Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems - Richard Ferber

An incredibly helpful book for addressing sleep problems. I was nervous about getting this book, because Richard Ferber is demonized in some child-rearing circles (notably the attachment parenting/Dr. Sears camp) as being unnecessarily mean to babies. The original version came out in 1985, and I can’t speak to the tone or content of that, but the 2006 edition is fabulous. In the preface, Ferber talks about how he has become identified with the cry-it-out method, which he regrets because his intention in writing the book was to provide an alternative to endless crying.

I found the book kind to babies and helpful for parents. He gives clear step-by-step instructions on how to alter sleep schedules and discusses how to solve sleep problems if you co-sleep (an omission from the first edition that he notes in the preface). He shows an excellent way of charting your child’s sleep so you can see what is going. He also discusses bedwetting, night terrors, and nightmares and covers sleep problems up through the teenage years.

Previously I recommended Marc Weissbluth’s Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, but the bloom is off that rose. Weissbluth is helpful for two things – excellent charts of the average amount of night and day time sleep at different ages, including the 10th and 90th percentiles, and guidance on noticing when your child is tired. But the book is incoherent, says the same thing over and over, gives you 100 pages on why sleep is important (well, duh), and doesn’t provide clear instructions on changing sleep patterns. It’s worth getting from the library for the charts and the sleepy signs though.

The only problem I have with Ferber’s book is that his charts of how much sleep kids need at different ages seem way off – they seem to track with the 10th percentiles from Marc Weissbluth’s book.


Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems: New, Revised, and Expanded Edition
Richard Ferber
2006
Available from Amazon