Better Sleep for Your Baby and Child: A Parent's Step-by-Step Guide to Healthy Sleep Habits

Most parents experience difficulties at some time with a child's sleep patterns.

Sleep problems from infancy through the teen years are common and can be highly disruptive and troublesome for all.

Better Sleep for Your Baby and Child is written both for expectant parents who want to prevent childhood sleep problems before they start, and for parents who want to solve a child's existing sleep difficulties. Strategies and professional advice are based on scientific and hands-on clinical experience.

The book includes:

• Detailed explanations of sleep: what it is, why it's needed, how much is needed, how it changes through childhood, and what happens when a child is not getting a sufficient amount of it.
• Preventative strategies and "sleep hygiene" habits.
• Sound advice on where an infant should sleep, sleeping through the night, "colicky" babies, and what to do if a baby seems to prefer nursing all night long.
• Guidelines for recognizing when a child has a serious problem, keeping a sleep diary, and dealing with teenage sleep requirements.
• Detailed information on nocturnal feeding/drinking disorder, nightmares and night terrors, nighttime breathing disorders, and other difficulties.
• Professional advice about sleep medications and how each may help or potentially harm a child.

By following the professional, practical advice in Better Sleep for Your Baby and Child, both parent and child can regularly enjoy a restful night.

Dr. Shelly K. Weiss, MD, FRCPC, is a pediatric neurologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and the co-director of its Sleep Disorder Clinic. An assistant professor at the University of Toronto and member of the executive board of the Canadian Sleep Society, Dr. Weiss has lectured around the world on the area of pediatric sleep disorders.