Parent Thread

Kedwyn_sl said:

As they get older they do get more needy and want to interact so that is normal. That said, kids don't have to be on your nips every minute they are awake. There are things they can do on their own even at 6 months as they learn / play. Naturally a significant amount of time is spent with Mom & Dad but there are things they can do to keep themselves occupied and give them some time to explore on their own.

Cry it out works fine and at some point most parents will use it. It's inevitable that they will want to keep playing at bed time and you'll put them down and let them cry it out until they go to sleep. Among many other things.

Kids certainly can manipulate situations even at a young age.

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This is a good post and advice. My kids are/were breastfed. We are at the stage where we let my son cry when he wakes up the 2nd time in the night for a feeding. At this point he's just looking for comfort because he actually doesn't really feed.

So while technically that's not manipulation you're still attempting to create certain feedback loops so to speak.

That also doesn't mean you pet your kid wail for 30 minutes by himself either. If you don't already know, you'll soon be able to determine what is an actual cry for hunger/need and a cry for attention.

It goes a long way getting g them used to being on their own. My daughter can play by herself at 2 and doesn't constantly need me or mom with her. Compare that with some other kids with over attentive moms where the kids are always hanging on them.

I like my small moments of being kid free eve if they are just in the other room.

Izo_sl said:

Crying it out for a 6 mo is for dummies imho.

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Yeah, babies need to learn to self-soothe and part of doing that is letting them cry it out sometimes. 6 months seems like a great starting point for that, by that time they should have established pretty good bonds with the parents and are beyond the point of needing constant comfort and assurance.

opiate82_sl said:

Yeah, babies need to learn to self-soothe and part of doing that is letting them cry it out sometimes. 6 months seems like a great starting point for that, by that time they should have established pretty good bonds with the parents and are beyond the point of needing constant comfort and assurance.

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Probably lost in translation on my part. To me the crying it out part is more in the lane of neglect / self serving parents. We do have the luxery of 1 year shared maternity/paternity leave which colors the picture here, 6 mo. Sure kids are manipulating you, but attributing intent other than survival and basic needs seems to be symptoms on the parents side rather than the baby having malicious intent. After maternity leave it's tradition to go 30/37 hours a week full day care for the rest of their preschool years. To me it's a priviledge being with the baby, so the time spent, their communication, 'manipulation', is not an issue. They're taught independance and appripriate need communication in the day care offers en masse. Doing so half a year before with the system we have seems odd. T'is all

It's obviously a differrent social wellfare and family structure you guys have and I respect that.

You trust those little fuckers too much!

While it can be difficult to achieve children often at that age just want to be involved in what their parents are doing. At that age I would always let my son watch or "help" me with whatever I was doing. He would sit up in his bumbo while I made dinner or worked on things around the house. I would even put him in the hiking pack because he loved to watch house work and chores I did around the house.

The truth is they are little for a very short time and soon they become independent. My son is only 2 and half and he already wants to play with every other person at the park but me. While watching him go up and try to make friends or just run around solo makes me proud its also a little sad and a glimpse into the not so distant future.

After 9 weeks the kid finally slept through the night in his cradle instead of with me/wife. His jam has been either sleeping on top of us in our arms, or with us having our arm around him. The wife has been sleeping on the couch with him because she was afraid I'd crush him in my sleep (i'm big).

Last night the little guy slept in his cradle though, so it was awesome. She still slept downstairs with him, and had to constantly wake up to turn the white noise back on - but there's some light at the end of the tunnel finally. I kept joking with her that we'd have a 10 year-old sleeping on top of our chests.

I'm thinking about finding some white noise tracks, putting them on an old ipod, and docking it in our little dock station for him at night. Right now we have a giraffe stuffed animal that provides the noise, but it shuts off after an hour. She said everytime it shut off he instantly woke up. She would turn it on and instantly he went back to sleep.

Edit: Before I get shit for making my wife sleep on the couch, it's because she prefers to feed him in the living room and didn't want to go up and down the stairs. I offer the bed every night but she refuses.

I've been sleeping on the couch with our little guy in a rock and play sleeper thing up next to it. It's way too jarring for me to get out of bed every few hours at night. I don't mind doing the same on the couch. I fully admit that it's purely in my head but it works so I go with it.
I take care of him over night because I'm generally up till 2am anyway and after that it's just one more feeding till my wife takes over at 5am. It works for us as we both are able to get 6+ hours of sleep.

