• Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, 4th Edition

  • A Step-by-Step Program for a Good Night's Sleep
  • By: Marc Weissbluth MD
  • Narrated by: LJ Ganser
  • Length: 22 hrs and 33 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (100 ratings)

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Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, 4th Edition  By  cover art

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, 4th Edition

By: Marc Weissbluth MD
Narrated by: LJ Ganser
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Publisher's summary

The perennial favorite for parents who want to get their kids to sleep with ease - now in a completely revised and expanded fourth edition!

In this fully updated fourth edition, Dr. Marc Weissbluth, one of the country's leading pediatricians, overhauls his groundbreaking approach to solving and preventing your children's sleep problems, from infancy through adolescence. In Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, he explains with authority and reassurance his step-by-step regime for instituting beneficial habits within the framework of your child's natural sleep cycles. Rewritten and reorganized to deliver information even more efficiently, this valuable sourcebook contains the latest research on:

  • The best course of action for sleep problems: prevention and treatment
  • Common mistakes parents make trying to get their children to sleep
  • Different sleep needs for different temperaments
  • Stopping the crybaby syndrome, nightmares, bed-wetting, and more
  • Ways to get your baby to fall asleep according to her internal clock - naturally
  • Handling nap-resistant kids and when to start sleep training
  • Why both night sleep and day sleep are important
  • Obstacles for working moms and children with sleep issues
  • The father's role in comforting children
  • How early sleep troubles can lead to later problems
  • The benefits and drawbacks of allowing kids to sleep in the family bed

Rest is vital to your child's health, growth, and development. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child outlines proven strategies that ensure good, healthy sleep for every age.

©1987, 1999, 2003, 2015 Marc Weissbluth, Trustee, Marc Weissbluth Revocable Trust (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"I put these principles into practice - with instant results. Dr. Weissbluth is a trusted resource and adviser." (Cindy Crawford)

What listeners say about Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, 4th Edition

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Very Happy

As a new mother of Twins, I found this book extremely helpful. I strongly disagree with reviewers who say his tone is condescending or judgmental, as I personally found him very tolerant of all parenting choices while still providing the facts that disprove them. I also don't see how people say he doesn't give options other than crying it out as he has offered a range of other options, though not in as much detail. My problem with this book is actually not the content as much as the organization and redundancy. A lot of the information is repeated throughout the book that you can easily find yourself wondering if you are relistening to a part that you have already finished. Funnily enough, this repetition is not utilized when most needed in age-specific chapters. Moreover, and this is not the author's problem but rather audible's format, you can't tell where to find the information you need because there's no chapter titles or subtitles, and the book chapters are further divided into two chapters in audio form. Tip for people who are in a hurry, listen to chapters 4, 7, and your baby's age specific chapter.

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19 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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It worked for my baby!

This is a comprehensive sleep book, I was reluctant to sleep train my baby, who at 6 months slept in my arms. I listened to the entire book, applied the techniques and now my baby sleeps 12 hours in his crib. We are still working on good naps.

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7 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars

Couldn't get past the neglectful advice

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

While this book did seem to contain some useful, scientifically proven information about good sleep habits for babies, it also contained tons of negative judgment towards working parents and attachment-style parenting. And worst of all, it contained such horrific, neglectful edorsements of leaving small babies as young as 4 weeks old to cry by themselves in dark rooms for long stretches (as long as necessary including HOURS UPON HOURS for babies just a few months old), that I had to stop reading. I'm blessed with (or probably more accurately--have created through attachment parenting) an easy-tempered 9 month baby who mostly sleeps well but has just lost her a way a little bit (medical issues, mom returning to work/new caregivers, travel), so I don't judge parents in more difficult circumstances who feel desperate enough to let their babies cry. I haven't walked in their shoes. But I do very negatively judge a DOCTOR who endorses such cruelties as a first resort and claims there's no harm to it.

By the way, parents beware when following such advice. My sister-in-law followed strict cry-it-out advice with her first baby, and her now 5 year old has the worst sleep problems I've seen. She absolutely hates sleeping and has a phobic dread of being left alone in a quiet room. By 3 years old they had to stop naps all together because she would literally tear apart her room when they left her in there and was a danger to herself and their home. She currently needs to be bribed to stay all night in her room and will only "sleep" with the lights on and music playing. This is despite being left alone in a dark quiet room as a small baby for 12 hour stretches, supposedly to "train" her to self-sooth. Of course she is chronically sleep deprived, but the psychological damage in her attitude towards sleep is done and probably can't be undone. It's something she'll have to live with for the rest of her life. Let's just say her parents have done it differently with their other 2, with much better success!

