AITA: should I let my partner sleep-train my four year old in peace?

A Reddit user is grappling with a sleep-training dilemma involving their four-year-old daughter, who is struggling to settle down at night. The father is attempting his own methods, including allowing her to watch cartoons and leaving her alone in her room, which has resulted in escalating tensions and emotional distress for both the child and the parents.

The user intervened during a particularly chaotic night, leading to conflict with the father, who believes that his approach will ultimately help their daughter self-soothe. Now, the user is questioning whether they should have stepped back and let the father handle the situation as he sees fit. Read the original story below to explore this challenging family dynamic.

‘ AITA: should I let my partner sleep-train my four year old in peace?’

Hello Reddit, my family is having some difficulties with getting our youngest (4F) to sleep. It has been an ongoing battle. She only wants me, and mostly rejects her father. He tries his best, but rejects my advice and wants to find his own methods.

Lately he has been letting her watch cartoons, and he was very happy with that because he could use the number of episodes to pressure her into behaving and sitting still / eating her dinner, but even that is getting problematic now. Last night was g**esome.

She was utterly refusing him and just trying to get to me, who was putting our eldest (9F) to bed by reading to her. She was crying and screaming for half an hour. He was also raising his voice, and toward the end being quite loud. He tried to block her in her room.

I tried to keep calm and keep reading, but when I heard doors slamming and the crying and screaming just escalating I felt so sad I had to intervene. I picked her up and comforted her as he started yelling at me instead, angry that I stopped his methods.

He thinks that if he leaves her alone in her room, she will self-soothe and learn to go to bed alone. After I put both kids to bed, I took some deep breaths and tried to talk to him when he had calmed down and had a joint.

I tried to encourage him to find information on how to put bigger children to sleep, as from what I’ve read, neither cartoons nor locking them in their room seems to be very helpful. There are other methods that I try and use. He didn’t respond to me. This morning he barely spoke to me. Should I have let him keep doing what he thinks would work?

Here’s the input from the Reddit crowd:

MyCouchPulzOut_IDont −  NTA – your partner’s approach to sleep training your four-year-old is not just ineffective, it’s potentially damaging. Locking a kid in their room and using cartoons as a behavioral bargaining chip is is a trainwreck waiting to . It’s not going to work, and it’s only going to cause more problems.

You stepped in because you saw the situation spiraling into chaos. Good. You did the right thing. Your partner might be trying, but he’s stubbornly clinging to his methods even when they’re clearly failing. Parenting isn’t a solo sport; you’ve got to be on the same team, using the same playbook. Right now, you’re not even in the same league.

Unfair_Finger5531 −  At 4, she should be accustomed to getting in the bed at a certain time. I’m wondering why you two allowed this to go on for so long.

You say he won’t take your advice: I don’t think your solutions are much better than his. His approach is to throw in her bed and let her cry it out. Yours is to drop what you are doing when she’s in a state and pick her up. I guess your 9 year old, who was getting a book read to her, can just kick rocks.

You two need to sit down and get on the same page and execute a plan together that doesn’t involve undermining one another. She is school age soon, and she needs to be in the bed at the reasonable hour getting 8-10 hours of sleep *at least*. And quite frankly, I agree, some self-soothing may be required.

Also, I have no idea why you added the part about him allowing her to watch cartoons. All that did was show how at odds you two are on the most trivial matters. Get on the same page.

I’m not even going to address the notion of locking a 4-year old child in a bedroom. I assume that idea was thrown out in a moment of temporary lunacy and immediately squashed. Because I know no woman in her right mind would be living with a man who seriously advances this as a workable idea.. ESH.

MayaPinjon −  Um, have y’all considered that locking the child in her room is the *reason* she doesn’t want to go to bed? It must be terrifying for her.

anotherrandomname2 −  I had a similar situation with my 3 years old: Since my wife stays with him most of the day I”m the one who puts him to sleep and do the night routine. He sleeps in his room since around 6 months old and the first 2 years he never needed a presence light, he would always want the room to be completely dark.

