THE WORLD OF CHILDREN'S SLEEP: PARENTS' GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN AND THEIR SLEEP PROBLEMS

THE WORLD OF CHILDREN'S SLEEP: PARENTS' GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN AND THEIR SLEEP PROBLEMS
Alexander Z. Golbin, MD, PhD
Salt Lake City, Utah: Michaelis Medical Publishing Corp., 1995
306 pages, paperback, $22.95
ISBN 1-884984-09-5

Reviewed by Lynne Lamberg

It is a formidable task to weave the history of sleep research, facts about sleep disorders, case histories, and philosophical musings, into a gracefully flowing fabric. Such books are rare: Peretz Lavie's The Enchanted World of Sleep, and Stanley Coren's Sleep Thieves, both reviewed here in May 1998, are two of the more successful recent "big picture" books.

In The World of Children's Sleep, Golbin, a child psychiatrist who directs the Sleep & Behavior Medicine Institute in Chicago, Illinois, attempts the same goal, but is less successful. Although the author's concern for children and parents comes through, his text is poorly organized and rambling.

Chapter titles give a rough view of the book's contents: sleep problems through the eyes of the family, normal sleep and alertness, the nature of abnormal sleep and alertness, sleep and alertness through the lifespan, when sleep problems become a disorder, prevention of potential life-threatening sleep disorders, sleep related daytime disorders of alertness, sleep sickness and sickness in sleep. The last chapter, a "cookbook of sleep," provides tips for parents of children with sleep problems. This is the book's most concise and jargon-free section.

The book's opening sentences convey the flavor of its writing: "The world of children's sleep is not independent from our lives as adults. In fact, it is very close, and oftentimes occupies all our wakefulness. It is like air that we do not see, but that permeates everything. If this air is healthy, the family breathes easily, and their sleep is peaceful
and undisturbed. If the air is unhealthy, the family feels suffocated...."

The book was poorly edited, and contains numerous errors, both factual and stylistic. The latter sometimes give rise to unintended humor. Describing a child injured by a sleepwalking father, Golbin writes, "The infant was brought back to life after a prolonged hospital stay." The text also is marred by numerous typos.