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When did people start putting babies in separate rooms to sleep?

J

Jade Cambell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 14, 2007
341
0
No other mammal does this, and only some human cultures do it. When did it start? Parents put their baby in a crib in a separate room, and it wails in terror because it needs it's mothers body, and it doesn't have a concept of time. It can't know that someone will come back later. It usually takes several months for the baby's spirit to be completely murdered to the point where they no longer cry. They've given up hope.

But why did parents start having their babies sleep in separate rooms? How did that start? I've looked it up everywhere, and i've found no solid info.
 
Babies living in terror? Well I, for one, say good! It's high time baby kind was revealed for the conspiratal terror network it truly represents.

America needs to wake up to the real terror threat!

For decades babies have clothed themselves in "the miracle of birth", wearing it like a suit of armor to deflect criticism and to bury the facts. Puppy-dog eyes and lopsided smiles serve only to distract from their dark and sinister desires, to hide away their evil machinations. Since nearly the dawn of man, we've slaved under our baby oppressors, given unto them our earnings and our women, forced to hunt and gather and forgo sleep and luxury to bend over backwards for their every whim. I ask you, when was the last time you saw a baby put in an honest days work, and not leech parasitically from our society? When was the last time a baby fed you, read you a story or spent his or her earnings on a shiny new bauble for you? Their cries ring out at every Denny's, every Outback Steakhouse, thieving little monsters stealing away precious leisure-minutes from even those who have escaped their grasp.

Do not be fooled. Every second, every penny they whisk away from you is used to fuel their enormous outer space nightmare machine, a twisted amalgamation of technology and black magicks, designed to tear through the fabric of space time and sew nothing but despair. It will fell every sunny day, every picturesque beach, every rainbow and break the back of every surf bum. We must rise up against the babykin before it is too late, before they have called to the old gods and enslaved us all.
 
No offense but this is weirdest thread I've read in a while. (thinks for a second) take that back, its been demoted to just odd.

anyways, I just think parents get tired of hearing the damned thing and put it as far away as possible. This is one of those no real answer questions.
 
irmongoose said:
Dude, that's depressing.

I'd like to meet parents who do such things, look them in the eye, and ask, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"


irmongoose
Click to expand...

Depressing nothing, Desperate more like. I have seen people and all they want to do is sleep because their baby is keeping them up.
 
Iscariot said:
Babies living in terror? Well I, for one, say good! It's high time baby kind was revealed for the conspiratal terror network it truly represents.

America needs to wake up to the real terror threat!

For decades babies have clothed themselves in "the miracle of birth", wearing it like a suit of armor to deflect criticism and to bury the facts. Puppy-dog eyes and lopsided smiles serve only to distract from their dark and sinister desires, to hide away their evil machinations. Since nearly the dawn of man, we've slaved under our baby oppressors, given unto them our earnings and our women, forced to hunt and gather and forgo sleep and luxury to bend over backwards for their every whim. I ask you, when was the last time you saw a baby put in an honest days work, and not leech parasitically from our society? When was the last time a baby fed you, read you a story or spent his or her earnings on a shiny new bauble for you? Their cries ring out at every Denny's, every Outback Steakhouse, thieving little monsters stealing away precious leisure-minutes from even those who have escaped their grasp.

Do not be fooled. Every second, every penny they whisk away from you is used to fuel their enormous outer space nightmare machine, a twisted amalgamation of technology and black magicks, designed to tear through the fabric of space time and sew nothing but despair. It will fell every sunny day, every picturesque beach, every rainbow and break the back of every surf bum. We must rise up against the babykin before it is too late, before they have called to the old gods and enslaved us all.
Click to expand...

and I thought cats are sinister
 
After a few weeks of listening to my little girl scream and trying to work 40+ hours a week I got up once night, looked at my girlfriend, looked at my little girl in her bassinet, then pushed the bassinet to the next room. When I returned to bed my girlfriend was crying and I went back to sleep. I slept REALY well. In the morning my girlfriend thanked me. By then end of the week my little girl was sleeping like, well, a baby. I don't regret my actions one bit.

There have been several times where my actions have angered my girlfriend only to have her thank me later. A few times it backfired but not as much as the typical sitcom would like you to believe.
 
Jade Cambell said:
No other mammal does this, and only some human cultures do it. When did it start? Parents put their baby in a crib in a separate room, and it wails in terror because it needs it's mothers body, and it doesn't have a concept of time. It can't know that someone will come back later. It usually takes several months for the baby's spirit to be completely murdered to the point where they no longer cry. They've given up hope.

But why did parents start having their babies sleep in separate rooms? How did that start? I've looked it up everywhere, and i've found no solid info.
Click to expand...

...as the parents got horny...
 
LumbermanSVO said:
After a few weeks of listening to my little girl scream and trying to work 40+ hours a week I got up once night, looked at my girlfriend, looked at my little girl in her bassinet, then pushed the bassinet to the next room. When I returned to bed my girlfriend was crying and I went back to sleep. I slept REALY well. In the morning my girlfriend thanked me. By then end of the week my little girl was sleeping like, well, a baby. I don't regret my actions one bit.

There have been several times where my actions have angered my girlfriend only to have her thank me later. A few times it backfired but not as much as the typical sitcom would like you to believe.
Click to expand...

*SOB**........ I sent you a private message. Please read it.
 
