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The article mentions this 5y study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22966034/) which included a sleep training intervention at 7m, and found "no evidence of differences between intervention and control families for any outcome".

It sounds like the main concern would be starting sleep training too early (sub 6 months), or using it in unusual situations where there are already attachment issues.

> where you don't rock the child to sleep for an hour, but you check in on them, gently touch them, talk to them soothingly for a little bit, and then you leave them for a little while. Come back in a little bit and briefly soothe them, and then leave again for a little while. As long as they know you are there. And you could stretch those periods out to see how the child does

You just described the Ferber method, a very popular sleep training approach.

Thank you for saving me from having to look this up.

I thought the same thing, 'isn't that basically describing sleep training...?'

TIL: some people think "cry it out" means total abandonment, and that they will ignorantly and confidently tell others that it's child abuse.

> > As long as they know you are there.

This line was funny to me... like they think the baby is running on logic and not instinct at 6 months old.

Theres different levels of crying, and its easy to tell the difference as a parent. Theres regular, all-purpose crying which I'm in favor of allowing to run its course. Then theres actual panicked, full-on crying which is when I would say its time to intervene.

Not regarding a human child, but my spouse thought leaving our rescue dog, still a youngster only a few months old, in a cage in another room overnight was somehow proper, which frankly incensed me as cruel and abusive nonsense, because it's not the way of the wild, not what any of us were evolved for. And I'd lived with and worked with rescue animals for decades, so felt strongly about this.

(i put my foot down and gave her run of the house so she was soothed to be with her (generalized) family, and she's been fantastic ever since. my spouse is still indignant about her plan being abandoned, but it proved the effective and healthy choice.)

Crate training is pretty normal and not sure why you feel so weird about it. Is it “the way of the wild” to keep the dog in your house?

Docking tails and ears is normal too. Male circumcision is normal. Locking people in cages for possessing certain plants, extracts, chemicals is normal. War and all of the murder that goes on in it is normal. Burning coal is normal. Limiting rights of women is some countries is normal.

I don't get it either. Our shelter dogs were always crated overnight since they weren't allowed in the bedrooms and they would go there when it was bed time with no problem. Occasionally they'd go to their crate to take naps or seek refuge there during storms. I guess if a dog willingly going into a crate to sleep while everyone else slept is cruel and abusive I don't know what they'd think about actual abuse. Our dogs lived long happy lives. Most dogs I know have a spot that's tight and cozy, maybe even covered, that they go to; crate or not. If you crate train with positive reinforcement it's a benefit for everyone IMO even if you don't make them sleep in there.

I think what we did is much more similar to what you describe, with the crate door left open, so she didn't feel isolated when the other pets and humans were in other rooms. we moved the crate upstairs and left the door to it open, and she took a liking to it as her own space, and would choose to go sleep in it like it was her bedroom (or whatever), but having it at the distant end of the house clearly alone for the sake of isolating her is what I found counterproductive.

You're talking about the dog not minding being in the crate since you've taught them its nice and cozy. In that case why does it have to be a crate, why not say, an indoor doghouse?

As far as that goes, there's nothing wrong with that and that's not the part that people actually have problems with (but it's a nice strawman to argue against).

The part that is cruel and abusive is locking them up when nobody is at home so they can't damage your possessions. If there is some emergency like a fire, intruder, something falling down, etc, they can't do anything about it.

common, yes. what wolves and coyotes do, sort of, during the day when out hunting, but not leaving their pups alone overnight, right?

> because it's not the way of the wild

Not to defend crate training, but potty training, walking your dog on a schedule, feeding it processed dog food and generally keeping a pet indoors is also not the way of the wild.

> potty training, walking your dog on a schedule,

These are actually somewhat similar to wild dog behaviours. They usually have specific areas to poo, and they often have routines – albeit, not externally-enforced ones.

yep agree with all that too

Crate training is a good thing (imo) but should be done properly. Not just sticking them in a crate overnight in another room and ignoring them.

Our dog is crate trained, which makes travelling with him way easier for example. (He is 1 year old now, so at night he just walks into his crate whenever he feels tired. We don’t have to put him in his crate anymore).

You have to make sure they associate positive experiences with it.

good point. we left her crate set up with door open, which she could use as a "fort", and she did like that for napping. i guessed partly in the sense she doesn't have to stay partially awake worrying about being stepped on.

If only every owner would keep the damn door open.

Adding to this, we didn’t crate train our dog and while I wouldn’t say I regret that, it makes things harder.

She hated the crate when we introduced it. We couldn’t find any way to get her in there without her panicking and trying to dig out after a few minutes. She had a bad history before us and is completely fine outside the crate so we gave up.

Day to day it’s fine. She wanders on her own schedule, has a dog bed she claims as her space, and doesn’t really cause any issues. However, when we travel she’s loose in the car without a comfortable space. When some people visit there’s no obvious place to send her, so she has to be locked in a room where she isn’t used to being confined. When kids visit she has a harder time getting away from the chaos. She doesn’t have a consistently dark place during the day to sleep. The list goes on.

