Healthy sleep habits, happy child
One of the country's leading researchers updates his revolutionary approach to solving--and preventing--your children's sleep problemsHere 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-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 problemsFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
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What Hacker News says
- This. Be very careful implementing this paper's technique. It does NOT promote long-term sleep independence, which should be the goal. Crying before sleeping is not inherently bad. The objective function is not to greedily minimize crying. If you are interested in materials on sleep training, I recommend taking a more holistic view than a single paper. "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" is a good reference.
- I’ll throw one thing out there in case you’ve not tried it: I’ve seen plenty of advice that if your kids wake up “too early”, then counterintuitively, they may be going to sleep too late. So in your case, it’s possible that if you get them to bed two hours earlier, they’ll just wake up earlier. However, getting them to bed several hours earlier might work better. Ours are almost-3 and 5 and both sleep ~12 hours, but if they go to bed late will probably wake up early and things go to pot.
That said, I’ve zero idea how to switch sleep modes, sorry.
Our lifesaver was “healthy sleep habits, happy child” by Mark Weissbluth.
- Kids need A LOT of sleep; more than you think. I would say that 80% of the time you see a kid crying or throwing a tantrum, it’s a combo of not having enough sleep and not having the emotional toolkit or communication skills to express their needs. My single recommendation is to get your child on a sleep schedule and stick with it aggressively.
Check out the book: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Weissbluth.
BTW, I noticed my older daughter getting super cranky when using iPads/phones when she was about 2.5, so we stopped giving them to her and her mood vastly improved as a baseline. You’ll have to make your own decisions about tech and kids, but just keep that in mind. My kids now will happily go on a 12 hr car ride without ever asking for an iPad, etc. YMMV.
- >SLEEP WHEN THE BABY SLEEPS
Agreed. Check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/04... .
New borns sleep 18-20 hours a day but the few waking hours are distributed throughout the 24 hour period. This means your sleep will be disturbed in the middle of the night and you will need to make up for it with naps during the day.
Sleep is critical for brain growth and function. Tired dad/mom/baby == crabby dad/mom/baby. It can even lead to a negative feedback loop called being over-tired where one becomes too agitated to enter sleep easily.
After a couple months, you'll want to consider sleep training. This means allowing the kid to cry for increasing periods to unwind and adjust to the solitude/quiet needed for sleep.
- We had our twins sleeping through the night 7pm-7am at 3 months. We followed the techniques in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/03...
It was a fantastic book and written by a doctor who specializes in sleep habits. It's the gift I give to all my friends who are expecting.
- I have a 15 mo girl.
My wife read lots of books. I read a few. With a few exceptions, the books have been a waste of time and money. So many of the books in this genre have the feel of the Learn Blub in 21 Days line of programming books. Accept from the get-go that parenting is hard, there are no silver bullets, and you are going to spend a lot of time and energy if you want to do a good job, and filter anything you read from that perspective.
Nevertheless, we did find some helpful books. The most useful books we have are a reference book given to us by our pediatrician and a book about baby sign language (The following link is to the revised edition, which is not the one we have, but it's cheaper on amazon http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Signs-Revised-Linda-Acredolo/dp/B...).
We went through a lot of "the book says" conversations early on, especially related to getting her to sleep. The thing to realize here is that it is up to you how to do it. There's a book out there that will support your position, and many of the books are contradictory. So, in the end, you'll end up having to decide what you think is right. The book many parents find useful is merely the one that reinforces their opinion, and they will use that book to appeal to authority in the passive-aggressive conversations that all new parents seem wont to have.
I had trouble finding what I felt like were unbiased opinions on sleep in particular. This book: http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/03... was helpful, mostly because it more or less laid out three approaches and passed few, if any, value judgements on going to the baby vs. letting her cry herself to sleep.
In the end, I decided I couldn't stand to let her cry, so we settled on developing a very predictable routine at bedtime, and it has worked well. We have had our bumpy patches, particularly during illnesses, teething, and major milestones, but in general my child looks forward to bedtime and naps.
The sign language seems somewhat controversial among our peers, but we are in the less progressive southeastern US. The common fear is that it will retard speech. I just wanted to be able to communicate with my child, and it has made for a pleasant experience so far. She seems to be developing vocbulary at an above normal rate. I don't necessarily attribute that to signs, but it is at least one counterexample to the fear of significant speech retardation.
