Helping Your Baby to Sleep - Why Gentle Techniques Work Best
Every day in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and many other countries around the world, new parents are encouraged to 'train' their child to sleep - a practice in which they ignore their baby's crying and distress.
In Helping Your Baby to Sleep, authors Beth Macgregor and Anni Gethin argue that this 'controlled crying' approach is detrimental for children and can have serious long-term effects. This practice produces anxiety in both parent and child and creates a burden of stress on babies with which they are ill-equipped to cope.
In this groundbreaking book, the authors present important research into babies' emotional and brain development, and offer gentle sleep techniques that take into account a baby's natural sleep habits. They write:
'There are so many myths about babies and sleep - it is no wonder that many parents are unaware of babies' true sleep needs. When parents recognise that there is great variability in children's ability to sleep through the night, they can be reassured that it is normal for their baby to wake up and to need help to return to sleep. We show parents ways to tune into how their baby thinks and feels, so they can be more responsive to their child's needs. Babies thrive when their parents are sensitive to their needs, both during the day and at night. We believe this type of parenting also helps build a powerful bond between baby and parent - a connection that lays the foundation for the child's healthy emotional and psychological development.'
Anni Gethin is a health social scientist with special interests in early childhood development and health equity. She runs a research and planning consultancy, lectures in public health and social science, and is a mother of 3 boys.
Beth Macgregor is a psychologist who trains health and welfare workers in infant mental health, child development and child protection. She has worked as a child protection caseworker, specialist and researcher, and is an active member of the Australian Association for Infant Mental Health. Her work as a specialist educator is devoted to creating happier children, families and societies. Beth is the mother of a delightful little boy.
At last - an antidote to the current vogue for leaving babies to cry! Many parents have felt intuitively that this cannot be the way to deal with their infants but too often they are encouraged to ignore their feelings and to ignore baby's distress signals as well. Prof. Carolyn Quadrio, School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales
This is a beautiful book, rich with empathy for babies and parents, and also practical and down-to-earth. Sheila Kitzinger, social anthropologist of birth, author of 24 books, including Understanding Your Crying Baby
I can't imagine any parent reading this informed, wise and powerfully argued book, and ever wanting to use controlled crying again. Steve Biddulph, author of The Secret of Happy Children, Raising Boys and other major parenting books.
|
