Usually I am wary of sleep books. My three year old son has resisted sleep since he was five months old. We tried everything. We read books. We struggled. Sometimes we just gave in and accepted that he wasn’t a sleeper. Somewhere in there I gave up on all advice about getting children to sleep. I quit reading the books and I followed my older sister’s tried and true parenting adage “Do What Works.” Since then we’ve added a family member (8 month old daughter) and we’ve seen that there are both similarities and differences in our children’s sleep personalities. We’ve attempted to do things a little differently with her and sometimes we’ve been successful and sometimes we haven’t.
Along came Elizabeth Pantley’s new offering, The No-Cry Nap Solution – Guaranteed Gentle Ways to Solve All Your Naptime Problems. Having read The No-Cry Sleep Solution when my son was a baby, I already respected Pantley’s approach and philosophies. She is well recommended by the docs (dad and sons) over at Dr. Sears and I respect her tireless efforts to spread the word about gentle ways to get your child to sleep. I too am fervently opposed to the Cry-It-Out approach so despite giving up on sleep advice, Pantley remained one of my favourite parenting authors.
The newest book in her No-Cry series did not disappoint in the least. Like previous offerings, this book is well-researched, sensitive and practical. She includes in-depth explanations about baby and child sleep patterns and about the science and benefits of naps. These sections were extremely helpful, provided several Aha! moments and paved the way for me to re-evaluate our daily schedule for both our pre-schooler and our baby. It gave me the background information I needed to discover why certain methods were working and others weren’t.
After some general discussion about sleep and naps, the rest of the book is organized around specific challenges and solutions. Each challenge is explained and followed by more than one way to solve it. The bonus here is that a busy mom doesn’t have to sit down and read the book cover to cover. After the first few chapters, it is easy to flip to the section that applies to you and come back whenever your situation changes to try something new. As long as you can get past the distracting references to other pages in every chapter, this small paperback will become a treasured reference book to come back to over and over.
Because the book is written for a general audience, it may feel daunting when the list of possible causes to catnaps includes so many possibilities that you don’t know where to begin. My daughter’s frequent wakings could be caused by teething, impending developmental leap (crawling) or separation anxiety. My son’s inability to settle for a nap could be caused by being over-tired or not tired enough. But Pantley is thorough; rest assured that she has guaranteed gentle suggestions for every possible scenario that you might face. Gentle solutions are not always easy solutions though and The No-Cry Nap Solution is certainly not a quick-fix manual. Some of Pantley’s suggestions have to be done over and over again before they work. It might take five times unlatching your nurse-to-sleep baby before you can sneak away. You might have to try several different methods before finding the one that works for you.
Sometimes a sleep-deprived parent will feel like it’s easier to just do what’s been working. Which brings me to my favourite thing about Elizabeth Pantley and The No-Cry Nap Solution: Pantley accepts that all families are different and she repeatedly asserts to do what works for you. She offers the log sheets and schedules to fill out and then says to go ahead and skip them if they don’t suit your personality. She describes sleep challenges like a baby that will only nap in arms and then explains that not all families will consider that a challenge. Her No-Cry Process for Peaceful Problem Solving was like a page torn from my parenting manifesto:
"Address only those problems that are true problems to you, and don’t create or imagine problems because someone else thinks you have them, no matter if that person is family, friend or expert."
As always, Pantley proves sensitive not only to differing parenting approaches and family situations but also to the child. Her suggestions are always gentle and never designed to cause the child distress and yet she recognizes that parents need practical ways to get their children to sleep so they can re-charge too. Her approaches are balanced and realistic in that the goal is rest for both parent and child.
The book is peppered with quotes and photos from real-life parents. The photos are sweet and sometimes funny. The quotes give a tired, frustrated parent hope, a glimmer of light at the end of a dark sleepless tunnel. Both give the book added credibility. The science and research are wonderful but it’s the fact that Pantley has tested these ideas on real families (209 in 18 different countries) that makes it feel like they might work in my own.
Amazingly, many of Pantley’s solutions did work for us, despite our track record. Some suggestions were new to us and have worked their magic in only a couple of short weeks. Others show promise but are not paying off just yet. Still others were old tricks that we found on our own through trial and error. Imagine my surprise when I read solutions in the book that I had learned to employ in our family while struggling with sleep for three years. It was like a message telling me that I do know what I’m doing. And thankfully for all of us, so does Elizabeth Pantley; this book is one more great reason why she is the trusted resource for all parents looking to help their children sleep better.
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