I have advice but you aren't going to like it. The advice you might like is to obtain a copy of a book called "Sweet Sleep" and read it cover to cover. It contains the latest research-backed information about sleep, not just what some first wave behaviorists opined after doing experiments on dogs back in the mid century. (Sleep training is just dog training from the mid-century and does not, I repeat does not, has been studied and absolutely does not, and it has been repeatedly studied and documented that it does not reduce the number of wakes a child has. It just increases their distress.)

Here's the advice you aren't going to like ...

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Your child is not going to reliably sleep through the night without waking for one reason or another until somewhere between age 3 and 4. And that is developmentally normal. Nothing in your story right now is wrong, bad, off, or worrisome. I'm sorry that you ever had expectations set to the contrary. Those people were cruel and the only possible result would be to make you think something was wrong with you and/or your child. There is nothing wrong. Your daughter is behaving exactly as is correct for her age.

And. It. Sucks. Because you need sleep even if she doesn't. You need consistent night time sleep. And you aren't able to get that need met because your daughter is growing up exactly right. Two things can be true at the same time.

Day time sleep has an effect on night time sleep but ONLY after age two. She's not that old yet. Mess with her day time sleep at your peril, it won't change the nights.

Given that you say waking for hours, is it possible that your idea of bed time doesn't match her biorhythm? Is it possible that what you think of as bed time is actually something her body treats as another nap? Some kids can go to bed at 6-7 pm for the night. Other kids go to bed at 9-10-11 pm/midnight, but catch an hour or so nap around 6 pm. Both of these sleep profiles are equally healthy and normal, but there is no money in it if the latter profile weren't pathologized (if you get my drift). If you suspect your daughter is the latter type of child, then treat that evening nap as a nap and do the bed time routine later at true night sleeping time, and that will likely sort you right as rain. (Not for nothing but there is a correlation between what is socially considered a late bed time and intelligence.)

ABSOLUTELY. What is the worry? That the kid is scamming you to get more food which they are then going to turn around and sell to their friends on the playground? Kids, especially infants, haven't learned to have a dysfunctional relationship with food and hunger. If they are hungry, they show it. If they aren't, they show satiety. Definitely don't mess with this and you'll get a human with a good food relationship.

You've got cause and effect wrong on the more food = food coma thing. Both are caused by the same thing but hunger can interfere. The same thing is a growth spurt. When a kid is in a growth spurt they eat a ton and sleep a ton. Now, hunger can prevent sleep even in a growth spurt. But that growth spurt is going to spurt and it is a great thing you are doing to support it.

Your parenting instincts ROCK.

"Leaf Mold" is the name given to that absolutely rich, fluffy, amazing turf found in forests. Could they have named it better so we don't think of food gone rotten on the counter? Maybe. But it is a lovely, wonderful, amazing thing.

Best thing to do with leaves is leave them alone. Let them turn to fabulously delicious soil where they fall. And bonus, fewer chores to do. Plus you can sell all those leaf rakes and get some storage space back.

[Kid's name], stop exercising and get down here and eat some cake!

Which they’ve now decided they don’t like any of the food we make even though it’s exactly the same stuff that would be at daycare.

Are you judging this based on dinner? Ask any pediatric dietician and they will tell you that toddlers and preschoolers are quite likely to skip dinner. It might not be the food but the fact that there is a meal at that hour which is the issue. The recommendation is to serve a full meal afternoon snack and then consider dinner a bonus meal if they even eat it at all.

Which then prolongs the cycle of not eating enough and needing night feeds and then not eating much because there was milk overnight. I feel like we have to cut the night feeds somehow but it feels really cruel to starve them when they’re used to it…

Trust your instincts. It is biologically normal for children to have one or two night feeds up until age 3. Though at some point you can start leaving "the offering" (a bowl of food you are comfortable cleaning up left in their room for them to eat from overnight without waking you, such as a bowl of cheerios).

The sleep is a little better but still not sleeping through the night

Unless you get extremely lucky, plan on your child not sleeping through the night until age 3. Instead, focus on teaching them what is appropriate for them to do by themselves when they wake in their room. You'll sleep through the night and they will wake, play with some toys, and put themselves back to sleep and everyone will thrive and be happy.

