> most people and so-called experts told us to “sleep train” our child
There does seem to be surprisingly large amount of advice which centres on being vaguely unpleasant to your offspring, it always puzzled me.
I actively avoided adopting such ideas, I did everything I could to be kind to them, to pay attention to them and to show them love. For what it's worth my children have turned out, I believe, pretty well and as they've got older it's touching (and almost humourous) to realise that they are increasingly taking the same approach to me !
Sleep training is not about the child, it's about the parent. No child is going to thrive if their parent doesn't. My kid's chance of death reduced significantly after sleep training because I wasn't hallucinating from my own lack of sleep.
Also, a lot of things your kid needs to be functional involve being unpleasant to your kid. Ignoring their bad behaviors so as to not encourage them. Not feeding them exactly what they demand every day.
Parenting is a balance between my needs and the kid's needs. I tell my kid to go away and leave me alone because if she doesn't give me a break from her constant need to be touching me, I will scream and snap at her. I'm not a machine with infinite patience. It's better that she learn to exist separately from me on occasion than have a cranky parent who is snapping at her for reasons she won't be able to understand.