Scan barcode
cocoonofbooks's review
4.0
I honestly don't remember why I put a hold on this book — I can only assume I read about it somewhere at the same time my son was going through some sort of sleep issue. When the hold finally came through, I saw that there were 15 holds on the sole copy (usually my library buys more copies once it hits 5 holds per copy) and thought I should probably read it while I had it. It's only marginally helpful for a 3 1/2-year old, but I would like to get a hard copy for when we adopt our next kid.
Even though Dubief has created her own acronyms for certain approaches to helping your child sleep, she doesn't do what a lot of authors do and say, "I have invented a method that is better than all of the previously invented methods and then written a book about it." However, she also doesn't give only a 30,000-foot view, where she says, "Here's the research, all of these methods are ultimately fine, just pick one." She distills the current approaches into two main buckets (this is where her acronyms, SWAP and SLIP, show up), and then goes through each approach in very specific detail, including night-by-night examples of how you might implement each approach depending on what you're currently doing and where your child's particular hangups are. I'm a sucker for any parenting book with step-by-step guides and charts (especially after our success with [b:Oh Crap! Potty Training|25205433|Oh Crap! Potty Training Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right|Jamie Glowacki|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430084014s/25205433.jpg|44918099]), and this is chock-full of them. I also appreciated that the book was sprinkled with copious footnotes to academic research backing up each of the claims she made.
As with [b:Oh Crap! Potty Training|25205433|Oh Crap! Potty Training Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right|Jamie Glowacki|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430084014s/25205433.jpg|44918099], to get to the really solid, step-by-step guidelines for getting your child to sleep independently, you have to wade through the author's hit-or-miss (mostly miss, IMO) humor. I get not wanting the book to be dry, but I think you can be conversational without trying too hard to be funny. But this book was a product of Dubief's successful blog, so she clearly has an audience that appreciates her particular voice, and it may be that it just happened not to land with me personally. Dubief can also be a bit repetitive — which is understandable in a book that can be used as a reference guide, where people may only be reading bits and pieces, but also extends to things like using the word "triangulate" multiple times (and not entirely correctly). And despite her attempts to be inclusive and gender-neutral, she repeatedly addresses the reader as being the person who gave birth to the child and at no point (that I can remember) addresses the existence of adoption as a way that one might come to have a child in their life.
So it's definitely not perfect, and these aspects are going to bug some readers more than others, but overall I can't think of another parenting book I've read — and I've read a lot! — that covers the topic of sleep so comprehensively and accessibly. It's definitely recommended to anyone expecting a child or parenting a newborn, but even if your children are out of infancy she has some tips near the end that are useful as well.
Even though Dubief has created her own acronyms for certain approaches to helping your child sleep, she doesn't do what a lot of authors do and say, "I have invented a method that is better than all of the previously invented methods and then written a book about it." However, she also doesn't give only a 30,000-foot view, where she says, "Here's the research, all of these methods are ultimately fine, just pick one." She distills the current approaches into two main buckets (this is where her acronyms, SWAP and SLIP, show up), and then goes through each approach in very specific detail, including night-by-night examples of how you might implement each approach depending on what you're currently doing and where your child's particular hangups are. I'm a sucker for any parenting book with step-by-step guides and charts (especially after our success with [b:Oh Crap! Potty Training|25205433|Oh Crap! Potty Training Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right|Jamie Glowacki|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430084014s/25205433.jpg|44918099]), and this is chock-full of them. I also appreciated that the book was sprinkled with copious footnotes to academic research backing up each of the claims she made.
As with [b:Oh Crap! Potty Training|25205433|Oh Crap! Potty Training Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right|Jamie Glowacki|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430084014s/25205433.jpg|44918099], to get to the really solid, step-by-step guidelines for getting your child to sleep independently, you have to wade through the author's hit-or-miss (mostly miss, IMO) humor. I get not wanting the book to be dry, but I think you can be conversational without trying too hard to be funny. But this book was a product of Dubief's successful blog, so she clearly has an audience that appreciates her particular voice, and it may be that it just happened not to land with me personally. Dubief can also be a bit repetitive — which is understandable in a book that can be used as a reference guide, where people may only be reading bits and pieces, but also extends to things like using the word "triangulate" multiple times (and not entirely correctly). And despite her attempts to be inclusive and gender-neutral, she repeatedly addresses the reader as being the person who gave birth to the child and at no point (that I can remember) addresses the existence of adoption as a way that one might come to have a child in their life.
So it's definitely not perfect, and these aspects are going to bug some readers more than others, but overall I can't think of another parenting book I've read — and I've read a lot! — that covers the topic of sleep so comprehensively and accessibly. It's definitely recommended to anyone expecting a child or parenting a newborn, but even if your children are out of infancy she has some tips near the end that are useful as well.
More...