I am THRILLED to let you all know that the US edition of Bedtiming is out! For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, a couple of years ago, my husband (Marc Lewis) and I wrote a book that was first published in Canada. The US edition is now out (published by The Experiment) with a brand spanking new cover and subtitle (nothing else of substance has changed from the Canadian version, for those of you who have asked).
We wrote Bedtiming while trying to figure out the ins and
outs of our own children’s sleep habits and how to ultimately change
those crazy habits so that we could regain our sanity. The book goes through the best ages and stages to attempt your favourite sleep-training method. There are several chapters outlining the developmental research that points to several sensitive stages across infancy and early childhood — these are the stages we recommend that you avoid sleep training. There are other stages that children are more resilient, more focused on the "external" world of objects, and less anxious about separations — these are the stages we recommend giving your favourite method a go. The feedback I've received from several readers is that they have found the chapters that outline all the cognitive and emotional developmental stages useful in and of themselves, just to understand what is going on in the mind of their own child. I LOVE this because it was exactly our intent — we are developmentalists and so consider these developmental milestones so intrinsically fascinating and useful to understand for a range of children's issues (including, but not limited to, sleep training).
In terms of sleep issues: We are very clear in the book (like I am on this blog) that there is not one perfect sleep-training technique that is right for all children and all families. There's a chapter in the book that summarizes the pros and cons of the top 5 or so sleep-training
methods, but we don't recommend one over any
other. The method is yours to pick, according to your parenting philosophy, your own upbringing, cultural background, support system, your child's temperament, and so on. The main message of the book is that the TIMING of sleep-training may be just as (or more) important to success than the method you pick.
This blog was
first developed as a place to talk about the issues raised in Bedtiming, to highlight particular research findings that form the basis
of the book and, most importantly, to provide readers a space to ask
questions and trouble-shoot through their own sleep-training highs and
lows. If you go through the archives for the first 6 months of this blog, you'll find loads of Q and A's associated with the issues raised in the book. I hope that I can continue to use this space for that purpose, for those of you who pick up a copy and have additional, more specific questions.
For those of you who HAVE read the book, may I ask you to share with people what you thought of the book? I'm VERY open to critical feedback (as much as lavishing praise ;-)). I'm not good at this self-promotion thing at all, but I think it would be very useful to readers of this blog if they could access honest feeback about the book from real parents in the trenches (I promise I do not delete any comments, btw).
(To purchase the book, just go through any of the links under BUY THE BOOK, over on the left hand side of the blog… or go old-school and visit your nearest bookstore. Pssst… it's a bargain online at $10 and change).
What an amazing book. I am so thankful to have received it as a present with my first child. Easy to read, thoughtful, full of information. I’m now giving it to all my friends as shower presents. Armed with the knowledge in this book we were so much more confident going into sleep training than we would have been otherwise. I would, and do, recommend this book to anyone with a young child.
I actually bought the book from Amazon.ca when that was the only option.
I think the sections about cognitive & emotional development are absolute gold in dealing with all parenting issues, not just sleep – though sleep issues were the reason behind my finding this blog and thus the book.
I also think that you stress that each child can go through the stages on a different time line is really important as well – my daughter, for example, didn’t have a lot of seperation anxiety issues in the 8 – 12 month period – but leading up to her first birthday (which is next week), I’ve really noticed those issues coming out. So she’s obviously off by a bit on that particular issue.
Cool! I just went and bought it from Amazon. Evie is having another rough spell, so it is coming at the right time
But really, the last few posts you’ve done about parenting and discipline were worth WAY more than $10!
I bought the book after a review on ask Moxie, and (after a lot of frustration and anxiety stemming from Weissbluth and Ferber) finally felt like I had some sense of what was going on when, and why. It was too late to stop me from trying to sleep train at a non-ideal age (that was no fun, let me tell you), but it has been really helpful for sleep and non-sleep-related issues since. Well worth it, and definitely the book I choose as a new baby gift these days!!
You guys are AWESOME. Thanks so much for the vote of confidence. It really does mean so much to me…
LOVED the book. SO glad we bought it. Really appreciated it. It was a huge help in combination with Wonder Weeks (by dutch researchers) in letting us get a glimpse of what the kid is going through. Like IdahoGirl, I bought the book from Amazon.ca and it was totally worth whatever I spent on it!
The other comment I would make is that each child will have sensitive periods _within_ a less sensitive window. E.g., my son is 14 months so well within the 12-16 months of peace, BUT for the past month he has had had 1 perfect week of sleep, 2 sort-of-ok weeks of sleep (i.e., <2 minor wakings per week), and 1 REALLY CRAPPY week of sleep (at least 2 nights of wakings with 2 or more wakings per night, each waking lasting 20-60 mins) with much more clinginess during the day. The only thing I can think of is that either a) he needs to be sleep trained again, or b) he is/was going through some sensitive period and he is just temperamentally more likely to express that sensitivity compared to other kids. (We are in the crappy week right now; I spent 4am cramped on the futon in the kid’s room with him next to me on the futon, and he *still* needed to be shushed back to sleep 3 times with me next to him, between 4am and 8am.)
One thing I would love to see addressed at some point is how you determine whether a kid needs to be re-trained. Our kid has never been the *best* sleeper, there’s usually one night in the week when there’s *some* kind of waking but it usually happens before we go to bed. Sometimes he doesn’t need help, other times he does. So when things get rough (like this week) we always wonder whether it’s an issue of needing to re-sleep train (so that he is able to self-soothe back to sleep if he wakes up) or whether he actually needs our help. We did 2 nights of Ferber when he was 7 months which night weaned him perfectly. He didn’t consistently sleep through the night until about 10 months, but even “consistently” means a few nights in a row. He has never had a full week of uninterrupted sleep. It doesn’t *seem* like he has bad sleep habits – he has a great bedtime routine. But what do you do with extremely unpredictable night wakings? (i.e., not at the same time each night, not every night, and each night requiring different degrees of attention – some nights you hear him yelp but he goes back to sleep while other nights he’s standing in the crib with his arms outreached…)
I still haven’t bought the book yet (planning to place an amazon order today or tomorrow, and it will on that order!), but I was just telling someone about your book today and two other people last week. After reading your book myself, I’m thinking I’ll start giving your book and Wonder Weeks to parents having baby showers.