Become Your Child's Sleep Coach: The Bedtime Doctor's 5-Step Guide, Ages 3-10

by Lynelle Schneeberg

Proven bedtime solutions for parents of preschool and elementary-aged children -- from a Yale doctor

While there are plenty of resources available on establishing healthy sleeping patterns for infants and babies, there's hardly any guidance for handling preschoolers and elementary school kids who are still fighting sleep. Become Your Child's Sleep Coach, focusing on this older demographic of children, meets that need, providing parents with straightforward advice: first, an awareness of the two biggest mistakes that parents make (staying with children until they fall asleep and allowing too many callbacks and curtain calls), followed by a five-step program:

Step 1: Prepare your child's room for success
Step 2: Design your child's bedtime routine
Step 3: Plan your exit after the bedtime routine is over
Step 4: Manage callbacks and curtain calls
Step 5: Manage night and early morning wakings

In addition to her extremely successful five-step program, Dr. Schneeberg addresses several common questions and concerns parents may have about their child's sleep -- how many hours they really need, deciding what the ideal bedtime for their child is, deciding on managing the transition from a crib to a toddler bed, using a white noise machine, handling sleep during potty training, the use of melatonin and sleep aids, dealing with night terrors and other sleep issues, and beyond. Become Your Child's Sleep Coach is every parent's guide to better sleep for children and the whole family!

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Self Help

256 pages, Paperback

Published September 3, 2019

Reviews

[Jaimie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My daughter will be 3 real soon but she's always been advanced so I wanted to pick up a book meant for slightly older children. I'm desperate but I don't want to pay for a sleep coach so I'm going this route first. There are a LOT of helpful things in here and I can't wait to start our process. She goes to bed decent but we've gotten into some bad habits that make the nights really hard. For example the last 2 nights she has woken me up 6 times to take her back to bed and hold her until she falls asleep. That's one of the bad habits to break. Holding her until she falls asleep.

I'll make an update with results to let you know how the advice holds up. :)

[Paige Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

i’ll change the rating once i actually try it :)

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly just made me grateful for the way my kids sleep (knock on wood).

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is worth the read if you are having issues at bedtime. It’s easy to read so you can get thought it pretty quick. I wanted to read it because our child takes forever to get to bed at night, but the book offers examples for ALL sleep problems. The strategies are not revolutionary but helpful. It stresses the importance of being firm on boundaries at bedtime and simple routines or solutions. It’s all easier said than done and requires commitment on the parent side. I definitely use some of the tips I read in this book. Overall - I would recommend.

[Careea Richter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could give this book more than 5 stars! Sleep has been ROUGH in our house. This book is so easy to follow and encourages the guilty parent. We have been “sleep training” for 2 weeks now and our kids have slept multiple nights in a row ALL through the night. To say we needed this sleep is an understatement! My husband and I are finally feeling like we can catch up on sleep or rather get normal sleep to begin with. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our 3yo has discovered that she can open her bedroom door after we've put her to bed, and that has led to some sleep problems for her (and consequently, us). This was a quick, helpful guide to getting your child to sleep independently. A lot of what she suggests in this book we were already doing, but there were a few tips that we hadn't tried yet.

[Heidi Selas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starting to put some of these suggestions into practice this week. Somethings, like the bedtime tickets, aren't a system we want to use in our home, so we will just leave that out. I do think that's a great idea for kids who constantly ask for things but my son doesn't do that.

[Chrys Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Game-changer for our family. If you want your kids to sleep well, this is a good starting point!

[Isabella Maguire · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an SLP, I will be recommending this book to many of my families who struggle to have consistent and quality sleep. Great coaching approach with realistic examples.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly using for transitioning to self-comfort, but there's good information in the whole book

[Joan Gregerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I'd read this when my own kiddos were young! Great surprising strategies for bedtime routines, helping kids get used to falling asleep in their own room, and gradually doing so on their own.

[KNCHNGL · Rating 1 out of 5]

Enticing title but mostly common sense, with a few good tips here and there, and lots of anecdotes, which will surely be useful to some, but felt that this could have been compressed into a much shorter article (or series of), rather than a book.

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had some good ideas. Will revisit in the future as needed.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

When your toddler or preschooler struggle to get to sleep, open this book and follow this 5 step guide. Consistency and follow through are vital. The method is simple and straight forward. Read this book and consider this method to make a nighttime routine work.