Getting a young child to go to sleep and stay asleep is one of the most challenging aspects of parenting. Yet many parents resign themselves to enduring years of exhaustion. Practical help is not easy to find, and much of the available advice stresses letting even very young babies "cry it out," an option that is not comfortable for many parents. Kim West, known to her clients as The Sleep Lady®, has developed an alternative and effective approach that is gentler on both parent and child. West emphasizes that sleep is a learned skill and explains how parents can teach children to sleep, even at an early age. She starts with newborns, showing parents how to avoid sleep problems from the beginning. And she has solutions for older babies and children who have developed poor bedtime, nighttime, or nap time habits. The Sleep Lady method—including a gentle, practical, step-by-step program called The Sleep Lady Shuffle—has proven effective for hundreds of families. West has spent more than a decade successfully teaching parents how to help their children sleep soundly and independently through the night. She provides specific, achievable guidelines that work, while also taking into account the values, lifestyles, and parenting styles unique to each family. Most parents who adopt The Sleep Lady Shuffle see dramatic improvements in a few weeks, if not days. Good Night, Sleep Tight contains age-specific chapters from birth through five years old, in which West succinctly outlines what action to take; discusses important developmental changes; provides sample waking, feeding, and napping schedules; advises how to use The Sleep Lady Shuffle; and lays out common problems and solutions. Included throughout are real-life testimonies and anecdotes from parents West has assisted. Good Night, Sleep Tight also discusses co-sleeping, bedtime strategies for twins and siblings, and dealing with nightmares and illnesses. West even offers tips on how to minimize sleep disruption when families travel or experience other breaks in routine. Essential reading for any tired parent, or any expectant parent who wants to avoid the pitfalls of sleeplessness, Good Night, Sleep Tight offers a practical, gentle, easy-to-follow remedy that will work for all families in need of nights of peaceful slumber.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Kim West, known as The Sleep Lady® by her clients, has helped more than a thousand parents learn to listen to their intuition, recognize their child’s important sleep cues and behaviors, and gently create changes that promote and preserve healthy sleep habits. Kim, a mother of two and a Licensed Certified Social Worker-Clinical (LCSW-C), has been a practicing social worker for more than twelve years. She received her Master’s degree in Clinical Social Work from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. Kim lives with her family in Maryland.
Joanne Kenen is a journalist and mother of two who first met Kim West professionally while seeking a remedy for her younger son's sleep difficulties. Joanne graduated from Harvard University, then went on to report from Latin America and the Caribbean, New York, and Miami before settling in Washington, D.C. For the past ten years she has been a Washington, D.C.–based writer, specializing in U.S. politics, health care, and health policy. Joanne lives with her husband and their sons outside of Washington, D.C. and a Licensed Certified Social Worker-Clinical (LCSW-C), has been a practicing social worker for more than twelve years. She received her Master’s degree in Clinical Social Work from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. Kim lives with her family in Maryland.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
193 of 196 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to use, and it works.,
This review is from: Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep, and Wake Up Happy (Hardcover)
The Sleep Lady is the reason our daughter is finally sleeping through the night, after a long struggle with up to 12 night wakings every night. We attended a phone class taught by Kim West and then later bought her book.
