The best-selling children’s book that promises to send your kids to sleep.

We all know that having a baby means your nights of solid sleep are, invariably, long gone – whoever came up with that stupid phrase “sleeping like a baby” couldn’t have been more wrong. However, thanks to a good baby routine book and a certain amount of OCD on my behalf, I used to be one of those mums who could say “all night” when asked how long my baby slept, or “he self settles” when asked if I had any problems with getting him to sleep.

Nowadays? Not so much.

Fast-forward just over a year and our little guy has decided he’ll be the one dictating when and if he sleeps. After a few months of sleep deprivation, my husband and I are a little beside ourselves.

I know we’re just two of a large number of parents out there who regularly go through issues with their child’s sleep. Indeed, research has shown that a new baby typically results in 400-750 hours of lost sleep for parents in the first year. What’s more, this sleep deprivation can continue well into the kindergarten and school years.

So, to say I was excited to read that there’s a book which claims to be scientifically designed to send children to sleep within minutes is an understatement. Written by Swedish author and psychologist Carl-Johan Forssen Ehrlin, The Rabbit Who Wants To Fall Asleep promises desperate parents everywhere a quiet night's kip and has hurtled to the top of Amazon's bestsellers list.

The 22-page book is all about ‘a perfect combination of sentence structure and soporific words’. It follows the journey of Roger the Rabbit, the Sleep Snail and Uncle Yawn as they try to help the rabbit go to sleep. The characters tell him to "think slowly, breath slowly and calm, slow and calm” and “let your whole body be heavy, so heavy it feels like it falls... just like a leaf, that falls down, slowly down, down... Your eyelids are so heavy."

Parents are advised to read the story slowly and methodically and to yawn throughout. Apparently these psychological reinforcement techniques transfer to the child who then mimics their parents' sleepy behaviour – with the author saying it’s the verbal equivalent to rocking them to sleep.

Like baby routines and various sleep training methods, it remains to be seen as to whether this works for all children, and up to parents to try it out for themselves.

Who’s to say the same techniques used to read a regular book (one you already have in the cupboard!) wouldn’t do the same job in helping your child relax and drift off?

However, parents are certainly giving the book rave reviews online, giving feedback like: “Our nine-month-old daughter has been wild at bedtime, and we've tried so many methods of calming her, but this has been the first thing to get her into sleep mode in under 20 minutes. It feels almost like a guided meditation, and the story is so lovely that it's a true pleasure to read aloud.”

And another saying: “Wow - I just bought this and it works like a charm. My two-year-old daughter always fights sleep. It normally takes one to two hours and she was out cold within minutes. This will definitely be a regular part of our bed time routine.”

With sleep deprivation accounting for reduced productivity, health issues, stress and much more in adults, I can’t see any harm in trying this book out. Other parents clearly share this opinion, with the book still at the top of the bestsellers list this morning despite having no marketing whatsoever.

Would you try this book?

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