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Comment by jonplackett | Hacker News Reader

The control group should still be sleep deprived for 6 months and see what that does to their brain.

As a father of a newborn never have I ever seen an HN comment so incisive and to the point.

As the father of a 9-year-old I have to warn you: the sleep deprivation does not end at 6 months.

As a father of three, ages 4, 5.88, and 9 I can concur that the sleep deprivation doesn't improve much. Especially if they are neurodivergent.

  > ages 4, 5.88 ... if they are neurodivergent.

I think they may have learned something from dad.

as father of seven...

Happy birthday to the youngest and oldest!

Wait, the 4 year old and 9 year old were both born today? Or is 5.88 a typo?

Or different architectures where floats can’t be represented?

Maybe they're more dense so they don't float? ;)

As a father of multiple kids younger than that, I have a very different experience.

I’m sorry you’re going through this, but I’m slightly taken aback by this comment because this isn’t a common feature of having older children. The only parents I know having sleep deprivation problems have very young children. I have a lot of parent friends and I’ve never heard anyone claim that sleep deprivation continued until older ages, let alone that it’s common.

Yeah it moves from waking up in the middle of the night to having fights about going to bed and getting up in the morning...

Like I said, I have kids too. But enforcing boundaries and sleep schedules is lot different than claiming a decade of sleep depreciation. Kids sleep longer than we do as adults. I’m not losing sleep by getting them up in the morning unless I stay up late on my own, because we both have things to do in the morning.

My wife and I have a 7 month old and have learned that other parents do not like hearing about babies who sleep well. We don’t bring it up deliberately, but it comes up in conversation naturally sometimes. I have a lot of friends who say their 2+ year olds still don’t sleep through the night and say we’re lucky.

The luck attribution really downplays the rigidity of the schedule and routines my wife and I have kept for the little dude for MONTHS. It is the same schedule every single evening barring extenuating circumstances. But nobody wants to accept that we actually put effort in day after day to protect and foster the sleep schedule.

You may be attributing way too much to what you are doing. And that will make it hard to accept the inevitable negative chance outcomes that will be entirely out of your control. I know parents whose first kid slept through the night at 3 months, and their second one not sleeping through the night at age 3. Skill issue? I don’t think so. And these people are such routine enforcers that they described themselves as “stubborn.” And then there is sickness. Amount of sun and physical activity the child gets during the day, which will depend on geography and the kid’s personality. Our 6 year old daughter sits down, and does a ton of art. Her 2 year old sister runs laps around the house for fun. Her favorite activity is running and slamming herself to the couch. Do you think these kids get similar physical activity? What if I told you they go to sleep around the same time and have no trouble waking up?

Edit: Forgot to mention night terrors. Doctor told us about it for the first one. Had no idea what he meant, and didn’t even care to look it up because it didn’t happen. Until the 2nd one hit 15 months or so. Imagine a barely 1 year old in an extremely confused state while asleep, sitting in her bed, screaming, sometimes hitting her head on the sides of the bed, getting more agitated if you pick her up. I read that it can last up to 30 minutes. Thank god ours were no longer than 5 minutes. It’s horrific when it happens for the first time. Straight out of the Exorcist movie.

What could a 6-24 month old possibly do from their bed in their room, to disturb your sleep in your bed in your room? Bring a trumpet to bed and badly play Miles Davis?

What happened to lights off, door closed, do whatever you want in complete darkness in the bed that you aren’t able to climb out of?

Cry? Scream? Many kids can climb out of cribs earlier than 24m.

I might have too French of an attitude towards parenting for American taste, but as long as the crying and screaming isn’t based on anything real (and as long as you’ve childproofed the children’s room well enough it shouldn’t be) the child will be fine and what y’all need is sufficient distance between the bedrooms, some nice, solid brick walls in between the the rooms and some earplugs.

What is real? Is poop in the diaper real enough to cry for? Is fever real enough? How do you know whether the kid is not having a fever seizure or crying because of poop in diaper without going in there? How about night terrors where the kid is throwing themselves against their crib?

The fever seizure happened to a friend’s kid. Ambulance showing up, etc. Seizures can cause permanent damage. This kid wasn’t premature and he has no other obvious differences than our kids. Am I supposed to believe/pray it can’t happen to me and just sleep?

I like sleep, but I don’t like it that much. What’s the point of having a kid if I am supposed to ignore their needs? Make sure they pay into social security so I can retire or smtg?

I remember talking to a parent recently and their kid didn't sleep for a long time. It turned out to be some undiagnosed something-or-other (allergy?). Can't recall the specifics but sleeping issues cleared up for the kid - and parents - when it was treated.

sorry can't remember the specifics, I'm sure i will recall the moment the edit link disappears on this post... :)

Right! I am very open about the sleep challenges I face with my children, but I also believe that the problem is due to lack of a rigid schedule. Routine is key not only for sleep, but general development. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to get on the same page with my spouse about this.

