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Press, 16 January 1986, Page 13

Parents find many ways to cope with sleep problems. This is how three families taught their children to sleep contentedly.

“My problems began from the word go,” says Tracey Desmond. “Andrew gained a reputation for being the loudest baby in the hospital. “At that stage I thought his behaviour was quite normal, but after nine months of his continually refusing to settle for more than three hours I began to wonder if I would ever lead a normal life.

“Andrew was extremely over-active, and didn’t ap-

pear to be able to relax,” she says. “I was housebound and felt totally trapped.” Tracey says she was at her wits end when she heard about the Leslie Centre’s sleep plan through a friend. Despite her initial apprehension about the plan, she stuck with it. “After the centre had established his night-waking was from habit and not due to a medical problem I was told to put Andrew to bed,

close the door, and to leave him alone until he dropped off. “I put him down at 7 o’clock that night and he screamed for me for nearly two hours,” she recalls. “It was hard leaving him for that length of time and, in fact, I had tears streaming down my face. “If it wasn’t for my husband helping me through it I probably would have weakened and gone to him.”

Andrew finally went to sleep, but he woke four hours later, and the performance was repeated. After about an hour he settled and slept through until early the next morning.

“The fact that he fell asleep for more than three hours at a time was a miracle,” says Tracey. “Two nights later he went off to sleep as soon as I put him down, and his pattern hasn’t changed since.”