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Newspaper Article: "The Sleep Lady, Kim West of Annapolis, brings slumber to fitful toddlers" From the normally placid book-signing corner of the Barnes & Noble at the Festival at Woodholme come the murmurs of parents desperate for a decent night’s sleep. One 15-month-old boy has never slept through the night, his mother admits. A 5-month-old girl drifts off on her own – but is wailing after 10 minutes, says another woman. A baby delays bedtime by angrily throwing her favorite stuffed duck. What to do about the day care center where all the kids have to sleep at the same time – so one has to nap, poorly, in a bouncy seat? The Sleep Lady – otherwise known as Kim West, an Annapolis social worker turned guru of children’s rest – stands in a dark suit at the center of this confessional. After building a consulting practice that has exhausted parents from around the country paying $125 an hour for evaluations and morning phone calls, West has written a book that offers a “gentle” way to get kids sleeping on their own. If she needed any further evidence that we are a sleep-deprived nation, the book’s promotional tour has provided it. The Pikesville signing is tame. “In Annapolis,” West recalls, “three women were crying.” With Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady’s Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep and Wake Up Happy (CDS Books, $22.95), West is the latest to enter the never-ending debate over how best to get children to sleep. Parents often struggle with conflicting sleep advice. Should they use the Ferber method of leaving children alone to cry, with intermittent checks? The “attachment parenting” model that encourages parents and babies to sleep in the same bed? The numbers show that, for many, nothing is working. A poll released last year by the National Sleep Foundation found that more than two0thirds of children have one or more sleep problems at least a few nights a week. In every age group from infants through fifth-graders, the average amount of sleep that children were getting fell below the minimum amount recommended by experts. Doing the ‘shuffle’ Many kids are going to bed too late, says Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a pediatric sleep researcher whose popular book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (Ballentine Books, $14.95) emphasizes the importance of children’s sleep cycles. “You have more children kept up too late because the parents are coming home wanting to play with their child,” he says. The fact that parents also are usually tired makes it less likely that they will follow any method consistently, Weissbluth says. With co-author Joanne Kenen, a former client, West advocates what she calls a “middle road” approach. It involves allowing kids 6 months and older to cry – while parents stay in the room with them. She calls it “The Sleep Lady Shuffle.” It can take as long as two weeks. First, the parent sits next to the crib and intermittently pats and talks to the child until she goes to sleep – as long as that takes. To keep the baby from being overly entertained by this, West recommends that the adult close his or her own eyes. “Don’t stimulate him,” she writes of the baby. “Bore him.” After a few days, the parent moves the chair halfway to the door. Then, to the doorway. By night 10, Mom or Dad is sitting in the hallway. Three nights after that, parents can usually do what they like – as long as they’re on the same floor, listening for the baby to cry. Two prominent sleep experts said the West’s “shuffle,” is similar to “fadeaway” techniques that have been used for years. “It works for some children and utterly fails for some,” Weissbluth said. “Any piece of advice has to be temperament-specific, age-specific. There’s no cookie-cutter approach that works for every family.” Dr. William Sears, author of many books on attachment parenting, said he recommends a similar method for parents who want an older child to leave their bed for his own room. But Sears is leery of doing it much before a child is a year old. “Fading away too fast, too young is risky, because a child loses trust,” he said. ‘She’s controlling me’ West, 40, became interested in children’s sleep around the time she thought about having her own. She began to read everything she could on the subject, and got both of her daughters to sleep for eight-hour stretches before they were 3 months old. A word-of-mouth practice grew, and a decade later, West estimates she has helped at least 1,000 families. Her recommendations didn’t work in fewer than 5 percent of cases, she says. For those children, the problem is sometimes a hidden medical condition, or disagreement between the parents over the best sleep strategy. “If a parent is really 100 percent consistent, the problem
goes away,” West says. She tells parents they are “sleep coaches,” not trainers – that, in the familiar terms of the little league soccer match, they can encourage and teach, but it’s up to the child to make the goal. Her advice worked for Kristin Miller of Monkton, whose daughter
Sarah was waking up earlier and earlier as a toddler to be nursed
back to sleep in her parents’ bed. But when she sat next to Sarah’s crib and watched her cry – for an hour and a half the first morning – she realized that her daughter wasn’t suffering, just angry about having to sleep on her own. “It kind of clicked with me that she’s controlling me,” Miller said. “She knows I’m her, that I’m not abandoning her.” Affirming postcards When Kathy Cavanaugh of Bowie hired West, her toddler daughter was staying up later while her twin brother woke at 1 a.m. to sleep with his parents. They wouldn’t nap at day care. West recommended moving the twins’ bedtime to between 7 and 7:30 p.m. and doing the “shuffle.” Cavanaugh, 42, was surprised to see that one twin’s crying didn’t wake the other. After some rough nights – including the first one, when daughter Nicole ended up in her parents’ bed after hours of fussing – the twins are sleeping well. “There’s no doubt that the payoff is worth it,” Cavanaugh said. “I think they’re healthier and happier.” Lisa Agius of Towson, one of the sleep-deprived mothers at the Pikesville book signing, bought West’s book that night and quickly read it. She was determined to get her 11-month-old daughter, Ella – who she describes as “a bit headstrong” – to stop waking up at night. Agius steeled herself for the task. She wrote out four affirming
postcards to look at in Ella’s room, as West suggests, to
keep herself from caving in. One read: “Sleep equals sleep.” But by the third night, the baby cried just 10 minutes after a middle-of-the-night wakeup before drifting off again. And the fifth night, she slept until morning. Teething has awakened her a few times since then, but Agius was hopeful. “I could see, even in the first three nights that she was starting to realize that, you know what? I think Mom means business this time.” Tips from the Sleep Lady
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