How do you feel about conditioning?

As in, doing specific things or rituals so that a baby or child, or even animal I suppose, behaves a certain way. For example, when a baby wakes up and cries you decide that you will not go and comfort it for a certain amount of time. I mean that’s fair enough I suppose because then they won’t always expect you to come in straight away to cheer them up and they learn to go back to sleep but I know people disagree with this and I know that I couldn’t leave a baby crying for forty five minutes (that’s what the mum told me for the baby I just baby sat-luckily she was fast asleep the whole time anyway) so I was just wondering what you Flutherites thoughts are on this? Not necessarily the sleeping thing, anything else you can think of…