Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth M.D. (1999, Paperback, Revised)

I consider this book to be the "bible" for sleep-deprived parents. It gives you all the background info you need to understand children's sleep problems and how to fix them. I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone with a child who is not sleeping well.

However, be prepared for a long, cumbersome read. Like many other reviewers have stated, this book needs some good editing. It is difficult to understand in parts, contradictory at times, and just an overall boring read! Difficult to get through the whole thing when you're a tired mom!

Despite all that, I'd still consider the book worth buying. But for those of you who just want to get to the facts and solutions, and only have a couple of hours to spend reading, there is an even better book out there. It's called the Sleep Sense Program, by Dana Obleman. You can order it at wwww.sleepsense.net

We were following Healthy Sleep Habits to the letter, but our son was still not sleeping through the night consistently. When we came across Sleep Sense, we quickly ordered the book and devoured it. We found that Dana's techniques were very similar to Mark Weissbluth's. The difference we found in Dana's book was removing the soother from our son's bedtime routine. As soon as we did that, no more night wakings!

If you have to pick one book, I'd pick Sleep Sense for its quick, no-nonsense read, easy to implement, effective tips as well as the extras it comes with (workbook, electronic sleep log and audio interview with Dana). But if you really want to get in-depth and truly understand how children sleep, what causes sleep problems, different types of sleep problems and how to fix them - Healthy Sleep Habits is the book for you. Personally, I'm glad I have both, and refer back to them whenever my son enters a new sleep pattern.