sheyne rowley

[skeetaboat]

I was dubious when I first saw this thread pop up because of the number of rave reviews by brand new users, but have since read (some) of the book (my mum lent it to me), and so I wanted to put my two cents in..

I have found Sheyne's communication priciples really good for dealing with my toddler. He's a lot more co-operative and we have fewer tantrums because I'm communicating with him better and he knows what we're doing, what I expect, what's coming up, yada yada. I think the communication philosophy fits in well with the P.E.T stuff.

We've yet to implement the sleep stuff, because bubs is under 6 months and toddler is heading towards 3 (its recommended for 6mo-2yo). But I will give it a go with bubs when she's old enough because after 2 years of being BF'd to sleep and the last 8 months of being cuddled to sleep, the nearly-three year old still requires us to be there until he falls asleep (which we actually don't mind), and wakes up screaming if no-one is there with him (which we do mind, especiallly coz it's happening 4 times a night, and is pretty distressing for us all). It's like he can't fall asleep without us there, and I'd like to avoid that with the next bub. I have tried Sheyne's general philosphy with bub a couple of times - wrapping, rocking for a few minutes and putting her down awake, to be pleasantly surprised that it worked - 5 mins later DD is asleep (not exactly what she says to do but close enough) it never occurred to me to give her the chance to try to fall asleep on her own before, because my firstborn was so insistent on human contact to fall asleep. Other times I've found that after being put down wrapped and awake, DD will sort of talk to herself for about 10 minutes but go the other way and start to get unsettled and wriggle out of her wrap instead of settling down to sleep. I think it depends on how ready for sleep she is.. plus she's used to being fed or rocked to sleep, so I guess it's not going to work all the time at this stage and I'm really just experimenting to see what works ATM. I will give it a proper go when DD is old enough and see if it works for us.

So there's my 2 cents. If anyone has any suggestions for how to stop DS waking up screaming at this age, I'd love to hear them!

ETA: added info..