Help - Pine Bluff, AR

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quick, get No-cry sleep solution by elizabeth pantley!

Hi F.,
Sleeping issues are so frustrating. Most likely because if you kids aren't sleeping well, neither are you. I would recommend a book called "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child." It is very helpful for overcoming sleep issues at any age.

I think that your children will need some "sleep training." They need to learn how to sleep. One thing that the author the book (Marc Weissbluth) often suggests is moving bedtime to a much earlier hour. Often kids don't sleep well because they are overtired, and encouraging them to get more sleep often helps solve the problem. The book goes through different methods of sleep training, so you definitely don't need to do the cry it out method if you don't want to.

Hope that helps.
M.

Hello! I really understand what you are going through. My daughter is a year old and she still gets up every two hours during the night. So I am not getting much sleep. I notice when she has a really full belly and doesn't take many naps during the day that she sleeps a little better at night. When she wakes up during the night I get up with her and sit in the recliner and rock her. Sometimes we just sit there and fall asleep together. My almost four year old wakes up in the middle of night with her and we all just get on the couch and cuddle. They both fall asleep and one by one I put them in their bed. I understand about not letting them cry themselves to sleep. My daughter she doesn't do that well, I have tried. She just got so use to me that she wants me to hold her for a little bit. I have a nightly routine that has helped with both my little ones. After dinner time there is bath time, getting dressed for bed, i read to them, then they say night night to everyone and then lay them down. My children are spoiled they have a tv in their room. It does help with my daughter and it acts like a night light for when they first go to sleep. I just try different things. I hope maybe some of this helps. Good luck.

S. Thorne
www.always4myfamily.com

I also recommend Weissbluth's "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child." He explains more about sleep than you ever knew there was to learn, and it's wonderful how clear he makes it. We sleep-trained our first son at 4.5 months and he's been sleeping through the night ever since, anywhere from 10 to 13 hours a night for the past year, plus his usual daytime naps. Weissbluth details a "rapid extinction" and a "gradual extinction" method - the former is basically crying it out, the latter is more like the Ferber method. We let our son cry it out, because it's very simple to remember and after one miserable week, no more problems. I know it seems cruel to let a child cry it out, but it does not harm the child or lead to psychological scarring, and once they get caught up on sleep they'll be a whole lot more cheerful. Plus, once they know they can go to sleep on their own, bedtime will go a lot easier and they'll be happier knowing they are "big girls" and can go to sleep by themselves. The screaming is not because she's in pain or cannot calm herself, but because she knows you'll come if she makes a miserable enough noise. Babies can be trained to sleep poorly just as they can be trained (or allowed) to sleep well. It really is up to you as the parent.