Product Description

One of the country's leading researchers updates his revolutionary approach to solving--and preventing--your children's sleep problems

Here Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a distinguished pediatrician and father of four, offers his groundbreaking program to ensure the best sleep for your child. In Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, he explains with authority and reassurance his step-by-step regime for instituting beneficial habits within the framework of your child's natural sleep cycles. This valuable sourcebook contains brand new research that

- Pinpoints the way daytime sleep differs from night sleep and why both are important to your child
- Helps you cope with and stop the crybaby syndrome, nightmares, bedwetting, and more
- Analyzes ways to get your baby to fall asleep according to his internal clock--naturally
- Reveals the common mistakes parents make to get their children to sleep--including the inclination to rock and feed
- Explores the different sleep cycle needs for different temperaments--from quiet babies to hyperactive toddlers
- Emphasizes the significance of a nap schedule
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Rest is vital to your child's health growth and development. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child outlines proven strategies that ensure good, healthy sleep for every age. Advises parents dealing with teenagers and their unique sleep problems

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #923 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-12
• Released on: 1999-04-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 345 pages

Review
“I love Dr. Weissbluth’s philosophy that the most important thing to have is a well-rested family. And fortunately, thanks to this book, most days (and nights) we do!”
–from the Foreword by Cindy Crawford


From the Hardcover edition.

From the Publisher
I read this book when my second child was born last fall. My first baby was a terrible sleeper, and I was determined not to go through that same nightly hell -- rocking, singing, walking, coddling for hours only for her to wake up when I finally placed her in the crib. So, with my son, I decided to be prepared. And Dr. Weissbluth's methods were amazing. Who knew that babies would actually like to go to sleep early? By watching my son's moods, I learned that he really needed more evening sleep, and two lengthy naps, one in mid-morning and another in early afternoon. Bedtime at 7:30 and he sleeps until 6:00 am! He's happy, energetic and bright. I'm truly convinced that if I had tried to go through the "crying to sleep" method again (my husband and I did attempt it with my first kid, but found it absolutely agonizing), we would have all had a miserable few months.

Now I know why the good doctor gets phone calls from all over the U.S. asking for advice. He is one of the leading pediatric sleep researchers in the country, and is frequently consulted by top parenting and child care magazines.

I'm so utterly devoted to this book, that I'm happy to announce Dr. Weissbluth will be updating the research in a new edition of HEALTHY SLEEP HABITS, HAPPY CHILD due out in 1999. Same life-changing concepts, but with additional testamonials from parents who've used this book so successfully in the past.

From the Inside Flap
One of the country's leading researchers and pediatricians reveals a revolutionary new approach to your child's sleep in this complete guiding to solving -- and preventing -- sleep problems. Includes a step-by-step program for establishing good sleep habits and individualized guidelines from infancy throughout the growing years.

Customer Reviews

A little disappointed
I was a little disappointed in the book. It often seemed disorganized, vague or at times talked rather lofty. There were a few good nuggets of info, such as 'never wake a sleeping baby' and knowing how many hours of sleep a baby should be getting and at what intervals. However, I was looking for more step by step - do this to get your child to sleep, but it seemed more like anything goes - no real strategies for dealing with my child. And there were lots and lots of horror stories from parents about their children crying for hours on end, and now I'm quite petrified to deliver mine...

Big disappointment
I was looking forward to finding a good sleep solution for our 8 mo. old son who wakes at least every 2 hours during the night but this was NOT it. Anyone who subscribes to the cry it out method will find a gentler version from Ferber.

I guess I'm a softie... How in the world did you allow your child to cry for 2 1/2 hours and not attend to them? If it feels wrong, it's wrong. The fact that a baby sleeps through the night is not proof enough for me that this is a good method. Anyone would eventually fall asleep from exhaustion if they were crying nonstop and no one ever came to comfort them. You'd be afraid, worried and you'd eventually cry yourself to sleep. Any method that tells a parent to go against their instinct is NOT a method for me.

Worked For Us
So I read a lot of Amazon reviews on controversial books. Reviews regarding books on politics, religion, philosophy, evolution, and music (particularly anything that tries to call itself punk) all have their share of condescension and bad blood, but I have never encountered the venom and vitriol as I have when reading reviews of baby books. I read parts of or skimmed most of the popular ones on a range of positions on the attachment-schedule continuum and each seemed to have strengths. So, while I really don't believe any method is perfect for all children, I can report that Weissbluth knows my little girl better than I do when it comes to sleep.

We did not have to try very hard to get on this schedule after the first couple months. The key insight for me was that the earlier you put your infant to bed the better (and later) they will sleep. Our daughter was regularly sleeping for twelve hours each night by 3 months. It seemed like each time we ran into problems we went to this text to read on the life stage and usually fond that it was a problem that Weissbluth had anticipated and offered advice for. I am sure this will not be the case for all kids. I am only offering you anecdotal evidence. But if your child is anything like ours, I highly recommend this book.

Another benefit of this book is that it actually includes graphs and statistics. I was completely flummoxed that a `science' as important as raising your child would be passed on to us the masses in such a completely unsubstantiated way. I can not believe that there are not many other parents out there that require empirical warrant for the positions they take on this subject. So while Weissbluth did not even come close to providing the kind of data I was looking for, he at least included some, which puts him in a class of his own.