Turns out if you stop feeding them or going to them in the middle of the night, they adapt and sleep through in less than a week.
I am sure we could train them with some sort of food scarcity approach (this is the only thing there is to eat; now is the only time you can eat) to teach them to eat enough of the food that's there, but that'd take a psychological toll for a few weeks on us that we aren't able/willing to take on.
There's a reason parents pick up this version (i.e. the "let them cry it out" version, not the "create a safe and comfortable environment to allow them to self-regulate when they wake up" one) of so-called sleep training from books, "experts" and now apparently also training centers, whereas co-sleeping needs to be actively discouraged to stop parents from doing it intuitively.
I'm not saying every parent who doesn't co-sleep with their child is engaging in child abuse, but many mainstream forms of "sleep training" (especially the informal ones) very much boil down to "neglect your infant until they learn not to broadcast their needs because nobody will take care of them".
I'm also not saying that OP's account is representative of all co-sleeping parents. Co-sleeping (with breast-feeding) simply allows for reducing interruptions from nightly feeding in a way that is hardly replicable without it.
That children who are subject to any given for of abuse or neglect don't "seem" harmed by it, doesn't make it harmless either. I think we've all heard people who hit their kids argue that "my dad hit me when I was a kid and it didn't do my any harm either" and don't accept that as a justification anymore.
I'm not saying people who do this (because they are taught to do it) are bad people. I'm saying what they are doing is bad and that there are training centers who sell neglect as "sleep training" (which can refer to other things) are bad.
I don't know why you think "do you even have kids" is a gotcha but yeah, I have kids, I also have nephews and I have friends who have children. Would you insist that someone isn't allowed to speak on whether it's okay to hit your wife if they aren't married, too? That someone telling you off for leaving your dog in the car on a hot day has no right to criticize you because they don't own a dog themselves?
