TITLE: I Can’t Sleep: A Story for Children with Sleep Difficulties
AUTHOR: Dr. Susan Ozer
SUBJECT AREA: Sleep Difficulties-Children’s Literature
PUBLISHER: Dr. Susan Ozer
PUBLICATION DATE: 2021
Sleep problems in children are very common, but children with ASD and similar developmental disorders tend to have more serious and more long-lasting problems. Getting to sleep and staying asleep can result in grogginess and irritability during the day.
Now that sleep problems are recognized as a real problem, there are more children’s books about it and I Can’t Sleep: A Story for Children with Sleep Difficulties, by Dr. Susan Ozer, a sleep specialist in the UK, is a charming little book about Syd. He has read his book about the scrawny cat that is his very favorite bedtime story and has his stuffed dinosaur in bed with him. Syd is all ready to drift off into dreamland when he discovers that he can’t sleep! He tries counting numbers in his head and what stars in the sky he can count but that doesn’t work.
Syd gets up and asks his mom if he can help her bake a cake, but he is told to get back into bed. He gets up again and is sharply reprimanded. After much tossing and turning, Syd finally comes up with a solution and it works!
This little gem helps kids to learn about a universal problem of childhood and adulthood and to find ways to solve the problem at hand. The illustrations are just gorgeous, and it is written for younger children. This book is charming and written by a specialist with credentials so this should help reassure parents who are reading along with their child that the author understands her subject. This book’s a real winner and every parent with a child with autism should have this on their shelf, just in case little Johnny or Janey can’t sleep!