My 2 year old is all of a sudden having all sorts of issues going to sleep at night. Nothing has changed whatsoever with his schedule. Up until a month ago we always had him in bed by 7:30-8pm, he fell asleep fairly quickly, and all was good.

Now he won't even think about sleep if it's before 8, and he just tosses and turns and talks and sits up and everything else until after 9pm. He cries, my wife goes in and rocks him some, puts him back in bed, it's a huge ordeal and he's not falling asleep until well after 9pm.

I don't know if it's the fact that it's still light out until about 9pm or what, but his room is still fairly dark since we have curtains on his window that we close(but a tiny bit of light bleeds through, it isn't pitch-dark).

The only upside is that this is making him sleep in a tad later, instead of waking up at 6:30-7am, he sleeps in about an extra half hour or so.

It sucks though, my wife and I were used to having some free time in the evening after about 7:30, now its closer to 10 before he's asleep and settled. Nothings getting done around the house, as she's tired and ready for bed by that point :/

My 2 year old did the same thing Joeboo, and it just took patience, and a firm, It's bedtime! he still gets up sometimes, but ya. You've been spoiled a bit. Free time? F no. Your misery makes me smile a little, as misery loves company! Welcome!

For us, we think it was for sure the change in light. My son loves it dark, and it wasn't dark anymore. Could be the same for yours.

Just thinking about that, if my son starts going to bed at 730 I might only see the dude on weekends

We enforce pretty strict bedtimes of 730 here even for my older kids. We have to because every single time they stay up late they have a miserable day the next day. But a big part of it has been that it was just impossible to get anything done when they were up because we had to watch them like hawks, now that phase is ending gradually. Don't tell my wife that though, the kids are 6, 5, and 3 and she acts like they can't play in a room by themselves without direct supervision. I'm trying to ease up on the whole surveillance state.

So my 4 year old (turns 5 next week) who was having the poop regression thing? We took away her pullups completely and made her start sleeping in underwear, problem immediately fixed. Now I feel dumb.

Tough love.

"You either shit yourself or here's an idea, you don't."

+ Dad points.

People who tell you kids won't learn to self-soothe without cry it out are impatient people.

Cry it out is for the parents. There isn't anything wrong with it if that's your bag, but don't fool yourself.

Eh...no. Cry it out is also for the child. If the child is never left to do that, it's formative.

"Cry it out" is misleading. When done properly you don't just disappear and let the kid cry until it collapses into a quivering mess. The kid is left in increasing intervals to a max of 10 minutes.

And I disagree, it is very much for the kids. Self-soothing isn't just something nice to do, it is a distinct developmental goal and if it gets fucked up somehow it can delay them developmentally in other areas. I'm half a goddamn woman around babies, I would hold a baby all goddamn day if I could and just hang out with them. That not only isnt the best thing for them, it is straight up detrimental to their ability to thrive and be independent.

No, it's bullshit that you've been told they won't learn it on their own. We are talking about night time cries here.

I never said they won't learn it on their own or that anyone ever told me that. I said coddling them can lead to developmental and social delays. The sooner they become independent the sooner they start hitting milestones like crazy, if they're being coddled they thrive less.

chaos_sl said:

We enforce pretty strict bedtimes of 730 here even for my older kids. We have to because every single time they stay up late they have a miserable day the next day. But a big part of it has been that it was just impossible to get anything done when they were up because we had to watch them like hawks, now that phase is ending gradually. Don't tell my wife that though, the kids are 6, 5, and 3 and she acts like they can't play in a room by themselves without direct supervision. I'm trying to ease up on the whole surveillance state.

So my 4 year old (turns 5 next week) who was having the poop regression thing? We took away her pullups completely and made her start sleeping in underwear, problem immediately fixed. Now I feel dumb.

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Same bedtime for every kid? Why? Clearly the 6 year old doesn't need the same bed time as the 3 year? wtf?

6 year old stays up reading. I use that as kind of a "quiet hour" thing for her. She's going into first grade so we're kind of reevaluating everything. It is so weird constantly thinking of your kids as babies and needing to protect them etc and then one day they're all in elementary school. Time flew.

But yeah, but her and the 5 year old stay up, just in their room reading or whatever. They still don't stay up much later, they wake up early for school (relatively) and too much later turns them into assholes the next day. We used to let them have a tablet/device and watch a show or play a little game, but that was a terrible idea, just wires them and causes problems. 3 year old needs her sleep desperately so it is straight to bed for her.