Rating: 
Summary: Easy to read and really works without being harsh.
Review: This book really worked for us. It's easy to read, interesting and practical. We needed to get our 10 1/2 month old back to sleeping through the night and it's working! Mindell gives an easy to follow program with options and ideas for various situations. Within 3 nights our baby was going to sleep on his own with no crying and had cut his night wakings down to 2 from 5 or 6. Also, we felt we had flexibility with her program and we did not feel like we were being cruel to our child. I would highly recommend this book to any parent. I feel confident our son will be sleeping through the night again within a couple weeks. We are all much happier and more rested. Our son is napping better and less crabby now that he's sleeping better. He really does well on his evening schedule. He even crawled into the bathroom at bathtime and was waiting for me! We really recommend this book to any parent who would like more sleep. It's a easy to follow program with a lot of information so you understand why it's so important for your child to sleep through the night.
Rating:
Summary: easy to read, excellent results
Review: I bought this book on a whim when my then-8-month-old son was not sleeping through the night. As a college student with a new baby, I was a walking zombie and didn't want to "Ferberize." I needed something that was going to work and was based on solid research. This book was very quick and easy to read, which is perfect for sleep-deprived new parents. There are lots of case studies to show real-world application of the tecniques. The first chapter discusses the normal sleep patterns of infants before it goes into how to help your child so you understand what your baby needs. The best part is, it works. Many of the negative reviews of this book criticize the "let baby cry" part of the book, but that's only a small piece of the whole puzzle. Just as you need to have certain "cues" to sleep well, your baby needs a routine and certain "cues" that it's time to sleep. Sleeping well is a learned trait, as this book discusses, and it *is* a gentle, effective way to teach your baby how to sleep well. I have used the basis of her technique (routine, not crying it out) for my subsequent children and my other two have been champion sleepers from early on (6-8 weeks of age). This is an excellent book to arm you with information, real-world application, and realistic expectations for your baby's sleep habits. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: A good book, but a hard process
Review: We bought this book on the recommendation of a friend when our son was 4 months old (he is now 33 months old). I first read through the book, and when our son was 5 months old we decided to try it. We were exhausted, not having slept more than 4 hours a night since he was born. I must say that as a mother, and a first time mother at that, training my child to sleep was a very hard process to go through, but well worth it. The first night our son cried for almost an hour. The second night he screamed (yes, screamed) for nearly two hours. Night three went down to 45 minutes. It took a total of 2 weeks to get him sleeping through the night, but it worked. I modified Dr. Mindell's approach a bit, because I could only stand 30 seconds to a minute of my son's crying. I eventually was able to get it up to 5 minutes, and by that time he was going to bed without a fuss and falling right to sleep. He is now a champion sleeper. We recently moved, and he did have some sleep problems, but we went back to our plan of putting him to bed, coming in every 5-10 minutes to reassure him, and leaving. It made it a bit harder because he is in a bed now, but he got the message, and within a week he was back being a champion sleeper. We gave our copy to a co-worker whose baby wasn't sleeping. We are expecting our second child so we are getting another copy! Make no mistake. This is a hard process, but in the long run, it is well worth it. Our son is a happy, well rested, well adjusted toddler, who actually looks forward to night time.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing! Finally an end to my sleepless nights
Review: As far as I'm concerned, Jodi A. Mindell and this book are a godsend. I have been co-sleeping with my baby since he was born, just to get two or three hours of sleep at a time. I was told that a breast-fed baby would most likely not sleep through the night untill 12 months! I never though it would work, but the methods suggested in this book worked almost immediately. After a couple of tearfull bedtimes and naps, my 7 month old baby boy sleeps like a champ! I swear to God, if you can put up with the heart-wrenching first few times, you are in for a whole lifestyle change. After four days of using these methods, my baby has slept through the night in his own crib for the first time ever! He can put himself to sleep without my assistance in less than ten minutes, and takes the longest naps he ever has (an hour or more each)! I've told everyone of my friends about this book...I couldn't reccomend it with more enthusiasm. It has changed our lives forever. I have one happy, well-rested baby.
Rating:
Summary: A great book to help parents deal with sleep issues
Review: Prior to having my daughter and the first few months of her life, I was completely against the "cry it out" method. I read Sears & Sears chapter on nighttime parenting and thought that their philosophy was much more consistent with my own. Then I experienced the reality of having a baby.Dr. Mindell's book was given to me as a gift and after reading it I decided to give her methods a try. Yes, it is not easy to hear your baby cry but her method really works and she offers excellent suggestions on how to cope with the first few nights of sleep training. Our baby cried far less than we expected and fell asleep fairly quickly. Also, her book is about more than just putting your baby to bed awake, it is about understanding the difference between infant and adult sleep, establishing a bedtime routine, a consistent bedtime and paying attention to the environment where your baby sleeps. My husband and I feel liberated that our 4 month old baby is sleeping through the night most nights already! I do not think we have caused her psychological harm in any way. In fact, she is much less cranky and she is taking more consistent naps. (Prior to sleep training, she almost never napped). Dr. Mindell's book offers a very good overview of sleep, sleep disorders, & how to cope with a large variety of issues from nightmares, early waking, and difficulties getting to sleep yourself once your baby is sleeping. I found her book to be thoughtfully written and very comprehensive. Whether to use a sleep training strategy or not is a very personal decision but Dr. Mindell provides the reader with sound advice on how to improve your babies sleep habits. I highly recommend her book.