Crate training isn’t just about giving your dog a small room you can lock them in, it’s giving them a private, safe, emotionally and physically comfortable space they can call their own. The crate travels - so their safe space is always with them, they can escape to it, and they are in a comfortable place if you need to lock them up for some reason (as always happens sometimes). Our dog doesn’t have that.

We picked up a young stray. Too rambunctious to be left out overnight. Well-behaved generally but around 3 am he jumps on top of us and wants to play. Not working. A crate though? Seems barbaric. But we did it gently, in slowly increasing increments. If he became distressed, we let him out. I think that's probably key. Oh, sleepy time? Let's try to get him to do it in the crate for an hour. Then a few hours.

Now, around bed time, he goes in on his own, lies down and waits for his treat. He usually prefers to sleep in the crate, and he goes there during thunderstorms too; it's a good safe place. We don't usually have to lock the crate door anymore, but when he's rowdy it's "no! bed!" and he goes and lies down in the crate, and we can cinch him in, for a few more hours of rest. Even that's increasingly rare.

I think a major mistake is to use it to separate the dog from people. It's very important that he can hear us nearby, even just sleeping. If he can't hear us, it becomes separation anxiety and he needs to get out because he's trapped in an isolated place. About five minutes out of the bedroom and the whining will start. I'd guess that it's probably also important that it be predictable and associated with daily routines. And it should never be used as punishment.

that last paragraph is exactly what was wrong in our first few nights and which we changed by moving the crate into the main bedroom with us, and then there was no need for the crate door to be closed. everything seemed harmonious (hence my assertion the original distant part of house nonsense was unnatural isolation).

Yes, your final paragraph should be understood by all dog owners. Crates are not for punishment!

Dogs are not 'way of the wild' creatures. Most, if not all, wouldn't even survive in the wild without human intervention.

Don't worry, crate training is indeed illegal in many western European nations.

Americans who do this are deluded into thinking it's okay. I had the misfortune of living with a person who did this with their two dogs and I saw the impacts it had on the dog first hand.

No, 10000 years ago, when the dog fell asleep in the den with its "owners", the den door was NOT closed. It is abusive as fuck to crate train.

I'm also very happy to have seen states like California take a stand against usage of small crates within factory farming techniques with chicken and veal. There's still far more to be done on this front, but there will be an end to this practice eventually.

>Edit: I saw another comment which talked about "checking in" on the infant during sleep training. I think there is some middle ground I would be comfortable with after 6 months of age, where you don't rock the child to sleep for an hour, but you check in on them, gently touch them, talk to them soothingly for a little bit, and then you leave them for a little while. Come back in a little bit and briefly soothe them, and then leave again for a little while. As long as they know you are there. And you could stretch those periods out to see how the child does. But, again I would suggest to be very conservative and cautious and don't try this at too early of an age.

I have two children under the age of three, so this has been a topic I'm innately familiar with. What you are describing is the commonly taught method of "crying it out" or "sleep training", and yes, it's commonly suggested to wait until at least six months of age.

It's incredibly frustrating how many people in this thread seem to think that we are just abandoning our children for the evening and calling it abusive, even earlier in your own post.

Do you have children?

Not the commenter you replied to, but I am a parent.

I see attachment as one of the most important aspects of human experience. Forcibly severing this is, in my opinion, emotional abuse.

>Forcibly severing this is, in my opinion, emotional abuse.

When you think of parents letting their kid "cry it out", what do you picture? What is your understanding of the process?

Edit: Seems the answer to my question is over here[1].

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34177882

i have been with friends who let their baby cry it out in the other room while the parents entertained guests. it did feel like emotional abuse.

Well said. My wife is a therapist who works extensively with children and she would absolutely agree with you. Letting a child cry it out has profound effects of development, in ways that may be invisible or hard to notice for many years. Someone else in this thread mentioned The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog, which is a great book on the subject.

From the article:

"Hiscock's study, for example, the largest and longest longitudinal study done on sleep training, found sleep-trained children were no more likely to be insecurely attached to their caregiver at six years of age than their peers."

> Having read "The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog", which goes into a fair amount of detail regarding attachment and attachment disorders, letting an infant "cry it out" strikes me as child abuse.

You sound exactly like someone who doesn’t have kids, advising parents and speaking with authority that you don’t have.

> and speaking with authority that you don’t have.

All of us have (had) parents, the majority of us have been raised by parents, and that includes the childless people. And even the people who weren't fortunate enough to be raised by one or two parents are entitled to talk about parenting, I'd say that they're even more entitled to talk about it.

What is easier, watching a movie or making a movie? Or do you think those are equal in effort?

The discussion is in no way comparable. If anything, you could say that we've all been actors, i.e we've al been kids, but even that seems a little stretched.

Anyway, this talk of "it's so hard to be a parent!" mostly comes from middle-class well-to-do people for whom it shouldn't be actually hard to be parents, or at least not as hard as it objectively is to much poorer people.

I suspect they're mostly doing it (the complaining, that is) as a social signifier, the same way that part of the same well-to-do middle class people used to complain until not that long ago that they're over-worked because of all of the emails.

You have no authority to say they are not comparable, nor do you have any authority to say that being a child gives you any insight on how to be a parent.