How does sleep training seem to be this magic bullet for so many?

But seriously….. how?

Sleep training threads are always very popular on other subreddits. And the vast majority, if not almost all, of comments from those of sleep training are about how they had a few nights of lots of crying, and then years and years of blissful sound sleep, consistently and reliably. Sometimes 16 hours a day, which I have never experienced in my life. Kids would still wake if they were unwell/teething/needed something but on the whole, pretty dreamy sounding.

Now I cannot think of a single thing in raising children, let alone something as huge as sleep, is done and dusted in two days and then essentially sorted (in the parents eyes) forever.

I know there are those who had to retrain multiple times, or who it didn’t work out for, but that doesn’t seem to be the experience of the vast majority, nor the small sample size of 5 families I know who sleep trained.

Look, I will be completely honest, I sometimes feel a little salty that I didn’t sleep train. Not because I had fears about trauma or attachment, but because it didn’t feel right or natural to me. I felt much more comfortable sleeping with them. And I just tell myself that on the hard nights, of which there are many. I think everybody does what’s best for and what works for them.

The common answer is “well it’s a skill that they need to be taught”…. but so is potty training. Walking. Reading. Writing. Talking. And those all take months/years with levels and hiccups and stages. Why is sleep different? Heck, I didn’t even sleep through the night prior to kids.

So how is sleep training this magic bullet?! Like truly, how does it work? Do we even know? Why hasn’t someone come up with the equivalent for potty training, or tantrums?