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Tag Archives: Elizabeth Pantley

The No-Cry Sleep Solution For Toddlers And Pre-Schoolers, and an Owl Sleep Update

07 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery, Shhh, I'm Reading

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

books, Elizabeth Pantley, night time, no cry sleep solution for toddlers and preschoolers, parenting, reviews, sleep training, sleeping alone, toddlers

It’s about time I did this review.

I had been holding off until I actually felt like taking the book’s advice.

And I finally did.

And now Owl goes to sleep ALL BY HIMSELF.

For those who have The No-Cry Sleep Solution, you’ll find that this book is much the same… with one important difference.

The No-Cry Sleep Solution is aimed at little babies, babies who are young enough to be below the recommended cut-off for cry it out, according to child psychologists.

I admit to being a little dubious about the Toddlers and Preschoolers edition, because honestly, I think that crying isn’t so bad for kids that old.

If anything, a certain amount of emotional distress is necessary to the developing toddler brain.

But Elizabeth Pantley mirrors my own beliefs back at me perfectly:

I’m a firm believer that babies should never be left to cry until they fall asleep. I also believe that toddlers and preschoolers should not be left for endless amounts of tears and anguish, contrary to some sleep books, which suggest doing this even to the point of vomiting. There are hundreds of ideas for helping a child sleep better without resorting to shutting the door on him and wringing your hands while he wails for hours. I have learned, however, that allowing an older toddler or preschooler a few minutes of fussing or moderate crying is not necessarily evil. Many loving, attached parents have put together complete and considerate sleep plans for their children and allowed a small amount of tears along the way.

[…]

There is a huge difference between putting a child in a crib, shutting the door, and abandoning her to hours of crying versus creating a complete and thoughtful sleep plan that includes a loving before-bed routine and then allowing a few minutes of protest at the time the lights are turned out. There’s also a considerable difference between letting a tiny baby cry in the night and letting a four year old cry when he’s put to bed but would rather stay up and watch a movie. […] So if your no-cry plan turns into a little-bit-of-cry plan, don’t feel like you’ve been a failure.

A lot of the ideas in this book were either ones that I was already carrying over from the original book, or were aimed at a child much older than Owl.

Some tips were ones I had instituted on my own, based on my dog training experience.

For example, she suggests setting a clock radio to go off in the morning and telling the child that they can’t get out of bed until it goes off, thus sending a clear signal about when it is ok to get up.

Well, we have a clock that we turn on at night, which we call “Mr. Sun.” mr sun

Mr. Sun goes to bed with Owl, and we wave night-night to him. He winks, closes his eye, turns into a star (it’s weird to say the sun turned into a star since the sun IS a star, but you know what I mean) and glows blue. In the morning, at the time we set, he lights up and turns into a glowing orange sun again.

Owl learned back in the night-weaning days that Mr. Sun was the signal that meant his fussing would be responded to with more than a simple “Shh, it’s still sleepy times, I’ll see you in the morning.”

His first words in the morning are always “MR SUN IS AWAKE!!”

So that’s that covered. We brought Mr. Sun with us to Disneyland and learned that Owl actually does wake up and lie quietly, waiting for Mr. Sun to turn on in the mornings.

But the place where we have gotten stuck is sitting with Owl until he falls asleep.

We did wean him off of being sung-to.

PH put his foot down last year and refused to continue to feed our extrovert’s need for human interaction any further. If he tried to talk to us, we’d walk out of the room for a minute or two.

THAT caused some “moderate crying” as Elizabeth Pantley would call it.

But he learned, and for months and months and months now I have sat quietly in his room, reading to myself, while Owl drifted off to sleep.

And I knew that it was time to make the next step.

Most of Pantley’s sleep plans involve steps. Wean off of one thing, and then another, and then another. So, we had weaned him off of being nursed to sleep, then we weaned him off of needing us to sing to him… but then we stopped.

It’s not Elizabeth Pantley’s fault.

We were just tired. And I didn’t really mind sitting and reading for half an hour or so in Owl’s room. It was easier than introducing a new battle.

But, honestly.

We really did want to have a kid that you could just kiss goodnight and walk away from, and we both knew perfectly well that it was our OWN fault that we didn’t.

Owl had successfully weaned off of nursing at night. He had successfully weaned off of singing and endless recitations of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. There was zero reason to believe that he wouldn’t wean off of human company while falling asleep just as successfully.

We were just… tired.

And lazy.

And so, I put off this review as well because she tells you exactly what to do about that in her book (she has a whole chapter on it, called “Mommy, Stay!”: Needing A Parent’s Help To Fall Asleep) and I didn’t want to admit that I knew what to do but wasn’t doing it.

So we finally did it.

The “I’ll Be Right Back” Trick.

Pantley recommends weaning the child from the staying routine by making frequent trips outside of the room and quickly returning. The child gets used to you coming and going, and knows that you always do come back. That’s the first step. Over time, you just stay away longer and longer.

Owl was used to this a little already.

Knowing that this was the next step, I did make a point of leaving the room at least once during the evening: fetching my book, running to the bathroom, etc. He usually waited patiently for my return, as long as I wasn’t gone too long.

But that was as far as I had gotten.

Because I am lazy, and tired.

Anyway, last month we told Owl that he was not a baby, but a little boy now, and it was time for him to learn how to fall asleep by himself. So we would be giving him chances to fall asleep by himself, but we’d keep coming back to check on him.

Pantley recommends this as a way to be clear about things.

Once you decide on how you are going to handle bedtime, communicate the news to your child. 

Makes sense.

We told him that when he could fall asleep by himself, he could have a little boy bed, that he could get in and out of all by himself.

