How to Get Your Baby to Sleep: America's Foremost Baby and Childcare Experts Answer the Most Frequently Asked Questions

by Martha Sears and William Sears

Book Overview

Offers advice for naptime and nighttime dilemmas such as choosing bedtime music, creating a safe sleeing environment, helping a child unwind at bedtime, and determining a child's sleep needs. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316776203
• ISBN13: 9780316776202
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 150 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Sleep sharing is convenient and promotes independence

Did you know that 85% of the world's families practice co-sleeping with their children? And that until quite recently, the family bed was used almost exclusively everywhere in the world? That's because there are great benefits for parents and babies who share a bed--read on!I am a professor and developmental psychologist. I am also a mother. My husband and I very happily practice sleep sharing with our baby. What Dr. Sears says about bed sharing is in line with healthy development for babies and parents. Babies shouldn't want to be alone--that's a poor survival strategy for them; they should cry when left defenseless. They are supposed to need to bond with the people who ensure their very survival, and they communicate that need by crying. Likewise, parents want to bond with their kids; in fact, those relatively few children who cannot bond appropriately are diagnosed as autistic, and their parents are devastated by the lack of connection with their child. So, it's actually a blessing that our infants need us so much. The problem arises when our society tells us that sleep sharing gets in the way of two primary cultural values: independence and convenience. For fear of encouraging dependence and inconveniencing parents, babies just hours old are expected to sleep on their own in America. Here's the irony: YOUR CHILD WILL ACTUALLY DEVELOP GREATER INDEPENDENCE and YOU WILL HAVE AN EASIER, MORE CONVENIENT LIFE if you DO bedshare with your baby. Here's why.First of all, research shows that kids who are strongly attached to their parents actually behave more independently as toddlers than kids who aren't as strongly attached. These attached children do more independent exploration and are happier with a variety of people, and when alone, than less securely-attached infants. From personal experience and from scientific background, the family bed is one route to secure attachment and to the value of independence--the independence comes later, though, not when the child is a baby. The family bed promotes a happy, safe, emotionally and physically healthy child with great self-esteem. This is a child who knows at a core, unshakable level that he or she is loved beyond measure. Second--and here's the fun part for Mom and Dad--the family bed is much more convenient than a crib. Much! Mom need not be exhausted all day, because she hasn't gotten up at night; she simply helps the baby latch on when the baby begins to move a little (signaling feeding time), and then they can both go back to sleep. Dad doesn't even have to awaken at all. And the baby NEVER, EVER CRIES AT NIGHT. How wonderful! (We just took a mountain vacation, and the people in the room next to ours didn't even know a baby was in the cabin.) Bedsharing is also safer than cribs; SIDS is significantly higher per capita among children in cribs, for instance. The family bed allows the parents to relax, because they can hear the baby breathing. Parents who bedshare know that

You don't sleep alone, why should your baby?

The other reviewer stated that this is a terrible book. In all of her vast experience as a new parent she knows that "sleep sharing" is bad. Well I have almost 16 years experience raising and sharing sleep with 5 children and I am here to say that sleep sharing is VERY good and anything Dr. Sears writes is wonderful. Why do so many adults insist that vulnerable young babies sleep alone when they are not willing to do the same? I wonder how the reviewer would feel if her husband told her that he was going to "train" her to sleep alone. That would be considered incredibly cold, selfish, and uncaring of him. I respectfully submit that any adult that "trains" a baby in that manner is all of those things. Babies are not meant to sleep alone. You carried them inside you for nine months so you should keep them close for at least that long once they're born. They NEED their mommies and daddies to be there in the night to show them that you love them and will always protect them and meet their needs. Sleep-sharing does not create clingy, selfish, brats. It creates loving, caring, generous, independent, wonderful children. My first two babies slept in a crib most of the time at first (because we thought they were "supposed" to) and it was horrible: every night waking up to a screaming, hungry baby and every morning to a tired mommy. Eventually, as they got older, they spent more time in bed with us and we discovered it was wonderful to share that special closeness with them. I worked when my first was little and co-sleeping helped us stay close. My last three babies have never slept in a crib (we don't own one now) and no babies that I have in the future ever will. Co-sleeping is SO wonderful. The baby NEVER, EVER cries at night bacause mommy is right there to nurse them the instant they make a sound. Mom NEVER, EVER has a sleepless night because she doesn't have to fully wake up to feed the baby. Once you get the baby latched on you can go back to sleep. It is so much safer to have baby with you and it builds such an incredible bond. As a bonus it helps to stave off your periods and ovulation for months and months---God's built-in baby spacing mechanism. (And the fewer periods you have the healthier you are.) And there is nothing more wonderful than waking up next to a HAPPY, sweet baby every morning. My babies sleep with us until they are two or three (Around the time I have another one!) Then they move into their own bed or a sibling's bed, whichever they want. Some want to be alone and some want more cuddling for a while. My oldest boy, now 8, moved into his own bed, though once in a while he wants to sleep with us, which is ok--I just move him out when I go to bed. My 3 year old sleeps with his 15 or 12 year old sisters every night. They read him stories, scratch his back, and whisper in the dark. It is such a wonderful experience and they are so close. The girls LOVE having him with them (They actually fight over who gets him!) and he just loves them