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I especially like how the author focuses on getting the child in rhythm with his natural sleep patterns. I felt a lot more comfortable letting my older son "cry it out" when I knew I was following his natural pattern for sleep. It is amazing. I felt like the stress level in our home went down dramatically when we started implementing the ideas in this book. I wish I had owned this book when my first son was a newborn. My newborn is still napping throughout the day, but I feel like I have a much better grasp on when he's tired and when to lay him down.
It would have made life a lot less stressful and eliminated the constant "What's wrong with him." question. Now he sleeps great at night and takes 2-hour naps every day. Now I'm re-reading it to help with my newborn and his sleep needs. I read this book when my first son was 4 months old and found it an invaluable tool for training him to take good naps, sleep through the night, and follow a schedule suited to his needs. It makes a lot of sense.
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It gives important advice and lets you choose which is best for your family. This book gives practical advice and has proven to be correct in many instances with my first born. I would probably use it if I had exhausted every other avenue.
I also loved the charts to show bedtimes and amount of sleep for different ages and stages.
This has worked wonders for us as well as realizing how important an early bed time is.
The whole book has that tone for me, it gives scientific evidence and advice then helps you choose what is right for your family.
The absolute best advice was not keeping your infant awake for more than 2 hours at a time.
I am using it now for my 2nd child and the habits we formed for our 3 year old previously are still in place.
This book discusses "no cry," "maybe cry," and "let cry." It does not condemn any of these in particular.
There are lots of stories to help relate the advice and there are little bits of advice off to the side of pages that help for quick reading/skimming.
I have found this book to be extremely helpful.
I am not a fan of the "let cry" bedtime solution.
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I now feel very little angst listening to my son protest for a bit when I put him down to nap. Example: "A missed nap is sleep lost forever." Talk about fatalistic. And yes, some sources insist you're a horrible parent and your child will have abandonment issues if you let him "cry it out." But I look at it this way: either he cries for 5-10 minutes before falling asleep and then awakens refreshed or I avoid putting him down for fear he might scream, he gets cranky because he isn't getting the sleep he needs, and then he ends up crying much, much more than 5-10 minutes (and then he *really* won't go to sleep). And at the very least, this book will give you an idea of how sleep works at different ages. *The earlier in your child's development you institute the sleep methods in this book, the easier it'll be to get your kid to respond. In other words, if you start letting your kid fall asleep unassisted at, say, 10 months (versus 4 months), you're in for more crying. Rather, just be aware that initially it's going to be harder for you than if you'd tried a similar approach earlier on. What you do with that information is up to you.
He was a promising night sleeper, but erratic. *"Part II: How Parents Can Help Their Children Establish Healthy Sleep Habits" is absolutely invaluable in its breakdown of what's reasonable to expect from each age group, from newborn to adolescence. Yes, there was (still is) some crying involved in this process. It also contains a lot of information from the first section, but much better organized. Once we learned how to recognize signs of drowsiness, put our baby down for a nap, and soothe him to sleep, our little guy was so much happier.
He's firm, but not cruel. The first 191 pages could be condensed into the following sentence: Babies and children need sleep, but don't always know how to get there; so it's up to you as a responsible parent to teach them good sleep habits. *Don't beat yourself up if your child doesn't conform completely to Weissbluth's ideal sleep schedule. Then a friend recommended this book and we UNDERSTOOD. Every child is different.
*Skip "Part I: How Children Sleep" and go directly to "Part II: How Parents Can Help Their Children Establish Healthy Sleep Habits." So much of Part I is redundant, disorganized, and filled with statistics from scientific studies. Get the gist, then don't take the wording personally. "Drowsy Signs" and "Soothing to Sleep" on pages 63-69 (paperback) are helpful, as is "Bedtime Routines" on page 75, but the rest of the first section is largely a waste of time. A few observations:. Daytime naps were all but nonexistent, since we were told not to let him "cry it out" and every time we put him down to sleep he.well, cried.
The reason our son fussed most of the time was because he wasn't getting enough sleep. That isn't to say you simply shouldn't try Weissbluth's methods if you have an older baby or child. *Weissbluth may endorse what's essentially the "cry it out" method, but he isn't against co-sleeping or using breast-feeding to soothe a baby to sleep. The result was a baby with what we assumed was a naturally fussy disposition. At 3 1/2 months, our son's sleep habits were a mess.
*Weissbluth's language can at times be really alarmist and should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.
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