Review & Giveaway: Sleep Buddy Sleep System

Sleep is pretty elusive here.

Neither of our kids are what you'd call "good sleepers." They still wake up multiple times a night, and L has the horrifying habit of waking up several hours before the sun comes up, and accidentally on purpose waking up everyone else in the house.

We've tried everything we can think of to get him to understand that we don't want start our day that early.

Sleep Buddy Sleep System

I was recently offered the opportunity to review a product called the Sleep Buddy Complete Sleep System. The program is intended for children, ages 18 months to 6 years. It retails for $34.95, and includes a sleep light, an incentive chart, a parent's guide, and book to introduce the system to your child.

The premise of the product is that you program the light to remain on while you want the child to remain in bed, either at night or during nap time. When the light goes off, the child knows that it's ok to get out of bed.

My impressions of the system are as follows:

Pros:
I liked the inclusion of the incentive chart and book, particularly for toddlers and preschoolers. At 6 years old, I find that L isn't particularly motivated by sticker charts anymore, but he definitely was at that age.

The sleep light itself is small and attractive.

The light it provides is dim enough to not actually keep anyone awake, it's just a sort of soothing blue glow.

For a child who needs lots of visual cues, this provides a very clear one.

Cons:
The only real con was that it was fairly hard to program. My husband who is generally the tech support around here even had some  trouble with it. Obviously if the light goes off at the incorrect time, (too early or too late,) due to improper programming, it sort of undermines the program.

So did it work for us?

Well, it depends on exactly how you define success. L does not stay in bed until the allotted time every single day. He does, however understand the concept, and occasionally decides to stay in bed a bit longer if the light is still on. In our particular house, with our particular set of circumstances, (special needs, etc,) that's still a pretty positive response.

The Sleep Buddy is available through the Sleep Buddy website, and via Amazon. You can also follow Sleep Buddy on Twitter, or check out their FB page for more information.

I have good news for those of you who are also struggling with sleep issues in your home. I have 1 Sleep Buddy System to give away here.

For your first, mandatory entry, please leave a comment telling me who you'd use this program with.

For additional, optional entries, you may do any or all of the following:
Follow my blog.
Tweet/FB/Blog about the giveaway, up to once per day. (Please leave a comment for each entry.)
Follow Sleep Buddy on Twitter.
This giveaway will end on 2/27/12, at 10 pm, Central Time. Don't forget to leave a way to contact you if you are the winner.

Disclosure: I was provided with a free product, in order to facilitate this review, as well as the opportunity to give one away. No other compensation was provided, and all opinions are my own.