At first, you go to bed with them, on the ground and you let them cry it out. Once they get used to the routine, things will go much faster but that first week is tough. Routine is also the key. We do bath, reading, bed. Our oldest has snuck in there a bunch of items, but it's the same routine every night. Getting back to the sleep training, after that first week and they get used to it, you can start just dropping them in there, hanging out a minute, and walking out. This too will be met with protest at first, but you let them cry it out and it stops pretty soon after. Ours occasionally yells when going to bed at first, but most of the time we just hear him talking until he drops out.
Sleeping through the night takes time, but the main thing is to try to feed a lot before bed. Naps in the day shouldn't be too long either, but are still key to brain development.
There's a really nice article on sleep training over at the BBC. It's a long read, but the bottom line is that the research on sleep training effectiveness is sketchy at best. Sometimes short term benefits are shown, mostly for the parents (children still wake up, parents just don't realize). but it's very difficult to remove biases when people's children are involved. There also seems to be a large variance between children and what works for one will not work for all.
The good news is that in the long term it doesn't seem to matter much. Sleep trained or not, a large majority of children are able to sleep through the night at 20 months old.
I've done it 3 times and our results work, but for each their own. I was just sharing how.
I have friends that have struggled though. A couple I know still have their 7 year old crawling into their bed every night. A different couple have their son showing up at 3am and gets them up.
Consistent lack of sleep can have detrimental effects both physically and mentally. We manage a good night's rest the vast majority of the time (sickness or other outliers being the exception).