As a long term nanny and now a parent myself, I've had exactly ONE charge out of 22 + my own child who can sleep 8 hours with no bottle. He stirs but puts himself back to sleep silently and if you aren't watching a video monitor, you'd have no idea that he had stirred.

But if you ask The Mister about our own child, he'd swear our own kid sleeps twelve hours with no bottle and no stirring. That's because THE MISTER sleeps twelve hours and wouldn't hear a smoke alarm, much less the child stir. So I agree with you to consider the source and that it is very likely fantasy talk.

• most babies do their highest caloric intake at night because it is the lowest stimulation time. While it is possible to have them fast all night long, it isn't in their best interests because their stomach has a fixed size and simply cannot hold enough calories to get them through the nightly brain growth without a meal. Can vs should. And also, that pediatrician needs to attend some continuing education.

• the fact that children sleep less well in the room with the parents is EXACTLY WHY roomsharing is recommended to prevent SIDS. Cannot die in deep sleep if you never get to deep sleep. Sleep apart at your own risk. And on that note, almost every single SIDS prevention tip is designed to give your child sh-tty sleep in order to prevent sleeping deeply because you cannot die in deep sleep if you never get to deep sleep; it is by design. Ask me sometime how I feel about that.

• sleep training doesn't teach them that their bed is safe to sleep in. It teaches children that parents don't want to hear them cry. There have been objective studies that find that children night wake the exact same amount whether sleep trained or not. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. But the sleep trained children wake silently. So this one is one where the benefit is to the child from having a well rested adult caregiver. But the child doesn't learn anything from it other than to shut up.

My 11 month old drank from a water fountain. We expected him to play in it, but he leaned in like a school child who had been doing it all their life and pursed his lips and took a slurp.

it’s been 13 years lying, deceitful and sneaky behavior, provable fabrication of events, and denials of truths

Okay, but that's just typical child-with-ADHD. Show me a child with ADHD and I'll show you a liar who fabricates events and denies truths.

Would you like to know why? Read on!

Because the child with ADHD has been held to standards that are absolutely completely out of whack with who they are biologically (yes ADHD is a biology condition which is why medication is effective). But being children, they aren't able to articulate. So they lie because it 'makes the problem go away'. What problem?

The parent asking them if they've done their homework. They say yes instead of -- No, I haven't done my homework yet because despite wanting to, I cannot get my body to cooperate with my desires. I absolutely intend to have it done by the time it is due, I'm a good child who enjoys homework and wants to meet those expectations. I'll do it as soon as my body starts following my brain's directions and sits down/picks up a pencil. If I tell you I haven't done it yet, you'll ask me, "Why?" and I just cannot explain to you because though TheInfamousJ is able to type all this out, that's because she's 22 years my senior so has learned a lot of metacognition I don't have seeing as how my brain isn't even finished developing yet. I don't have the words. So yes, Dad [or whatever parent you are], I've done my homework because by tomorrow afternoon this statement will be true anyway and it saves me from having to deal with your ish about me, my brain, and how completely unacceptable it and I am to you. ...... except that time where my body starts following my brain's directions? It never came before the homework was due. I need help. But you are punishing me rather than assisting me.

and so it goes

Having to do the work to learn healthy techniques to healthily regulate one's own emotions so that one can coregulate small humans who are just learning how to do the alive thing and then actually putting into place what one has learned is a challenge vs not doing any of this? You don't say. /s

These preliminary findings, which will be submitted soon for publication, should be interpreted with caution since the diversity of our sample was limited.

The authors polled 100ish parents across the country; just 100ish parents. Are any of you all family studies scholars? Is this really something which would be published with this kind of study design simply due to the inclusion of the "should be interpreted with caution" caveat? Like, in a reputable peer-reviewed journal, published? My background has me completely flabbergasted that something of this nature would come to be and I need reassurance that it is okay in its field.

a 36-year-old mother of two children under 5 reflected that she often feels like she “has nothing to give” and gets “easily overstimulated and overwhelmed all day every day.” She ended her reflections with the simple confession: “I often feel out of control.”

Oh lovely woman, you've skipped a few grades in Gentle Parenting. The first steps are to learn effective and healthy techniques to regulate one's own emotions. You, my darling lovely woman with two under five, have not. You are burned out, overstimulated, and overwhelmed because you haven't. One cannot pour from an empty teacup and no teacher was ever deemed effective who taught from the textbook without having a deep understanding of the material.

