Baby Monitor with Delay

post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2022-10-03T01:40:01.371Z · LW · GW · 13 comments

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13 comments

Our youngest (15m) has recently started sleeping through the night on her own, without us needing to get up for feeding or settling. But she's still waking ( one of) us up, because she often cries a bit before falling back asleep. Turning the monitor off entirely is an option, but then if something were pretty wrong (ex: vomiting) we might keep sleeping. I'd be interested in a monitor with a configurable delay: only turn on the monitor if they've been crying for, say, 8min.

A monitor like this would also be useful for sleep training. One common approach is to pick some sort of timing pattern for when to go back in to settle the baby, and not go back in before then. For example, you might settle them, and then hope they stop crying and fall asleep, but if they're still crying in 15min you repeat. Trying to ignore someone you're very attached to cry while trying to remember when exactly it will have been 15min while super sleepy is not fun. If baby monitors had configurable snooze buttons, after settling the baby you could snooze the monitor and try to fall back asleep. If you're lucky they fall back asleep before the fifteen minutes are up, and you more sleep.

There are a bunch of ways to make this fancier, including only counting crying and not other noises or identifying unusual crying, but even something basic like turning on when the average recent volume reaches a threshold would be very helpful.

I did find someone who built a prototype using a phone, with a much shorter delay (10s). I can't find any products, though. Would other people find this useful?

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comment by waveman · 2022-10-03T07:49:15.744Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

> Our youngest (15m) has recently started sleeping through the night

Initially I was going to point out that letting them cry themselves out sets the scene for neediness and insecurity down the track. But at 15 months it is a different story and what you are doing is fine. You must be at your wits' ends. Ours slept through at 6 weeks which was bad enough.

Replies from: jkaufman
↑ comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2022-10-03T11:13:53.686Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

letting them cry themselves out sets the scene for neediness and insecurity down the track

I'm not sure how to read this; where are you on the continuum from "I heard it's bad" to "I read all the papers and came to a deep considered view"?

(My understanding is that the state of research on sleep training, like most other parenting strategies, is pretty terrible.)

Ours slept through at 6 weeks

People often mean different things by "sleeping through the night" (I blame Moore and Ucko 1957 for using 5hr starting at midnight) so we should make sure we're talking about the same thing. Since maybe 12m the pattern had been that Nora would wake once to feed around 3am, with occasional wakings before or after where she might or might not need settling. The recent change is that we decided to drop the night feeding, and now she typically sleeps 9pm-7am without needing anything from us (though, as in the post, she might still cry briefly at the end of a sleep cycle).

Replies from: crabman
↑ comment by philip_b (crabman) · 2022-10-03T14:54:12.217Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm not sure how to read this; where are you on the continuum from "I heard it's bad" to "I read all the papers and came to a deep considered view"?

I also thought so when I read your post. I'm at the "The book 'The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog' says so" point. The book is not about sleep in particular, it's about psychological trauma in childhood, especially the one obtained from neglect.

Also, I think this might cause the child to develop either an avoidant attachment style (there's no point in crying or asking others for help, they won't come anyway).

Replies from: jkaufman
↑ comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2022-10-03T15:20:05.276Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm at the "The book 'The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog' says so" point. The book is not about sleep in particular, it's about psychological trauma in childhood, especially the one obtained from neglect.

My understanding is the book is about children who were severely neglected and abused, and while I haven't read it I'd think it was even less relevant to evaluating sleep training than the kind of crummy studies we have on sleep training in particular? The gulf between "no one comes when I cry a little, I'm sleepy, let's go back to sleep" and "no one comes when I cry hungry for hours and hours in a dirty diaper" is huge, as is the one between "this happens a few times when I'm first learning how to sleep on my own" and "this happens every day for years".

I think this might cause the child to develop either an avoidant attachment style (there's no point in crying or asking others for help, they won't come anyway)

The general idea is that you're teaching them a pattern of when crying will and won't work, not that crying never works. In the rest of their life they still experience having requests (including pre-verbal ones like crying or pointing) acknowledged and respected.

