Sleep Related Articles & Blog Posts

There is a lot of information (and opinion) about how to get your infant to sleep through the night. Cry it out/don’t cry it out, rocking/no rocking, co-sleeping/crib sleeping, white noise/no noise, breastfeeding or bottle-feeding. Everyone has an idea about what works. Like I said earlier, there is very little data to support one technique [...]

I think perhaps the hardest thing about new motherhood is the sleep deprivation. In fact, I think some of postpartum depression may be due to lack of sleep. Lack of sleep can cause irritability, lack of emotional control and lack of concentration. But it can also keep you from losing weight!

Who would want to give their children nightmares? Or night terrors? Who wants to make bedtime battles worse? Who would want to make it take longer for their children to fall asleep once they get in bed?  Who wants their kids to sleep worse when they finally do drift off? Who wants their children to [...]

I’m asked almost everyday by some concerned parent whether their child is sleeping enough or too much. That’s not a simple answer and varies from child to child and even from day to day.

For almost ten years now I’ve suggested using a simple, easy “Get Out of Bed Free Card” for those who want to help preschool and school-age children learn to happily stay in their own rooms at night. I’ve heard from thousands of parentsaround the world who have been thrilled with the results.

Today’s generation of children is growing up unlike any previous generation in history. In the last 10 years there has been an explosion of digital and electronic media available to and even targeted at children – even our very youngest children. Lots of DVDs are aimed at kids 0 to 18 months old. Television networks [...]

Sleep problems in babies, toddlers, and preschool kids are common. So are mental health problems, such as depression, in parents. Postpartum depression in mothers gets the most attention, but when a mother is depressed, up to 50 percent of fathers will be as well. And depression is not restricted to the postpartum period. It’s also [...]

You may be more exhausted than you have ever been. Whenever people are sleep deprived they are more subject to swings of emotion and to feelings of inadequacy. This, by itself, is enough to cause a blue period (ask any practicing pediatrician).

Uninterrupted hours of nighttime darkness encourage healthy melatonin levels in the blood that dramatically suppress the growth of breast tumors. On the other hand, exposure to light at night causes melatonin levels in the blood to plummet, stimulating growth of breast cancer cells – according to a groundbreaking study appearing in the December 1, 2005 [...]

Dads matter. When people think about depression soon after a baby is born, they often forget about fathers. But many new dads do get depressed, and you can read their depression in their children’s behavior! Fathers and their well-being have an important effect on their babies’ development, but this has been too little studied.