[lern_too_spel]

Hypothesis: the parent, by forcing themselves to sleep train, conditions themselves to ignore more of the infant's emotions; and the infant, observing no reaction to their emotions, learns the same behavior, leading to higher incidence of autism.

Typically (aside from some neurological disorders), there is an underlying reason for the infant to be crying. They could be hungry or wanting to urinate or defecate (many cultures begin potty training shortly after birth). This is frequent because their stomachs, intestines, and bladders are small. Figuring out what they want and responding is normal and has a long history of working, not just among humans but among all mammals with dependent young.

It's astonishing that some pop-parenting guide came along and said, "You don't have to figure out what the baby is crying about if they happen to be crying at night or if you are sleepy," and nobody stopped to wonder what night time had to do with it.

[TeMPOraL]

Reality: sleep training enters the picture only after all the things you've mentioned have been checked first.

Even from a pragmatic point of view, it's hard to imagine otherwise, because all of those underlying reasons are quick to check and (usually) quick to mitigate. You don't even consider sleep training until exhausting every other option, because literally everything is easier than any of the sleep training methods.

[lern_too_spel]

All of those things have to be checked immediately every time they cry. The Ferber method, mentioned elsewhere in the thread, says to not even check on the baby for longer and longer periods after they start crying.

During the daytime, if they start crying and you haven't solved the issue, you don't just start ignoring them. Why would you do so at night?

[0xEFF]

Research shows no long term effects after age 6, positive or negative, of sleep training, so the research doesn't support your hypothesis.

Research shows many positive effects before age 6, both for the child and the family.

[metabagel]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34179412

[lern_too_spel]

As the article mentions, the research is amateurish. The experimental designs wouldn't pass muster at any tech company.

[shaklee3]

except there's no better research to contradict it

[lern_too_spel]

Without valid research in any direction, we should fall back on our prior, which is that ignoring crying infants at night is no less detrimental than ignoring crying during the day.

[shaklee3]

you're responding with that comment in an article with valid research.

[lern_too_spel]

As I pointed out earlier in this very thread, the article itself mentions that there is no valid research on the long term effects of sleep training.

The only valid research says that they stop waking up their parents. This is probably due to learned helplessness, which leads us to the hypothesis in my first comment.