Product Description

The foremost medical authority on children's health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, has collected in these pages the best advice on getting newborns, toddlers, and school-age children to sleep. Packed with practical tips, this guide offers invaluable information, answers questions from parents, and provides reassuring ad-vice for preventing SIDS, getting your baby to sleep through the night, and solving sleep-wake problems. Above all, the Academy weighs in on the controversies over the most popular child-sleep advice--by evaluating the pros and cons of these conflicting theories--enabling parents to make the best decisions for their families.
        
Here, in a compact and accessible package, is information to ensure that even the most bleary-eyed parents and their children get a good night's sleep.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #273350 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-30
• Released on: 1999-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From Library Journal
Everything you want to know about night terrors, midnight ramblers, larks and owls, and snoring in children can be found between the pages of this handy guide from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Representing a consensus of its 55,000 members, it offers reassurance to parents of newborns and young children with explanations of normal sleep patterns and common problems such as night waking and monsters under the bed. The guide emphasizes the importance of bedtime rituals and good sleep hygiene, physical problems that may affect sleep quality, and differences in temperament and developmental stages. Controversies such as the family bed vs. cribs for newborns and whetherAor for how longAto allow a baby to cry at bedtime are also addressed. Though this is written largely for parents of infants and young children, it does touch upon the sleep problems of school-age children and adolescents: if you have to pry your teen out of bed with a crowbar in the morning, this book will tell you why and what can be done about it. A list of sleep centers is appended. Recommended for public libraries and parenting/consumer health collections.AAnne C. Tomlin, Auburn Memorial Hosp. Lib., NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap
The foremost medical authority on children's health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, has collected in these pages the best advice on getting newborns, toddlers, and school-age children to sleep. Packed with practical tips, this guide offers invaluable information, answers questions from parents, and provides reassuring ad-vice for preventing SIDS, getting your baby to sleep through the night, and solving sleep-wake problems. Above all, the Academy weighs in on the controversies over the most popular child-sleep advice--by evaluating the pros and cons of these conflicting theories--enabling parents to make the best decisions for their families.

Here, in a compact and accessible package, is information to ensure that even the most bleary-eyed parents and their children get a good night's sleep.

About the Author
George J. Cohen, M.D., F.A.A.P., is attending pediatrician at Children's National Medical Center and a professor of pediatrics in Washington, D.C.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of more than 55,000 primary-care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists, and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety, and well-being of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. Previous AAP books include the Guide to Your Child's Nutrition and Guide to Your Child's Symptoms.

Customer Reviews

Not recommended
I read this book desperate for ideas on how to deal with night wakings, and I did not find it helpful. The information is very general and is presented in a disorganized fashion. I had to look in 5 different sections to answer my question, and each only contained short blurbs on the subject. Almost every page of this book has a box with a tip or answered question, and although the advice seems sound, the format is distracting and difficult to follow. I much preferred Ferber's "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems". His answers were more concrete and arranged in a readable fashion. He provided detailed charts to help you manage things like how long to let a baby cry, how to water down bottles for night feedings, or change the sleep cycle of an early riser. I also preferred Weissbluth's "Health Sleep Habits, Happy Child", which offered a lot of moral support on why it's best for your child to correct sleep problems early. He also spends a lot of time talking about daytime naps in detail. And both authors say it's fine to nurse a baby to sleep (as long as there are no other sleep problems), which for some reason the AAP is totally against. I would not recommedn this book.

Difficult to read
I cannot honestly say whether or not this book would have helped us because I couldn't get myself to read it. It is not organized in a reader-friendly way and it is difficult to get help quick. When you're sleep-deprived, the last thing you need is to slog through a difficult book. I recommend instead "Sleep: how to teach your child to sleep like a baby" from Child magazine.

Just an outline of the options...
Because this book was edited by the AAP, I expected a detailed and methodical perscription for getting my baby to sleep. Instead, the book is really an expanded pamphlet that describes the different sleep options out there with a clear bias against co-sleeping. Frankly, I wasn't interested in co-sleeping with my baby either, but I found their "con" (from the "pro/con" section) to be laughable--that co-sleeping is dangerous because you could smother the baby accidentally. Lots of other books out there. Don't buy this one.