“Oooh! Little boy bed? I get in by myself? Ooh! OKAY!”

Owl loves his independence.

That first night, I kissed him, told him I’d be back in a couple minutes, and left the room.

Zero protest.

Nada.

I went in after a few minutes and sat down for a moment, then got up again.

“Mommy, I want yoooooou,” he said as I started to leave.

“I’ll be back in a minute, bud,” I said.

He waited patiently.

We repeated this, oh, maybe four or five times.

The last time I went in, he was asleep.

Seriously? It was THAT easy? I had been geared up for tears and war.

The next night I stayed away for five or ten minutes at a time. He was asleep by the third check in.

The night after that, he was asleep by the second check in.

The night after that, I kissed him goodnight and left without making any promises of return at all.

He fell asleep.

HE FELL ASLEEP.

I CAN NOW KISS MY CHILD GOODNIGHT AND GO DOWNSTAIRS AND WATCH MY HUSBAND GET TEARY OVER UNDERCOVER BOSS IN THE EVENINGS LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING.

I can’t tell you how freeing that is.

We started on Wednesday. On Sunday, Owl demanded his prize, and we delivered.

Little boy bed it is.

And he climbs in it on his own every night.

And he falls asleep on his own every night.

And he doesn’t get out of it until Mr. Sun wakes up.

HALLE-EFFING-LUJA.

…And there wasn’t even any crying.

The No-Cry Potty Training Solution: A Review And A Plan

29 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery, My Blag is on the Interwebs, Shhh, I'm Reading

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

books, Elizabeth Pantley, No-Cry Potty Training Solution, parenting, potty training, reading, reviews

It’s about time I got around to reviewing another one of those books Elizabeth Pantley sent me. I’ve been meaning to do it for a long time, but life kind of keeps getting in the way. But putting it off makes me feel like a thief.

Anyway, this is apropos because we are gearing up to potty train Owl, so it would kind of be good to have a post reviewing the book, and then another post once potty training is complete to say how well it worked.

The No-Cry Potty Training Solution

Overall, I found this book to be a really good overview of the whole potty training debate.

I loved the little tips she put in about things like why a splash guard is a no-no and how to teach them to wipe their own bums.

But, while I normally love the open-ended, menu-of-ideas approach taken by Pantley’s book, I was actually hoping for more decisive instructions this time.

Continue reading →

The No-Cry Discipline Solution: The New Model For My Future Dog Training Book

02 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery, Shhh, I'm Reading

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

babies, behavior, book reviews, books, child development, children, discipline, Elizabeth Pantley, literature, No-Cry Discipline Solution, parenting, reviews, strategies

As you may remember, Elizabeth Pantley of the No-Cry Sleep Solution sent me some more of her books for me to check out. Since I love books, this made me pee my pants with excitement just a little bit. (Although that’s also a side effect of having given birth. Still working on those Kegels.)

So I started with The No-Cry Discipline Solution.

I really enjoyed this book, and I actually found it more useful than Harvey Karp’s The Happiest Toddler On The Block.

Continue reading →

Elizabeth Pantley Landed On My Blog. I May Never Wash It Again.

12 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by IfByYes in My Blag is on the Interwebs, Shhh, I'm Reading

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

book reviews, books, Elizabeth Pantley, no-cry sleep solution

GUYS.

I got an email from Elizabeth Pantley, the author of The No-Cry Sleep Solution, a couple of weeks ago.

@IfByYesTweets no WAY! Am just (re)starting her book. Cool that she's so accessible! What about?

— Diana (@BlesstheFunk) February 23, 2012

She said that she stumbled on my blog posts about Owl’s sleep and my search for and eventual use of her book, and she said she was happy to know that I had found her book helpful.

(I hope she actually DID find and read my blog posts, rather than get forwarded links by her editors/media relations people, but you never know. Still, I choose to believe that she did!)

She wanted to know if I would like some free copies of her other books.

So of course, I said HELL YES.

Today I went down to UPS to pick up a box with three shiny new books in it. They still have that new book smell. Since I buy most of my books from Value Village or the used book store where PH used to work, this is a big deal for me.

They didn’t want to give me my books at first, because they were addressed to someone named Doug. I don’t know a Doug, unless you count my friend’s dog, and he’s not much of a reader. I pointed out that my own name was also on the label, right under Doug’s. The UPS lady looked at me suspiciously through her granny-glasses.

“I can’t give this to you. It’s addressed to Doug, not you,” she said firmly. “But my name is right there!” I said, pointing to the label and waving my ID.

“I’d really rather release this to Doug himself.”

“But there is no Doug! I don’t know who Doug is.”

“Well, it’s addressed to him.”

Eventually her younger male co-worker reasoned her into letting my have my package. “Her name IS on the box.”

“Well, then why does it say Doug?” the UPS lady argued.

“It must be a mistake.”

“Look, I was expecting the package. I know what’s in the package. My name is on the package,” I said, pointing again to the label.

So they let me have my package from Elizabeth Pantley.

(When I opened the box, there was a packing slip billing the cost of my books to the self-same Doug, so he must be a media relations guy or an editor or something at McGraw Hill.)

As a thank-you to her for the free books, I’ll of course be posting reviews of the books as I complete them.

The books are:

The No-Cry Sleep Solution For Toddlers And Preschoolers

The No-Cry Potty Training Solution

The No-Cry Discipline Solution.

The potty training one especially will probably get a couple of posts – I’ll post one as I begin the process, and another when I finally succeed. Here’s hoping you won’t have to wait until Owl is five years old for that second update :-p

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