When we first started writing the book, every time I'd write "sleep train," I'd cringe. Isn't training for pets or something? It just sounded… wrong. But it got to be too clunky to repeatedly write things like: "teaching your child to sleep…" or "helping your infant fall asleep…" and so on. Many people use the term "sleep train" to refer to what parents do to try to teach kids to sleep longer stretches during the night and to nap more consistently through the day. We went with it, but I've never been thrilled with the choice.

Let me also make the point here that when I talk about sleep training, I'm referring to a large class of strategies that are really about trying to induce TRANSITIONS in the way your baby or child sleeps. So sleep training can be applied to a huge variety of sleep issues:

• helping you child sleep longer stretches at one time during the night or helping her sleep "through the night"
• getting your child to sleep in a crib after co-sleeping with him for a period of time
• helping your child wake up less (or put herself back to sleep) in a family bed
• getting your child to sleep in a crib rather than <insert a variety of desperate yet effective methods including sleeping in a car seat, swing, sling, bouncy chair, buzzy chair, in the car>
• helping your toddler transition from a crib to a "big boy/girl bed"
• teaching your child to put herself (back) to sleep without 2 hours of parental rocking, bouncing, shushing, begging, etc.
• and so on…