 Charming dinner guest, smiling while held by a stranger This is a frequent question from families interested in sleep training. They want the benefits of great sleep but don’t want to have to commit to being home for every nap.
Like so many things, the answer is: it depends. My daughter Valentina ended up being out to dinner not once but twice this weekend. The first time was planned, and we returned home at 7 pm. The second time was because she fell off the couch and hit her head while being babysat by my older daughter. My partner swooped home to pick her up and then joined friends and I at dinner. She was, luckily, in a great mood despite her dramatic fall. Since we hadn’t planned on attendance at dinner, she didn’t get to bed until more than an hour after her regular bedtime. Both evenings, she was an excellent dinner companion and I got lots of compliments about how she never cries. We got lucky. She slept great that night. But last night, the following night, she was up for 90 minutes in the middle of the night, apparently starving. Or overtired. Or probably both. In my experience, well-rested babies who are almost always on a schedule are the easiest going ones. Babies who don’t have a regular schedule are more fussy because their little bodies never know when the next nap is coming. Just like regularly scheduled meals, regularly scheduled sleep means happier kids. Some of this is luck, too. But with all three of my kids, I saw a drastic shift in their behavior when they were on a sleep and feeding schedule. They got much happier and more easy going. They were more comfortable with strangers. They were more curious and engaged in their environments. So the irony of this all? A regular sleep schedule may actually give you more flexibility. Beyond that, I learned to embrace the requirement of being home for naps. It forced us to get up and out in the mornings, and then we were able to enjoy planned laziness in the middle part of the day. I’m not a sleeping late kind of person, so that works well for me. My older kids do best if screen time is a deferred pleasure – if they start the day with it, we may never leave the house. My advice is to use school days for schedules and then one of the weekend as well, then let your family be flexible on the other weekend day. You’ll see how your child does with missed, delayed, or on-the-go naps, and then can make an educated decision from there. Of course, during a sleep training regimen, I always recommend sticking to the recommended schedule. But that’s only a couple of weeks and then you can return to “regular life.” But don’t be too surprised if you discover that you mostly enjoy sticking to the prescribed schedule! One other thing, if you have more than one child and more than one parent/adult caregiver, I highly recommend a divide and conquer strategy of parenting. Let one adult stay home with the napping child while the other takes the older one to the birthday party or sporting event. The next weekend, swap roles. And then in the evening, have some restorative adult time. If you’d like better sleep at night but are worried about tying yourself down with a schedule, you aren’t alone. Schedule a free consult today and let’s discuss your concerns. There’s no commitment and no sales pressure.
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 Does the thought of moving your baby out of your bedroom fill you with dread or delight? Not long ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) changed its recommendation for roomsharing, dropping their recommendation to at least 6 months of rooming-in with your baby instead of 12 months.
But many families I work with wonder if they can stop sooner than that. Why? Well, most babies and adults sleep longer, and more deeply when they are not sharing a room. We hypothesize that that is because we aren’t waking each other up with those little noises we all make while sleeping, babies too. But is it safe? Although it’s annoying, it seems like too-deep sleep for young babies might be a risk factor for SIDS, right? Emily Oster (Cribsheet) did a deep dive into the literature and found that room sharing actually only significantly reduces the risk of SIDS during the first four months of sleep. In fact, she says, “the choice of sharing a room, or even sharing a bed, does not seem to affect SIDS risk after three or four months, at least for parents who are nonsmokers.” (Smoking is a known risk factor for SIDS.) Moreover, she says, room sharing after 4 month has a significant negative effect on child sleep after 4 months old. And certainly, we can all agree, doesn’t have a positive impact on parents’ sleep (no one sleeps well with a crying baby in one’s bedroom!). In fact, she says, babies who slept alone at 4 months also slept longer alone at 9 months old, even longer than babies who started sleeping alone later than 4 months. And “these differences were still present when the child was two and a half years old.” At 9 months old, babies who slept alone slept 45 minutes longer per night than those who were still room sharing. If we consider that sleep is just as important for healthy brain development as food – and I, personally, do – than we can see that not room sharing after 4 months old is often the healthiest and best choice for a baby as well as her parents. Of course, I always recommend that parents read the literature for themselves! This is not a decision to make lightly. But I found Oster’s conclusions quite surprising and compelling. (Chapter 6, Recommendation 3, from Cribsheet -- check it for yourself.) Are you thinking about moving your baby out of your room but feeling a bit nervous about tromping down the hall to his room multiple times a night? Let’s talk on a free consult call about how we can reduce your baby’s night wakings – maybe even gradually but fully night weaning, if you’re ready for that! – so that the move to a separate bedroom means better sleep for everyone, not just your baby.  Mom? Dad? I won't go to bed until we play just one more round of hide and seek. Bet you can't find me! You know that annoying feeling when you’ve finally got your child settled in bed at night and you’re mentally exhaling after a very long day, looking forward to finally being “done” for the night? You’re looking forward to eating something, a little Netflix, or even just tackling leftover work, the dishes, or the laundry?
