This was what the library had at a moment of crisis, when my five month old decided that rather than sleep through the night he would scream continuously until exhausted. After the second such night, we had to do something.

On the plus side, Dr. Weissbluth had simple clear advice which worked. According to his long experience in the field, most babies with sleep problems are simply overtired. To avoid this, the cure is to move bedtime up, even to as early as 5:30 if you think your baby has sleep deficit. And while there are many approaches to sleep training, at some point your baby has to learn to go to sleep on his own, and 'extinction' or 'cry it out' is a rough few night that simply works. More complex graduated extinction processes mostly just take more time and energy, and actually deliver worse results since kids can learn things other than "I must go to sleep on my own."

And you know what? Dr. Weissbluth was absolutely right! My son's nap times have been better, he's figured out how to go to bed in 10 minutes, and we're all sleeping through the night. Collective familial madness adverted.

So why three stars? First, this book needs a hefty editing pass. It's 600 pages long with lots of redundancy. I read quickly and getting the information I needed was still a slog. There's a really excellent 250 page book in here. And second, the opening chapters take a hysterical tone towards sleep hygiene, as poor sleep habits now can doom your child to a life of mental illness and failure. I get that defending sleep is Dr. Weissbluth's whole career, but it's the wrong tone to take with stressed parents who are already worrying about so much.