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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   2444 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 6, 2025

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Is it just me, or is it normal for babies to cry very loudly right before they go to sleep for the night? Our baby cries for maybe 5-10 minutes in the evening as she drifts off to sleep.

I have a pet theory that babies who loudly cry before they go to sleep ensure that they sleep in a safe location. From an evolutionary perspective, imagine you're a hunter-gatherer with your baby in a questionable place: This loud baby is making me think twice about settling in here for the night. Best go back to our cave since this thing is making such a racket.

Those quiet and compliant babies were probably taken away by saber-toothed tigers and didn't pass their genes down.

There's a theory that it's instinctive to try to stop parents from having sex and having another child too soon that would compete for resources.

That’s pretty normal. I wouldn’t read too much into evolutionary just so stories.

Human babies are basically dysfunctional compared to other mammals for the first year or so, probably just so that they can have such an unusually large brain, and by extension skull, for their body size. I wouldn't over-interpret any particular behaviour they exhibit.

And yes, crying before sleeping is very common for babies. It gets (much!) better with age, but most kids get increasingly cranky in the late afternoon and evening.

Is it just me, or is it normal for babies to cry very loudly right before they go to sleep for the night? Our baby cries for maybe 5-10 minutes in the evening as she drifts off to sleep.

Ours used to make quite a big deal of going to sleep, with plenty of noise, but she's grown out of it by about 3yo.

My newborn does not do this often, but she does take a while to accept moving from one of her parents to her bed when sleeping

My baby son does this too but I assumed it was because they're over-tired just before they drop off. And when you're over-tired everything hurts more. I feel like everybody is more emotionally drained (thus, more likely to cry) in the evenings, makes sense to me that it would be the same for babies.

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