A friend of mine gave me a review copy of the book Sleepless in America: Is Your Child Misbehaving or Missing Sleep?, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka to look at since I'd complained to her too many times to count about Little J's issues around going to sleep at night. My friend's kids have sleep issues, too, but she was too tired to read the book! I was given a command: read this and report back.

It's taken me quite a while to get to it, mostly because we've managed to pretty much solve Little J's sleep issues and I've been catching up on sleep (Zzzzzzzz.....), but I think it's a book that's worthy of mention since apparently sleep is a huge issue for most parents, adoptive or otherwise.

Kurcinka's basic premise is this: many times children are read as being naughty or misbehaving when really they're sleep-deprived.

Hmmm....not rocket science, but there's more.

Sleep deprivation happens because kids don't have good schedules, because their days are too stimulating, because they are not comfortable at night, because their needs for affection and closeness are not being met at night, or because parents are not being as responsive as they need to be for their little ones.

Again, not rocket science, but worth considering. Is your child's day over scheduled? Does he/she get enough time with you? Is his room too hot? Too cold? Is he scared at night? Does he feel secure?

The answer to most sleep problems, Kurcinka postulates, is a consistent, respectful, and predictable routine. This is not news to those of us with slee-challenged children, but I think this book is still probably worth a look - particularly if you see sleep affecting your little one's behavior.

We already had a good nighttime routine and our afternoons are anything but overscheduled and unpredictable. My kids don't watch TV before bed, nor do they have very many activities, nor do they play video games. So reading Kurcinka's book didn't help us in that respect.

But, in addition to the routine, Kurcinka says that parents also need to provide consistent, respectable, and predictable boundaries as well. For us this was key. Little J needs and craves boundaries and will test them every chance he gets. By providing very specific boundaries we finally "solved" his sleep problems.

I don't know if our solution was one that Kurcinka would approve. But it works for us and seems to fit within the advice given in the book. Here's what we've done: at night, after shower and teeth brushing and book reading and snuggles, Little J's door is closed and he is NOT allowed to get out of bed. If he gets out of bed he is punished. By doing this over and over and over again he is now able to fall asleep within 15 minutes of being put in bed. If we deviate from this, which we have been lately because we want him to be night-time potty-trained, he is up for hours and hours. If we go back to it, he stays in bed. I don't know what to do about the potty-training, but we solved the sleep thing in our house!