The problem: he couldn’t fall asleep alone and would take more than an hour falling asleep. So from around 9.30 to 10.30/11 I would have to be there with him which would lead to both of us falling asleep together and me going to my wife’s side only at 2 or 3 am. Every time I tried to make him sleep alone he would cry, but cry with such intensity that he would puke all over.

A few months ago I decided that that was enough and he would have to sleep alone so on a Friday I did the night routine and had a talk to him explaining he would have to sleep alone which he blatantly refused and said no. I didn’t care so after bedtime story I kissed him goodnight and just left the room.

40 min of intense crying later and realizing he was getting to that “I’m gonna puke” state I went into the room, comforted him and explained again that he would have to sleep alone. Around another hour of crying he fell asleep. On Saturday the crying went on for about an hour but without the puking thing.

Sunday and Monday were about 30 min of crying and for the rest of the week it went down to around 3 or 4 min of crying with additional 10 min of playing around before falling asleep. Then he just accepted it with the condition of leaving a presence light on.

That was the biggest change. No light to some light. Now sometimes after leaving him in the room me or my wife sometimes have to go in the room to remind him he has to sleep because he just goes grab some toys to play a bit, other than that he just goes to sleep most of the times..

What I think it helped: 1 – since I’m the one doing the night routine I had to be the one training him. My wife did not interfere at all on those occasions.

2 – routine. Keeping the routine but being a bit flexible. He usually has 2 bedtime stories, during the training he would ask for 4 or 5 to keep me there. I would read him 3 at most but make him realize that it was a special occasion.

3 – praise him the day after. I did this a lot, praise him for being able to fall asleep alone.
This was my experience, hope you find something that works for you

Pikantlewakas −  ESH. Y’all need to talk to an expert about how to properly sleep train a kid. Apparently you already did it with your older daughter, so if it doesn’t work with the younger you might need professional help.

I wanna say that both of your approaches are wrong, at least a bit. It sounds like he doesn’t have enough emotional intelligence to grasp the mood she is in and therefore can’t react accordingly, but you giving in to her tantrums is only gonna make them worse in the long run. I can’t tell you what you need to do differently, but the way you’re doing it now obviously doesn’t work.

Mountain_Cat_cold −  Young kids don’t self soothe by being left alone. They might be quiet, but the stress level is the same as if they scream. Yes, this has been researched. They need to feel safe and loved, and your partner is actively working against that.
NTA and tour partner needs a wake up call.

me_version_2 −  Gently ESH, but all judgements are going to be harsh for this kind of things tbh. Kids are learning boundaries and testing them, some of them are fixated and won’t be distracted. He has his way of thinking about it, you have yours.

Yours is the one that’s working (for now) because that’s your daughter’s decision. Realistically your husband is going to realise that arguing with a 4yo is never going to end well. You both need to have THE PLAN and stick to it.

Not he effs up and you sweep in and save daughter, it’s reinforcing the daughters behaviour that you don’t want. I’d recommend finding some old episodes of SuperNanny for sleep training. She was great.

Trikger −  He thinks that if he leaves her alone in her room, she will self-soothe and learn to go to bed alone. Oof, I remember when I was around her age in a sort of similar situation. My parents had “given away” one of my favorite toys and told me right before I had to go to bed. In bed, I was crying very loudly because I wasn’t able to say goodbye to that toy and I also didn’t want to let it go.

Eventually, my dad walked up to my door, banged on it very loudly and screamed at me to shut up.. I felt so alone and emotional.
Your husband’s “methods” will stick with your kid for the rest of her life if it doesn’t stop soon.

Trevena_Ice −  NTA. But maybe TA for letting him scream at a 4 year old. No wonder she doesn’t feel safe to go to sleep with your husband, if he screams at her and lock her in her room, so she will pass out of exhausting. This is no wayto bring a child to bed.

InevitableBad7730 −  NTA – your husband’s methods make no sense, and him blocking your daughter in her room and shouting at her sound a**sive bc he can’t control his emotions. Maybe you should switch and him putting the older to sleep by reading or what ever you’re doing at the moment. And why do you let him behave that way?