The most valuable part of this book is the Sleep Lady Shuffle. My husband and I tried using Ferber's method first, and my daughter cried until she just collapsed from sheer exhaustion. When I went in to check on her, finally asleep, I could tell she had slumped over from sitting up - with tears still drying on her face. This is not the picture of a child who has learned the art of self-soothing. We gave it up, and it took some time before I could shake the guilt. We tried the No-Cry Sleep Solution next for almost two weeks and did not see any improvement. I think that for us, the method was too difficult to implement. Our daughter would cry as soon as she left our arms... putting us into a pick-up-put-down dance for hours at a time, and after seeing no results over a few weeks, we quit. The Sleep Lady Shuffle is something "in-between" these two methods. It's phased and gentle. It does involve some crying, but mom or dad is right there in the room to comfort and reassure baby... and although it took some time, our daughter did fall asleep peacefully and on her own. Over the nights it took less and less time for her to do this. We had some setbacks along the way - sickness and travel - and when those were over, we could just implement the Shuffle again in about half the time it took originally... we got our nights back, and we feel that our daughter is eating better and acting happier because she's getting more quality sleep. You don't really need the book to implement the Shuffle. We found the book valuable because we could use it for inspiration to continue being consistent, and to help shape our daily and nighttime routines. I also felt the anecdotes gave me confidence to work with Kim's suggestions for our own family's needs. For example, instead of cutting out night-nursing completely, I continued nursing my daughter once per night for a few months, and we were fairly successful at keeping her to this one night waking until the time was right to night-wean her. All that said - I feel the book and method work very well for a young toddler, since we used it with success when our daughter was close to a year old. I have not used the sections on newborns or older children. As with any book, read it, take what you want and believe in, and throw away what doesn't apply to you. Her advice on breastfeeding, for example, didn't sit completely right with me, but I feel that I know enough now that I could tailor her suggestions for the needs of my particular baby. If I were co-sleeping and did not plan on moving my baby to a crib, I don't think this is a book I would choose - her only examples of shaping the sleep of co-sleeping babies involved moving them to a crib. This book is very well suited for people who, like my husband and I, tried to let their baby cry and could not handle the tears... and who find that avoiding crying at all costs is causing sleep-deprivation on everyone's part. It is sensible and gentle. It works! My family owes the Sleep Lady big time! We could not be more happy with the progress our sleep patterns have made.
60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It Worked!,
By Ted Wallace (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep, and Wake Up Happy (Hardcover)
My wife and are were committed against the "Cry it out" philosophy. I'm sure it works fine, but we simply didn't feel like that was the way to teach our son to fall asleep. We'd spent plenty of time trying to make the "baby whisperer" work -- but the pick-up, put-down mechanism recommended just seemed to agitate both us and our son and leave him exhausted and hoarse and us frustrated.
This book has a very simple philosophy that's easy to follow and that generated results for us after we returned from an overseas trip to see the grandparents back in the US. Within a few days he was able to put himself to sleep and within the 2-3 week timeframe we could plonk him down in his crib and reliably leave him to put himself asleep without us in the room. Now, during the night, he still will fuss on occasion -- but most of the time he's able to sort it out himself and get back to sleep (this from a dedicated 2-3 times a night waker). While no baby book will work for everyone, these one helped us achieve sanity in our lives. Our son is a radically different (and better!) sleeper for this purchase.
65 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It's all about temperament . . .,
By
This review is from: Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep, and Wake Up Happy (Hardcover)
This is a useful book for parents wanting information on babies and sleep. However, I am weary of seeing books on babies and sleep that do not acknowledge that the success of "sleep training" all depends on your baby's temperament. My first child is what Dr. Sears calls "high needs," a label I rejected for a long time and finally came around to, as it's almost a profile of our first child. If you read Kim West's tips with a high needs (or "colicky") child in mind, you will think you are incompetent or insane -- especially naieve, new mothers -- as it simply will NOT work (such as, 'nurse your one-month old in the middle of the night, and then she should go right back to sleep' -- in the crib, no less! This is almost laughable for a baby with a temper such as my first, who thought the crib was fashioned by Satan and only got real sleep if co-sleeping. West does allow for co-sleeping, but my point is that you get the sense she almost assumes all babies are calm-tempered). I now have a second child, still a newborn, who has an entirely different and very easy-going, peaceful temperament, and I can apply West's sleep training rules quite easily and now am using the book as a *general* guideline (notice I emphasize the word "general," as babies don't come with manuals, nor should they). But never once does West acknowledge that some more, um, spirited-tempered babies, shall I say, simply do not bend to these sleep training guidelines. And new mothers need to know this! I am reeeeeeeeeeally tired of reading books that do NOT acknowledge this!
It does have some valuable information, though, for those more calm-tempered babies, and it has valuable information for when your child is older. It's worth the purchase, all in all.
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