Rating: 
Summary: Child Abuse
Review: The methods prescribed in this book are CHILD ABUSE - plain and simple. If you are desparate and tired - try reading a book that will help you UNDERSTAND infant developmental appropriateness - Dr. Sears and Elizabeth Pantley are good. If you have to harden your heart to let your baby cry until they vomit - you are ignoring nature's gift to you "Mother's Instinct". Ask yourself how YOU would want to be treated? Humanely and with respect. All the posters who say it "worked like a charm" are fooling themselves about the long-term effects of this type of program. Parenting is a long road - a quick solution may not be the answer!
Rating:
Summary: Appalling, abusive and unbelievable method.
Review: I was horrified to find out that letting your baby cry out till s/he vomits is an acceptable method of parenting in this day and age. How can this be considered a gentle and compassionate way?
Even pet-owners are prosecuted for this type of stuff, so how can a supposedly liberal culture accept such an atrocious method! All the people who rave this book must be selfish, and totally cold people that they can think that a it is ok to do this to a child. Here are some basics that are universally accepted, EXCEPT it seems in the America that accepts Ferber/Mindell CRAP: a. Parenting comes with sacrifices; it is not easy, but most of us think that the rewards are worth it. A good choice to not being completely fatigued is to have the baby's crib in your bedroom or have the baby sleep in bed with you. That is a natural and healthy thing to do. Just because we are living in a modern technological world does not mean that our bodies have evolved to match this. We are still (biologically) the same pre-historic creatures that need comfort, warmth, soothing and mothers milk when we are vulnurable little babies. So whats a temporary sacrifice! 2. Babies DO NOT know manipulation. They want soothing and comfort from you because they TRUST you and see you as their main source of security. PLEASE pick up that crying child and wipe its tears. 3. Letting a baby cry till is vomits and falls asleep defeated and exhausted is akin to whipping a baby animal to train it for a circus -- no difference. So those of us who think it is OK to torture animals for a 15 minutes of human jolly will obviously think it is "normal" to let baby cry that long. After all once babies will is broken, it has GIVEN UP on trusting you (with the deep sub-conscious sense of security) as its main source of nurture. I just do not understand how a culture can produce emotionally well adjusted and happy adults when they are tortured as children. Maybe that is why violence is such a wide-spread occurence in this country! Maybe that is why the divorce rate is so high and so many people need to see psychiatrists. The Mindell/Ferber methods are great to keep psychiatrists in business!!!!
Rating:
Summary: I did not believe it, but this really works!!
Review: Our daughter is 4 months old and was waking up every 2-3 hours and it was taking us about 2 hours to put her to sleep every night. We had to walk her and shake a rattle to just get her to relax and then maybe she would fall to sleep. I was so eager to try something to improve her sleeping habits that I read this book in less than 48 hours. My husband and I talked about it and we stuck to what the books says (bedtime routine, putting her to bed at the same time each night, etc.) We waited to try it until one week after she got her 4 month shots and on a day when she was put down for her naps at the appropriate time. The first night, she cried for an hour and only slept for an hour. We did what we normally do (as the books states) to put her back to sleep. The 2nd night, she cried for 20 minutes (which was odd since they are supposed to cry longer the 2nd night) and slept for 5.5 hours just for a feed (she is only breastfed) and went back to sleep for another 4.5 hours. By the 4th night (which is tonight) she went to sleep in less than 12 minutes. My husband and I were in total shock. I am not going to tell you that it was easy. Hearing your child cry is very difficult, but if you stick w/ it, you will hopefully get the same results we did. We honestly did not believe it would work, but are so thankful that it did. Good luck to all of you!
Rating:
Summary: It really works!
Review: We tried the techniques in this book when our son was 9 months old. He was one of the 20% who didn't sleep through the night after just the bedtime routine was followed. After just one night of middle-of- the-night checking, he is now sleeping through quite happily. I admit that night was pretty tough but you have to believe that it is the best thing for your child to learn how to self-soothe and remain committed to helping him.
Rating:
Summary: Blatant attempt to cash in on sleep deprived parents
Review: This book is written in a meandering style that tells a lot of random stories but offers few solutions. The solution described is actually the Feberizing method which lets the child cry themselves to sleep, but I haven't seen the name mentioned .... copyright infringment? At any rate this book is not only a waste of time and money the advice it gives you is in my estimation very hard to even gleen and even then it is third rate at best. A much better book which offers ten times the information in one chapter is "Secrets of the Baby Whisperer" by Tracy Hogg.
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