LumbermanSVO said:
After a few weeks of listening to my little girl scream and trying to work 40+ hours a week I got up once night, looked at my girlfriend, looked at my little girl in her bassinet, then pushed the bassinet to the next room. When I returned to bed my girlfriend was crying and I went back to sleep. I slept REALY well. In the morning my girlfriend thanked me. By then end of the week my little girl was sleeping like, well, a baby. I don't regret my actions one bit.

There have been several times where my actions have angered my girlfriend only to have her thank me later. A few times it backfired but not as much as the typical sitcom would like you to believe.
Click to expand...

Yes... yes! Come brother, we must throw off the shackles of the bourgeoisie!
 
Hmm. This is kind of an odd thread for this forum, but I'll chip in.

I don't know when parents started to put kids in a seperate room, but presumably it was related to parents wanting to have some privacy and time to themselves, having realized or been told that babies happily sleep through the night if provided th right environment. I suspect it is something of a Industrial Revolution phenomena, as much before that people didn't often have extra bedrooms.

Both of my kids sleep in their own room and have done so from a young age (~6 months). A little reading, singing, and a few pats on the back and they fall gently asleep. Usually just before sunrise our youngest begins to babble and coo. One of us grabs him and we begin our day.
 
irmongoose said:
Dude, that's depressing.

I'd like to meet parents who do such things, look them in the eye, and ask, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"


irmongoose
Click to expand...

Nah, I would like to meet people who do that and ask them, why the hell did you have a kid?
 
as a new dad, i can see the merits of punting the cute little blighter into her own room as soon as she starts sleeping throught the night, because at the moment, EVERY SINGLE TINY BARLEY AUDIBLE WHIMPER OR SNUFFLE wakes me and my wife up, and it would be realy nice to sleep uninterupted for more than an hour.

As soon as our daughter is sleeping most of the night, we plan to put in her own bed in her own room at the oposite end of the house (not that far, its only a 3 bed semi') along with a baby monitor set up so it will pick up cry's but not every slight snuffle. Then maybe my wife and I may get a descent sleep.
 
If you don't teach the baby to sleep in its own room, you get the exact situation my one friend has. His 4 year old daughter will only go to sleep if:
a) She sleeps in bed with her parents.
b) One the parents sleeps in her bed in her room.

Sorry. You have a marriage destined to fail at that point.
 
At the moment my daughter is 16 months old. When it is time for bed all we have to do s tell her so. She grabs some pajamas from her dresser and hands them to us. She sleeps all night in her own bed, not a crib, and when she wakes up she starts playing with her toys. We still keep tabs on her with a baby monitor.

At the point that I had rolled her out of the room I had become a safety concern at work due to a lack of sleep. I job required that I drive a truck during rush hour traffic delivering to construction sites and operating forklifts. The regional operations manager actually had a meeting with me to see what needed to be done about it. That is the night I rolled my daughter into the other room. That is also the night that all three of us started sleeping better.

Maybe to you guys I'm a heartless shlep and my daughter is gonna off herself as a teenager. But right now everybody who meets my daughter is amazed at how smart and developed she is, including her doctor and the day-care lady who has been running a day-care out of her home since the early 60's.
 
I think it happened somewhere around the time of the Baby Monitor.

They like to feel your body? Seriously? You can't sleep with a baby, even a heavy blanket will smother them. Ever hear of people rolling onto their children and killing them?

What's the difference if you had them in a Bassinet two feet away or in a Bassinet two rooms away?

This is just Crazy Talk!
 
LumbermanSVO said:
After a few weeks of listening to my little girl scream and trying to work 40+ hours a week I got up once night, looked at my girlfriend, looked at my little girl in her bassinet, then pushed the bassinet to the next room. When I returned to bed my girlfriend was crying and I went back to sleep. I slept REALY well. In the morning my girlfriend thanked me. By then end of the week my little girl was sleeping like, well, a baby. I don't regret my actions one bit.
Click to expand...

Thats called the cry-out method. If you go to attend to the baby for every squeak they'll start depending on it and won't be able to put themselves to sleep. One or two nights of this method and they'll start sleeping when everyone else does.
Also, once a night isn't bad at all. Most babies need to be changed or fed at least once a night. It gets bad when the kid starts waking up every hour.


As far as letting the kid sleep with you. The longer you do it the harder it is to get them to sleep in their own bed. You don't want a three year old sleeping with you. Thats why people move them to their own room. To get the kids used to the idea of sleeping in their own room and on their own.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I'm fairly certain that the OP has no kids of his own. It's always the childless who are the harshest critics of parents... :rolleyes:
 
Jade Cambell said:
Parents put their baby in a crib in a separate room, and it wails in terror because it needs it's mothers body, and it doesn't have a concept of time. It can't know that someone will come back later. It usually takes several months for the baby's spirit to be completely murdered to the point where they no longer cry. They've given up hope.
Click to expand...

You clearly have a different perspective on this. Babies need to learn how to soothe themselves. When they are developmentally able to calm themselves down (around 3 months) is when they will stop crying on their own. It is not because they have "given up hope." Babies that sleep in a separate room still view their parents as sources of love and affection - but they don't NEED them to fall asleep.

I have a friend with the same attitude as you about this. He thinks that allowing a baby to cry itself to sleep teaches them that "no one is coming." I think it helps makes them well adjusted, and helps their parents sleep. If mom ain't happy, ain't no one happy.
 
bravo, Iscariot. work well done.

as for my opinion on the matter, even though i don't have a child:

its kinda needed, and important in my opinion. it, even at this early age, starts to build freedom, independence, and self sufficiency.
 
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