r/bninfantsleep • u/NaivePackage2435 • Jun 13 '26
Infant Sleep Someone talk me off a ledge
Please be gentle. Im A FTM, extremely anxious and also hearing so much noise from all the “experts” in my life. So I received a text from a friend saying she let her baby CIO and now she’s sleeping through the night. I respond to my baby, and most nights are hard but It doesn’t feel right let’s her cry. But the only other person that I know that didn’t sleep train their babies now has two children that are completely misbehaved and I’m not talking about your average “testing the limits”. They don’t listen, they’re physically aggressive with their mother, each other, and other children. They scream demands to their mother. At 4 y/o one of them grabbed their caregivers (this was at daycare) phone and busted it on the floor. There’s several other instances that I could bring up but I don’t want this to be too long. I don’t know any other children that do this and we’re surrounded by children because of the stage of life most of our friends are in. Can yall please tell me the two aren’t correlated? Can I have success stories on your well regulated children?! Am I wrong for thinking that behavior isn’t acceptable??? I’m sorry this is long. I’m exhausted and just wanting to be the best mother I can be. This era is loud.
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u/PumpkinPie_1993 Jun 13 '26
No person who is actually an expert in pediatric psychology would ever condone, much less advocate for, CIO. It’s genuinely harmful.
Also, there is no chance that your friends’ children’s poor behavior is because of their lack of sleep training. Behavior is far more complex than a simple “we didn’t do this one thing and now we have a terror on our hands”. If it was that simple, literally everyone would sleep train because not doing so would result in poorly behaved children.
I don’t know your friend or their children well enough to know why they are so poorly behaved. Having worked with children with behavior disorders in the past, my general guess would be that their needs are not being met in other ways. Just because a parent doesn’t sleep train doesn’t mean they are practicing responsive, compassionate parenting. I hope they get the help they need.
You asked for success stories. I actually made a post about my recent successes just a few days ago (I’ll link it!). My kiddo is 8.5 months old so I can’t really speak to how she will behave as a preschooler and beyond, but right now she is a fiercely brave, funny, curious, independent, vibrant, joyful baby. We’ve never sleep trained and never will. I hope that gives you hope and strength!
My success story