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6 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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My take-aways

1. Although at the very beginning author claims he does not represent cry it out method, he does. An since leaving my baby to cry means leaving her hysterically screaming, my motherly instincts do not allow me to do that.
2. I did like the explanation of sleep rythms and scientific part of it, however I did not get much practical advice or action plan for my situation. If a baby is a good sleeper or easy going, it is probably easier to apply his methods, but if a baby a)is hard to get to sleep, b)sleeps poorly, c)does not sleep in her crib or alone, then an advice “maintain regular sleep schedule” or “do early bedtime” etc is not big of a help.
3. After listening to this book, I have realised how vitaly important is a good quality sleep however now I feel even more desparate, because I cannot get my baby to sleep according to these guidelines and therefor harming the baby. So, overall book was not much help.

Also, most of the information is being repeated over and over again.

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4 people found this helpful

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Cruel context and disjointed writing

This Dr arrogantly knocks off an older equally as cruel sleep training method but in a highly disorganized fashion. The book is unnecessarily long, disjointed and offers no new information nor sheds new light. I’m baffled by its popularity.

The Sleep Easy Solution is a more empathetic approach that yields the same results. Though we’re sticking with the family bed for now, a practice this Dr belittles and shames for a good 20 pages. Our baby can stay a baby for now. When he’s not, we’ll start treating him a little differently. On his own time. The question to ask yourself is “do you believe and for how long that a baby’s needs and wants are the same thing?”. I do. So this book and its pontificating bag of wind has no place in my library.

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4 people found this helpful

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DO NOT BUY THIS!!!

So little information, SO MUCH REPETITION!!!

The print version is UNREADABLE and the audio version is UNLISTENABLE! Never before have I come upon a time where 90 PERCENT of what is said is just repeated! From sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, chapter to chapter — IT’S ALL THE F’ING SAME!!

Here is all you need to (or can) get from this book:
- more sleep is better
- naps are better
- sleep rhythms/cycles/schedules is better
- watch the child not the clock
- it’s better to involve both parents
- start early

Done. The rest is filler.

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3 people found this helpful

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So much learning and improvement!!!!!

Oh God I wish I could had gotten this book earlier. Just 3 days listening to it and my baby is already sleeping so so so much better. Got it through Amazon. I was doing everything wrong with my baby sleeping habits. She is 4 1/2 months. Now I can see improvement since the first day started following steps on this book.
God Bless the author!!!!!!

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1 person found this helpful

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Great content, but repetitive

The content in this book is incredible. I’m so glad I read it. So helpful to raising my newborn baby boy.

My one gripe with the book is the organization, or lack thereof. The book is about twice as long as it needs to be, and that’s mostly because of repetition. I’d often find myself thinking, “am I crazy or did I already listen to this chapter?” Only to realize the book was repeating itself.

There’s not a lot of evidence based advice out there on baby sleep. Ask 3 experts and you’ll get 3 totally different well reasoned opinions with opposing conclusions. You should go with what feels right for you and your baby. This feels right to me.

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  • Overall
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Excellent book for young infants

I started reading this book because I have two children with sleep issues, a four-year-old and 8-month-old. I felt this book offered excellent information for preventing sleep issues in newborns and starting sleep training for 3-4 months-old infants. Passed that you could probably read chapters 1-4 and receive all the information you need to help any child older than that by applying the principles discussed in those chapters to older children. The remainder of the book is regurgitation of the same principles discussed in earlier chapters and a large amount of sleep data from the 80’s. This book could be cut in half and you’d still know more then you ever wanted too about infant sleep. The examples he uses are generally regarding very young children. Basically after the first handful of chapters I had three to five more takeaways. Read this before your first or before your next child.

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Eye opening and amazingly helpful

This book is worth every penny on cost and every minute in listening/ reading. I began implementing the advise on the first day. it has taken me over a month to finish, but was enlightening and extremely helpful in more ways than I can list on this short review. I also bought the hardcopy so I can flip through and re listen as well as visually see the charts and data he refers to. yes, the book repeats a lot of facts/ statements. I actually appreciate this as such a large book can be difficult to retain sometimes. Thank you Dr. W for writing this book.

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