Book Review: A Good Night’s Sleep by Anna Wahlgren

Author: Ana Wahlgren, English translation by Bruce Junkin
ISBN: 978-91-977736-1-4
List Price $22.35

 ABOUT THE BOOK:

-Hundreds of thousands of Swedish parents and their children sleep through the night, while Americans are sleep deprived; book provides step-by-step approach for families that lets four-month old babies and up, and their parents have “A Good Night’s Sleep”-

–According to Anna Wahlgren, acknowledged child-raising authority, best-selling author in Sweden and mother of nine children, there is hope for sleep deprived American families who are trying to cope with kids that fail to sleep through the night.  Now available for readers in the USA, “A Good Night’s Sleep” (GNS) contains the most successful approach ever to training babies and children as young as four-months to sleep for as long as 12 hours a night.

Wahlgren divulges the secrets that help new parents understand the reasons why children awaken one or sometimes many times in a single night and what their cries really mean.  She pulls back the curtain and teaches parents the keys for ending the crying, making children feel secure and getting them to actually begin to enjoy sleeping.  The initial turnaround can occur in as little as four days. 

In “A Good Night’s Sleep,” Wahlgren makes a formidable case for her belief that babies and children who wake up at night suffer from survival anxiety.  Simply put, they question their safety and fear for their lives. Her solution is to teach parents to deliver that powerful sense of calm reassurance and security to the child. A security that love, food and comfort alone cannot give.The most important principle in “A Good Night’s Sleep” is to always calm the baby in its own bed.  Apart from other well-known sleeping methods, a child cured by GNS should never have to cry herself to sleep or be left alone with questions unanswered.

Anna Wahlgren firmly crushes the wide-spread myth that some children “can’t” or “don’t want to” sleep through the night, and she sees sleep-deprivation as a growing western phenomenon that must be reversed for the sake of children’s well-being.  Parents simply have to help them help themselves to sleep, in the same way we have to feed them and dress them. GNS installs that kind of doubtless confidence in every parent who follows Wahlgren’s approach. 

ABOUT ANNA WAHLGREN:

Over the last thirty years, Anna Wahlgren, a Swedish full-time mother of nine, and the author of For the Love of Children, has developed the Good-Night’s-Sleep Cure, which has enabled many thousands of parents to help their children – and thereby help themselves.

REVIEW:

As a mother of three, from almost five years to nine months, I was curious to see what tips Anna had for GNS.  My nine-month-old currently sleeps from roughly 8:00 p.m. until about 7 a.m. and takes two naps during the day.  Certainly, it has taken months and many short nights for me and my spouse to get this far.

With Anna’s own children, she wrote about having to weigh her child before feeding and after feeding, only allowing the child to be fed a certain amount at each feeding.  She found that letting her daughter eat until she was satisfied and not disclosing this to her doctor, for fear of reprimand, provided the best results.  I can’t imagine being a new mom and having to weigh a child before and after each feeding along with everything else!  In the book, she said her oldest was 47 so that is when this limited feeding regimen was practiced in Sweden.  Anna recommends that children go to bed with a full tummy as being one tip in helping to achieve the “cure”.  I personally feel some truth to this. 

In GNS, Anna spends a lot of time describing “the wolf”.  This is an analogy to anxiety.  She shares an example of paying for a trip to go on safari.  If you had a confident and organized crew that you had hired to take on your expedition, you would feel safe and assured.  The opposite would hold true if in meeting the crew, they had no itinerary, nor spoke of the means to make you safe and the trip successful.  This could lead you to fear “the wolf”, fearing that lions could come into camp at night, shear through your tent, attack and eat you.  Fear of the unknown would cause anxiety and poor or lack there of, sleep.  Anna states that this “survival anxiety” also occurs with children and we need to make them feel secure and know they are protected, beginning as a helpless newborn.

Ms. Wahlgren also mentions that picking your child up when they wake up at night, and comforting them by sleeping in your arms, could make them feel like the crib was to fear and create anxiety.  They could only feel safe sleeping in your arms.  GNS describes parents needing to learn how to calm the child while in its own sleeping area.  The parents are to create a feeling of security beyond what food, love, and comfort can provide.  With the GNS cure, children are never to cry themselves to sleep or be left with questions unanswered.

I feel Anna makes quite a few other good points in getting your child to sleep through the night.  It took me a while to figure out what was meant by repeating and confirming a “jingle”.  I wasn’t sure what she was referring to, a bell?  After reading further into the book, I learned it was a verbal phrase that was repeated and confirmed to the child when going to bed, waking at night, and a joyous verbal jingle when waking in the morning. 

Anna had mentioned sending the child to bed almost giddy, quite happy.  I thought you needed to wind down before bed time, but she wrote that the winding down should be done during the earlier evening.  I guess going to bed happy probably even helps relieve anxiety/stress in children and maybe in theory helps release serotonin, the “feel good hormone”, helping with a more rested sleep.

I am thankful my children are sleeping through most nights uninterrupted, outside of needing to change a diaper, helping to get their groggy heads to the potty during the middle of the night, or if they become ill.  Anna’s cure warns parents of two sleepless nights at the beginning of the plan for GNS.  Days 3 and 4 are a bit better.  I don’t know if I was already sleepless from having a young child and then knowing that I would have two sleepless nights, how I would initially react to accepting the GNS cure.

I think Anna has her heart in the right place.  This is a paragraph from near the end of the book:

“Young children should be courageous and happy.  Joie de vivre and a lust for life swell within the.  Human being with their relatively delicate constitutions haven’t survived as a species by being weak, helpless, and pathetic.  They haven’t come to rule the earth because they are objects of pity.  They are not born to succumb to life’s tribulations, but to explore, master and change their reality, their living conditions, and their world.  The iron will that young children possess and that their parents sometimes complain about is the reason the adults themselves are still walking the earth.”

I think this would be a great book for a new parent.  It has a large section of stories from real parents who share their problems, solutions, and sometimes relapses in seeking the answer to a good night’s sleep.  I don’t know that I agree with quite all of Anna’s statements, but she shares her vast personal knowledge in raising her own nine children.  She shows a strong feeling of love, need to develop a feeling of security for the child, and seems to have made some great strides in helping many parents provide the sleep needed for children to successfully grow and thrive.

Disclosure- I received a sample of the above product for review purposes. All opinions expressed are honest and of my own