The Happy Sleeper

The Science-Backed Guide to Helping Your Baby Get a Good Night's Sleep - Newborn to School Age

By: Heather Turgeon MFT, Julie Wright MFT, Daniel J. Siegel M.D. - foreword

Narrated by: Heather Turgeon MFT, Julie Wright MFT

Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

An urgent message for sleep-deprived parents: You don't have to suffer through "cry-it-out" or attachment parenting's "co-sleeping." There's another way!

Parents spend a great deal of time and energy coaxing, negotiating, singing, and swinging their children to sleep. Yet studies show that sleep deprivation among young kids is rampant. Babies and young children get an average of 9.5 hours of rest per night when experts agree that they need 11-12 hours. A mountain of research links drowsiness to academic, health, and psychological problems. It turns out that over time, all that cajoling and soothing can actually have the opposite of its desired effect. The harder we try (with the best of intentions and boatloads of love), the more we get in the way of our kids' natural sleep development.

The Happy Sleeper shows parents how to avoid and undo cumbersome sleep habits, putting their babies and little kids on track to a full night's sleep. Heather Turgeon, a columnist for Babble.com and writer for the National Sleep Foundation, and Julie Wright, a psychotherapist and highly-popular parenting expert, teach parents that babies have an innate capacity to self-soothe, as well as the brain machinery to sleep well. So why do many families struggle at night? Most do what works today, but don't notice when it's no longer needed tomorrow, and then push harder when it becomes a hindrance the day after that.

Parents get stuck working overtime with fanfare and tricks to put their babies and children to bed - lying down with their kids, re-tucking and refilling water glasses endlessly. Mindfulness - the practice of using focused attention, being present and open - has proven effective in many realms of health and serves as the foundation for the techniques in this audiobook. Using these methods in a thoughtful, attuned, and loving way, parents transfer the role of soothing from themselves to the children.

The Happy Sleeper features a foreword by neuropsychiatrist and popular parenting expert Dr. Daniel Siegel, author of Parenting from the Inside Out and the New York Times best-seller Brainstorm.

Includes a bonus PDF with worksheets and charts.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2018 Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"The Happy Sleeper makes happier parents by unleashing their child’s natural ability to sleep with a sensitive, structured approach based on the authors' combined twenty years of clinical experience." (Dr. Mehmet Oz)

"Clear a space on your bookshelf! You'll be consulting this friendly, research-based guide to the blessings of sleep for you and your little ones for many years to come." (Adele Faber, coauthor of How to Talk so Kids Will Listen & Listen so Kids Will Talk)

“Compassionate, courageous, and creative.... Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright have written a user-friendly, scientifically-informed, practical guide that provides the information and intention you need to cultivate healthy sleeping habits not only for your child, but for yourself as well! Give your children the relationship security they need while also providing them the structure they require to sleep well and thrive.” (From the foreword by Daniel J. Siegel, MD, New York Times best-selling author of Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain)

A must for first-time parents

Every first-time and new parent should listen to this book. My wife and I followed the steps and our little girl was sleeping through the night at month four. She is now ten months old, and sleeps easily at nap time, and at night sleeps 11 hours straight.

Might work - if you have unlimited resources

Requires that you control every aspect of your baby's sleep environment. Didn't work for us.

good information, awful narration

There was a lot of good information in this book, but one of the narrators has a nails on chalkboard voice that makes her chapters hard to listen to. you'll wince at the next time she pronounces "T" rather than listen to what she has to say.

Misleading

If you look for another version of Cry it out method, this book is that. As I was looking for something that is not Cry it out, I felt tricked into this book. Only few chapters in, it was finally clear, so I wasted couple hours of my time.

No chapter titles, impossible to navigate

The chapters in this audiobook are untitled (just chapter 1, chapter 2, etc.) AND the don’t actually align with the chapters of the book. So you can be listening to chapter 3 of the audiobook and it’s actually chapter 2 of the book. It’s a mess!

Don’t buy the audio version! It doesn’t have a Table Of Contents!

This audio version is everything an audio version should be BUT IT DOESN’T PROVIDE YOU WITH A TABLE OF CONTENTS! In either chapter 1 or 2 they say which chapters correspond to the age group of your child but you have to literally listen to the whole chapter to find out.

Another let the baby cry book

A waste of time and money, of couse is written as the must helpful,no harm for your baby recipe, but it is plain could hearthed stuff.

Cry It Out under a different name

This long book can be summed up by saying that the authors recommend you leave your infant crying in their crib for as long as it takes. But don't worry, your baby will be fine because you speak a couple of sentences to them every five minutes. For anyone debating whether or not to sleep train their infant (and make no mistake about it, what this book describes is sleep training), I highly recommend Safe Infant Sleep instead.