Sleep Book Review: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child

This is the first is a series of sleep book mini-reviews that will be posted to this blog. These sleep book mini-reviews are mentioned in Appendix C of my brand new book Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler: The Ultimate No-Worry Approach for Each Age and Stage. The purpose of these reviews is to help parents to zero in on additional sleep books that may be compatible with their child's temperament, their parenting style, their family's unique needs and circumstances, given what they have learned from reading my book.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child: A Step-by-Step Program for a Good Night’s Sleep
By Marc Weissbluth, MD
3rd Edition
Ballantine Books, 503 pages, $14.95 US/$22.95 Cdn

About the book:
Weissbluth explains the key role that sleep plays in allowing children to be at their best during the day—to achieve Weissbluth calls optimal wakefulness. He points out the link between sleep problems at night and a child's behavior during the day: "Sleep problems not only disrupt a child's nights, they disrupt his days, too, by making him less mentally alert, more inattentive, unable to concentrate, and easily distracted. They also make him more physically impulsive, hyperactive, or lazy. But when children sleep well, they are optimally awake and alert, able to learn and grow up with charm and humor."

Weissbluth argues that, at around three to four months of age, all children are ready to begin the process of beginning to learn to sleep well. Parents sometimes get in the way of this natural process of sleep learning, however: "When parents are too irregular, inconsistent, or oversolicitous, or when there are unresolved problems between the parents, the resulting sleep problems converge, producing excessive nighttime wakefulness and crying."

Weissbluth recommends the cry-it-out sleep training method (See Sleep Tool 2 in Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler for a detailed analysis of this sleep training method and a comparison to other sleep training methods), in which the child's cries are ignored in an effort to "extinguish" night-time crying. He argues that this method is the most effective. "The general reason why a gradual approach tends to be less successful in the long run is that it takes longer and there are always natural disruptions of sleep, such as illnesses or vacations. The subsequent reestablishment of healthy sleep routines using a gradual approach becomes very stressful to the parents. Several days or weeks of a gradual approach often wear down parents, so they give up and revert to their old inconsistencies. Parents who have successfully used extinction know that they might have one, and only one, night of crying after they return home from several days on vacation or from a visit to a relative's house."

Weissbluth does an excellent job of spelling out the physiological processes that govern sleep in young children -- specifically how becoming overtired can set off a series of biochemical processes that can make it even more difficult for your child to get to sleep the next time naptime or bedtime rolls around. The underlying theme of this book is "sleep begets sleep," which is why Weissbluth is so insistent that you have to make ensuring that your child gets adequate daytime and night-time sleep a priority for your family.

Comments from members of the Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler book panel about Weissbluth’s book or cry-it-out methods in general:

"I know several moms who have had great success by sticking with routines, and that’s great. They seem limited, however, as to when they can do things during the day because they have to be home at certain times for naps." - Jennifer, 25, mother of two

"I don’t think the cry-it-out method is bad for [babies]: it's just very hard to do as a parent. It almost killed me the first few times she cried for more than ten minutes. I didn't go by the book enough to know if I gave it an honest chance for Edie. 'No cry' doesn’t work entirely for us either. Sometimes she cries no matter what if she’s tired. Sometimes she’ll cry in my arms on her way to her crib for a nap. Sometimes she'll cry harder if she's being soothed when she'd rather be sleeping. Sometimes I swear she is hollering 'Leave me alone. I’m trying to fall asleep.' I think we’re going to come to some agreement that is partway between cry and no cry. We’re not there yet." - Laurie, 38, mother of one

"Mikaela's lack of sleep was affecting our family, our marriage, and her emotional, physical, and social health. We knew that as parents we would often make decisions that were in her best interest, whether those decisions made her happy or not. While I am not a huge fan of crying it out, I have to say it produces results better than any other plan we have tried. Every mother hates to hear her child cry: it is heart-wrenching. I try to remind myself that I am not leaving them to cry themselves to cry themselves to sleep. I am leaving them to learn to sleep by themselves. That distinction can be helpful in the middle of the night."  – Michele, 30, mother of two

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Comments

[Tatiana]

The worthless $15 I've ever spent in my entire life!! The whole book could fit in one sentence - "Let your baby cry". And then other suggestions.. they look like author has no idea what he's talking about - for example - reader asks question "won't my baby hurt himself if he falls down in the crib?" answr:" no, he won't. he may fall into an awkward heap...and sleep like a puppy". My son hurt his little head several times, when he tried to stand in the crib and then failed back! Don't buy this book!

[Potty Train Child]

I have to say that any advice that one can receive to help a child sleep is always welcome. It can be extremely frustrating when your child is crying and there is no way to calm him or her down.

[Jessica]

I found there were some key items in the book which were helpful, and some that were not. The whole notion of 1-2 hours of wakefulness really helped me to recognize when my son was getting overtired.. Crying it out is not the method that I would chose to use for our child though

[Ann Douglas]

Thanks very much for your comment, Jessica.

It's very important that your choice of sleep-training method meshes with your parenting style. Otherwise you're going to second-guess yourself at 3 am. So you were wise to take what was valuable from this particular book and go with your gut feeling about which sleep-training method was the right choice for our family.

Other factors to consider in choosing a sleep training method for your child: your child's developmental stage, your family circumstances (how much support you have, how well you are coping with the sleep issue, how many other children you have, what other stresses in your life you may be contending with), your child's temperament, and any other issues that seem significant to you and/or your partner.

[Sleep Solutions]

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