And then you hear that little voice calling loudly from the bedroom, “Maaaaaaaahm?” or “Daaaaaaaaad?” And you inwardly groan with exasperation, but outwardly pull yourself together and patiently go back to the child’s bedroom to respond to yet another request for water, a hug, to fix the blanket, to replace a missing stuffy, to respond to a “very important” question or thought about the day, or one of a hundred other silly things? You’re not alone if you are frustrated by this. I venture to guess that almost every parent is. And it’s not by accident. Your child knows that you are turning your focus from them to yourself and your adult pursuits, or the needs of another child, and it unconsciously freaks them out. That feeling of not being your primary focus is unsettling for them, even though it's healthy. It also unconsciously freaks them out because small humans are biologically programmed to want to be near their adults at all times. It makes perfect evolutionary sense: stray too far from the cave and a little one might get eaten by a tiger. However, we no longer live in caves and no longer have to fear tigers. So we have collectively decided to work against evolution in the pursuit of alone time to get chores done, relax, and get better sleep for everyone. This means that we adults have to practice setting clear boundaries at bedtime. Clear boundaries does not mean that we tell our child to stay in bed and they do it. Clear boundaries means that we tell our child that we won’t come back after lights out and we stick to it. We don’t respond to requests for attention after lights out. We fulfill all the requests before lights out and then, that’s it. (Boundaries are things that WE do, not things that we ask OTHERS to do.) This can feel really mean. We worry that we will traumatize our children if we don’t respond. What if they think they aren’t loved? What if they can’t sleep without their water (which is next to them on the bedside table but maybe they forgot?), their 14th best stuffie, their blanket at just the right angle? This is hard. BUT. Secure, consistent boundaries are the best way to make children feel safe and secure. Far from traumatizing them, they actually feel a LOT safer when they know what the rules are and they see their adults do things the same way they say they will, every single time. No child will say, “hey thanks for not giving me my 14th favorite stuffy back. I feel so much more secure now.” But my clients report again and again and again that their children are so much happier when their parents put an end to the bedtime shenanigans. There’s a few hard nights and then peace reigns. Children are better rested and parents have their batteries recharged. It’s a win for everyone. Doing this requires that parents have a strong stomach. Many of us have trauma from childhood that makes holding boundaries really, really hard. Let me help you process that discomfort – no, you don’t have to dig into the trauma if you don’t want to – so that you can hold strong boundaries with your child, leading to a happier, more rested family. Schedule a free parent coaching session here and look forward to peaceful evenings for yourself.  What’s the best age to sleep train? When is too early? Have I missed the boat if I haven’t started yet and my kid is x months or years old?
The first answer is, it’s never too late to sleep train. No matter how old your kid is, there is hope for you. So many families come to me, shamefaced, worried they’d missed the boat on sleep training. No, it’s not too late for you (unless your child no longer lives at home). Please don’t beat yourself up for not starting sooner! And in most cases, it’s also never too early to start sleep training or at least, sleep shaping (in the case of very young babies). If your goal is get your child to sleep through the night, and you want close to 100% odds of success, your safest bet is to wait until at least 6 months. (Please note: I do not consider sleeping 11 pm to 5 am to be sleeping through the night, nor do I consider night feeds part of sleeping through the night.) However, if you wait until 6 months old, you also miss out on improved sleep well before then. Many babies do sleep through the night before 6 months old – my youngest was sleeping through the night by 4 months old, and the other two of them before 3 months old. Moreover, you don’t have to define success only as sleeping through the night. If your baby is currently waking up multiple times a night at younger than 6 months old, we can certainly improve the situation if not entirely night train them. I typically don’t work with babies younger than 6 weeks old, just because I want to make sure that feeding is well-established, but the truth is, you can start working on appropriate wake windows from day one. I was sure my one-day-old baby had an intestinal blockage because she wouldn’t stop screaming while we were still in the hospital. The pediatirican examined her and found nothing wrong. He said that she was hungry and i should offer formula. But she refused the bottle. Finally, she passed out and woke up a bit later, perfectly content. She had been overtired. You can start working with wake windows and sleepy cues from your baby’s earliest days. This doesn’t lead to any crying, and preventing your baby from getting overtired should reduce crying. I thought my oldest was colicky but once I shortened her wake windows and started going by sleepy cues (I was not a sleep consultant at the time), her so-called colic disappeared over night. It had been overtiredness. If your child is already in preschool, the good news is that sleep training usually goes more quickly at this age. The reason for this is that we are able to prepare this age group ahead of time with a Family Sleep Meeting, visual checklists, visual timers, roughhousing play and talking things out. That doesn’t mean they’ll agree to the changes the first time bedtime rolls around! But the transition generally happens pretty quickly, even with the most gradual of methods. If you’ve been holding off on meeting to discuss sleep training because your child is too young, too old, too stubborn, or something else… go ahead and set up a complimentary sleep consult! There’s hope for you! |
AuthorAbby Wolfson is a pediatric nurse practitioner, certified child sleep consultant and certified life coach for parents. She divides her time between Brooklyn, NY and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Archives
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