March 22, 2004

Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, by Richard Ferber

I was trying to think about what book has had the greatest effect on my life. I thought about books I'd read in college that seemed to carry a lot of philosophical weight at the time I'd read them, and then seemed like junk upon re-reading them later, like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or The Fountainhead. So, I asked myself again, what book has really changed my life? Then it hit me: it was, without a doubt, Richard Ferber's Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems.

We have two kids, one age six, the other 11 months. When our six year old was a baby, we put her to sleep by holding her and rocking her. She would wake up every couple of hours, crying for us to come back and rescue her. We finally gave up and let her sleep with us. It was the only way we could get any sleep. To this day, she demands that one of us crawls into bed with her until she falls asleep. (Fortunately, she no longer wakes up in the middle of the night crying for us.)

When we had our other daughter, she would cry for us every hour at night. The whole family was exhausted from the ordeal. Would we have to suffer this ordeal for three more years?

Some friends told us to "Ferberize" her and we'd all be able to sleep soundly. We were skeptical, but we bought the book and followed the instructions faithfully. In a nutshell, Ferberization entails putting your baby in her crib, kissing her goodnight and walking out of the room. She'll cry, of course. After five minutes, you walk in and reassure her, then walk out again. This time you wait ten minutes. You repeat this, adding five minutes between return visits. It sounds cruel. As a parent, your instinct is to run to your baby as soon as she starts crying. But in this case, not following you instincts is the best course of action. It took exactly two nights to Ferberize our baby. She has learned to fall asleep on her own, and when she wakes up at night, she knows how to fall back asleep on her own. Best of all, she is happy, confident, and well-rested. And so are we. We have our nights, and as a result, our days back. Truly a life-changing book.

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