Haha, getting on the same page was easy for us cause I’m a light sleeper and our little dude was waking up every ~1 hr for weeks during the night so I’d wake up when my wife fed him. We hit our breaking point when we were both so tired we couldn’t set up a pack and play after about 30 mins of trying.

Same, as the father of three children, I believe a lot of it has to do with sleep pattern conditioning. You are literally training minds to sleep on a rigid schedule to keep your own sanity. That implies sticking to rigid timing as much as possible and creating the optimal environment for success. E.g., correct lighting, air movement, sound (I highly recommend “Hey Siri, play Pure Meditation playlist”) at a low volume, and if you live in an otherwise particularly hectic environment, appropriately dosed and timed melatonin supplements. You reap the rewards of your own hard training work, or suffer the consequences of the lack thereof.

Way too much attribution to what you did vs chance outcomes.

Detailed it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47988357

The battlefield changes as kids age. It’s impossible to have any realistic discussion about sleep habits without discussing the elephant in the room. What is your device policy and how do you manage screen time, what your bedtime routine is (you better have one!) and how good you are at sticking to the timing on a daily basis.

My son started sleeping through at 6 weeks... my daughter on the hand took more than twice that to start sleeping through. she was hard work.

Yeah it comes and goes doesn’t it. My 8 year old started waking us up twice a night for a week a while back!

But subjecting non-parents to 9 years of sleep deprivation would definitely be against the Geneva convention.

It does depend on the child and you have to make compromises.

My daughter would sleep only on humans, so we started napping with her on our bodies at some point. That's how we gained back sleep, lol

Congrats and guard your sleep hygiene as much as possible (practically impossible advice to follow in most cases).

I went through a really rough period because of the lack of sleep. I noticed that hydration during that period was also challenging, so I wonder if this is related to the brain shrink effect.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323595

Ah thanks! This is the nicest response to a comment I’ve received.

Hang in there with the 6 month old. It gets easier every month. Mine are 4 and 8 now. Sometimes I really miss having a tiny baby - but I do like sleeping now.

Without all the oxytocin you get from hanging out with a newborn that would be awful

Completely correct. With all three of my children I was sleep deprived the first few months. But never in my life have I felt better.

For all the difficulties, children are rejuvenating and fun and provide purpose to life.

These brain chemical rewards apparently do not work on me, my (still young) kids provide no such rejuvenation. Luckily I'm a deep sleeper so I have no sleep deprivation problems.

This may change with age. My children were cute but didn't engage me much emotionally while they were still mostly crying, pooping, and trying their best to hurt themselves. Once they became more multi-faceted that changed.

Parents are supposed to sleep when the baby sleeps. Industrial work culture does not allow this. One of the many things leading the "Western" lifestyle to extinction.

This is funny in how cut and dry it is. My friend, do you have kids?

It's my theory that crying evolved as a trait because it forces parents to go find some place safe lest a predator finds them, thus ensuring the helpless kid can grow in safe environments.

Note that there is no mention of sleep in there. That's bonus round if you get it.

Non western parents gets woken up in the night and sleep deprived ... and then have duties during the day while the baby sleeps

The babies I know yet don't sleep like adults which means that you will be up at night at random hours that you are not used to and I think this has nothing to do with industrial work culture. That 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep is just a "dream" :).

I recall, as a twins dad, I did not have 2+ hours of uninterrupted sleep till they are 2 years old. (This depends on the kid though).

Prior to the industrial revolution polyphasic sleep was pretty standard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

That article does not say whether polyphasic sleep was standard because parents were synchronizing with their babies.

The polyphasic sleep schedule was aligned with darkness, not random times throughout the day. Daylight was far too valuable for that.

This varies, you still see some polyphasic sleep in countries that have very hot middle of the days, Greece + Spain off the top of my head. An intentional waste of daylight because the cooler mornings and evenings are better, but industrialisation has still reduced the frequency of these practices.

More that babies are designed for the tribe/family/group to all share in the responsibility of caring for the baby.

Though feeding schedules early on are still grueling.

Why? Isn’t sleep deprivation a consequence of having a child?

They should be sleep deprived the same way for it to be a real control group, at least in the context of "becoming a father". Otherwise it's just "being sleep deprived for 6-12 months has X effect", which is much less informative. We already know being sleep deprived for long stretches is really bad.

but then you're not comparing what it is like to be father with what it like to not be a father.

such an experimental design would miss the forest for the trees.

I'm pretty sure you can be father and have someone to take care of the baby in the night, your wife or paid nanny can do it, so omitting sleep deprivation from title is just sensational clickbait

Yes, so then that way you would know if there's something special about raising children that causes cerebellum shrinkage, or if it is just run of the mill sleep deprivation that causes it

reducing exercise does this kind of thing too. I assume new dads also stop exercise (of all kinds).

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