Replies from: crabman
↑ comment by philip_b (crabman) · 2022-10-03T15:22:02.566Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Ok, I don't know more than that about addressing children's crying. I just thought that ignoring it is (almost always?) bad but I'm not sure.

Replies from: jkaufman
↑ comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2022-10-03T16:06:32.634Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

What do you think about my response to pharadae [LW(p) · GW(p)] below?

Replies from: crabman
↑ comment by philip_b (crabman) · 2022-10-03T16:36:05.313Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I don't know how to square that with the idea that one shouldn't ignore their crying kids. I have no idea how kids' crying at night works. Is it possible that a parent should just suck it up and come and comfort the baby every time they cry? Maybe you can comfort her since she's crying but not give her the reward of soothing her until she falls asleep? Is it possible that she cries at night because she's doesn't get enough cuddles during the day or because the room looks scary or something like that? I don't know enough about the situation and I don't have any kids of my own and don't have any practical experience of dealing with them. Maybe you can be there with her in her sleeping room when she cries but still make it so that she learns to self-soothe and put herself to sleep? Like, idk, stay with her but don't rock her to sleep or something like that.

Replies from: ChristianKl
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-08T21:21:41.516Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I don't know how to square that with the idea that one shouldn't ignore their crying kids.

It seems like you don't have an explicit justification for why one shouldn't do that, and basically believe that because people have told you.

There might be valid reasons for that notion or not, but there's no necessity to square it together.

comment by Zian · 2022-10-03T04:21:54.864Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

How confident are you that it is possible to differentiate something significant (vomiting) from something that should be delayed? Is it hard to differentiate between different types of cries?

Replies from: jkaufman
↑ comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2022-10-03T11:31:47.300Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I can distinguish a few different cries, at least with my own kids. With Nora (15m) right now the two clearest are a complaining half-asleep cry where she's very likely to go back to sleep on her own if I leave her and pain cries which are very different and much more urgent feeling. With the older two (6y and 8y) there's again a pretty big difference between "I'm objecting" cries (I didn't get my way in a game, my sister pushed me, etc) and "I'm in real pain and want help" cries (fell down badly, stubbed toe, etc).

comment by pharadae · 2022-10-03T08:19:14.996Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

We used an old phone and the (paid) Babyphone 3g App. You can set a delay, although not as Long as you suggested.

I do not recommend such a long time. Waking at night hast a reason and Kids need time to build the confidence, that they are not alone. Not reacting for too long can lead to panic and result in a much more parent-dependent behavior and inability to sleep again without the parents help/attendance.

I've had much better results with learning to sleep without parents while going to sleep (Iteratively prolonged times of absence when going to sleep).

Replies from: jkaufman
↑ comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2022-10-03T11:27:10.998Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Let's say you're a baby. You reach the end of a sleep cycle and become partially alert. What do you do? Ideally, if nothing is wrong, you settle back in for another sleep cycle. But this is something babies need to learn to do, and while some of them pick this up very quickly others initially come to full alertness every time and won't doze back off without some combination of cuddles, noise, and motion. Sleep training is essentially a collection of strategies for teaching babies (a) the skill of falling back to sleep on their own ("self soothing") and (b) when they should use it.

In this case Nora has already solidly learned (a) and mostly learned (b) but still tests the boundaries some times. For example, we were recently on vacation in a tightly packed house (28 people in a 5br) and Nora quickly figured out that every time she cried at night she pretty quickly got cuddles and nursing (because we didn't want her to wake up our older kids, 8y and 6y, sleeping in the same room). Over the course of the week she started crying more and more often during the night, correctly (and unfortunately) learning that the adult-implemented pattern for when she needed to go back to sleep on her own had shifted. After we got back home, we had about a week of gradually re-teaching her the normal pattern.

Replies from: jkaufman