"Every day in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and many other countries around the world, new parents are encouraged to 'train' their child to sleep - a practice in which they ignore their baby's crying and distress. In Helping Your Baby to Sleep, authors Beth Macgregor and Anni Gethin argue that this 'controlled crying' approach is detrimental for children and can have serious long-term effects. This practice produces anxiety in both parent and child and creates a burden of stress on babies with which they are ill-equipped to cope. In this groundbreaking book, the authors present important research into babies' emotional and brain development, and offer gentle sleep techniques that take into account a baby's natural sleep habits." - product description.