I fear that situations like the above will lead to mass impressions on the youth that respectful, emotionally intelligent parenting is useless simply because children are not unaware of burned out, tapped out, stressed out, touched out, and overstimulated parents. They are more attuned than we know.

It took me twenty years, a lot of therapy, several post graduate degrees, and twenty one children raised from bottles to backpacks as the AIC (adult in charge) during weekday daytime hours as a nanny to dial in my ability to healthily regulate my own emotions and sensory needs without disadvantaging any children who came into my area of effect. Save the Duggars, I don't think any actual parents (note, gentle reader, I am also an actual parent of a darling son) will have the opportunity to go through 20+ children as part of their learning curve. I think that Gentle Parenting is a fabulous and delightful ideal to aim for, but perhaps more realistic is Good Enough Parenting where you sometimes let them be angry without having to tell them that they are angry (footnote), while you go sip your tea in another room while it is still hot.

(footnote) Telling someone the name of their emotion in the moment without, you know, helping them with what to do with it, is unhelpful but it makes for great Instagram reels. Imagine yourself, very, very, very, very thirsty and unable to get a drink. Along comes someone who can provide you with a drink. Instead, they turn to you and say, "You are thirsty." And then they sit with you in your thirst. Rather than, you know, getting you a drink or anything. You'd gain a vocabulary word, but no skills. Same here with naming emotions. Magda Gerber was on the right track but she didn't get to the station, if you follow my analogy. And "Good Inside" can be summarized on a fortune cookie as: "They aren't giving you a hard time, they are having a hard time. Your experience is accidental." This, too, isn't the station.

I'm reading this from my laptop in my bed with my baby tucked up in his bassinet within arm's reach (which, amusingly enough, is the product name of the bassinet as well). My goal is to co-sleep in the roomsharing sense for the first year since I am breastfeeding.

Have I fallen asleep with him in the same bed as me? Absolutely. Did it the first night after he was born, in the hospital, even. I was in labor for over 24 hours and was knackered. The nurse came in and gently took him from me and put him back in the plastic box by my side. Hospital was big on "rooming in".

So, because I knew I absolutely could involuntarily head off to slumberland while breastfeeding, I took care to set my bed to be as safe as possible should this occur. It's like wearing a seatbelt in a car -- no plans for an accident, but just in case.

And let me tell you, my mental health is great! I know enough about me to know that my mental health would be far worse if I had to trudge down the hall in order to breastfeed at night or chastised myself for sharing a bed at such times as my body desperately needed sleep so took it. And with me sane in the membrane, I'm the kind of parent kiddo deserves in terms of personal quality. He doesn't deserve me loopy from sleep deprivation; so I'm not, mostly.

When did this become a contentious topic.

When people decided to make the perfect the enemy of the good. I don't know what concise term it is that is happening here, but it is the same as Time Out. So before Time Out was a thing, parents would assault their children simply because they, the parents, felt upset or frustrated with their children existing as new people who were still learning. In order to keep children from being hit so hard they'd welt or bruise, the public health authorities convinced parents that Time Out was by far more effective -- go sit in a corner by yourself! The only thing it was more effective at was getting that child out of the walloping range of an emotional parent; the goal. But if the public health authorities told those parents that, they'd keep hitting their kids. Time Out is not actually an effective teaching tool and for parents who aren't inclined to beat children, it's actually a poor choice to make vs taking the teachable moment to teach. So it isn't really A Good Thing as it has been branded. But if it saves even one child from harm, let's spread the good word.

Same with this one. Some children were overlaid by inebriated parents. Saying that children in the bed is A Bad Thing will save the lives of children whose parents are prone to inebriation and would otherwise have bedshared with them. And since it saves even one child from harm, we spread the good word. However, much like the parent who isn't going to beat their child above, there is also the parent who avoids intoxicants.

Yet people like hard and fast rules and like sanctimony. So they'll stan No Kids in the Bed under all circumstances without noting the nuance.

Personally, we follow the Safe Sleep 7, though baby spends more sleeping hours in his own bassinet than in our bed. Yet sometimes, only proximity to parents will do at night and so we make it as safe as possible so we can all get some much needed sleep.