Check out this week's Facebook Live on how to fall back with ease, when and how to give up the dream feed, and what to do when you lie down with your child at night and are feeling resentful... but guilty at the idea of giving it up. 

Mexico (and much of the rest of the world) reverts to standard time Sunday, October 25th. This Sunday.
The United States switches back Sunday, November 1st. Next Sunday. The day after Halloween -- an easy night to stay up too late. 

The good news is that "falling back" to standard time isn't nearly as hard as "springing forward" to daylight savings time. Phew. 

But just like in spring, the transition will be easier if you spread it out over a few days. Start 4 days before the time change and each day, move bedtime, naps, and all meal times 15 minutes later. 

If you have an especially sensitive infant or toddler, you may even want to start 6 days earlier, and shift just 10 minutes each day.

Moving mealtimes later is important because without this part, the body will just feel like it stayed up late and may still wake up at the normal time. But overtired. Switching the mealtimes too feels like you are gradually changing time zones. 

This is especially important for infants and toddlers but will make the transition easier for everyone, even school age children and adults. 

You can expect some extra crankiness or hyperactivity in the late afternoon for a few days. Just try to grit your teeth and stay calm -- easier said than done! -- through those tantrums! Remember that big feelings aren't a problem -- tantrums are fine. It's the fastest way to get to the calm after the storm. You can't coax a child out of it just by changing the rules, or not for long, anyway. Just sit and wait. It will pass, I promise.

And try to get outside in the mornings, especially those first few days, because we will be missing the sunlight in the late afternoons. Exposure to early morning light also helps the body recalibrate to the new time. 

Does your family need help with a sleep transition? Set up a free consult and get your family back on track so you can feel your best and enjoy your time together. 

Send me your questions ahead of time -- former clients get first priority! 

It will just be 15 minutes this time. Looking forward to "seeing" you there!

​Check out my first weekly Facebook Live to hear more about the ideal bedtime for your​ child, how teething can affect sleep, bedtimes for school age children, hear the story of how I came to be a sleep consultant and more. 

I also talk about my peaceful parenting style and how incorporating "special time" can make bedtime separation easier. For those of you with toddlers, preschoolers or older children... fear not, instituting new bedtime routines doesn't have to be a miserable experience for anyone in the family.

Set up a free consult with me to learn more. There's no committment.  

​If you know me, you know I love my friends. I live for friendship. It nourishes me and keeps me alive. The hardest thing about COVID for me is the distance I've had to keep from the people I love.

So when I recently learned that a close friend isn't speaking to me, it was really painful. Especially since she won't even talk to me about it. I can't fix it.

I've decided to try a new strategy: To embrace it. To lean into the pain and discover what I can learn about myself. 

I have a really hard time with people being mad at me. Or not liking me. And the painful truth is that people have every right to be mad at me, for whatever reason they like. It doesn't have to be a good reason by my standards. They don't need my approval. It's not about me, it's about them!

I'm having a hard time really believing this, but I'm working on it. 

Trying to manipulate other people's emotions so that I can feel better is selfish.

Our culture would tell you that "helping" others to feel better is a selfless act of service, but this is a lie. It's only generous if the other person wants to feel better. Imagine if a loved one just died and your supposedly well-intentioned friend tried to "help" by telling you, "Oh, don't feel bad, she lived a really long time. It was her time to go."

You would be furious, right? Because that act of "comfort" is only about the other person's feelings. Not about yours. 

My friend has told me she doesn't want to talk to me right now. She gets to have whatever thoughts she likes, and take whatever action she likes.

My job is not to fix that situation, but to work on my thoughts about what that means about me. Intellectually, I know that her thoughts are her responsibility, but it's hard for me to believe. My parents taught me that it is my job to fix other people's feelings. It turns out that this is really hard to unlearn. 

But I'm working hard on it. And I encourage my clients to work on it, too.

We never want our children to suffer. We all want our children to be happy. All of the time.

What is hard to admit is that we don't just want that for them. We want that for us, too. Because we assume that when our children are suffering, it means something bad about us. And that is unacceptable. Too painful to accept. 

I'm struggling with this, too. As I've previously shared, my five-year-old Amelie had epic tantrums over the spring and summer. The longer she was out of school, the worse they got. 

She started at a new Waldorf school in September. One with small, fully-outdoor classes and masking, one where I feel safe and she does too. I am sure she misses the larger community at her old school, but I could see a visible sigh of relief overtake her small body within a week. She's bursting with pride as she insists on setting the table in her own special way -- "No, Mommy, that's not how you get things done! This is how you do it." She carefully slices tomato and pear for the salad. She joyfully taught us a new grace at dinner. 

And then her teacher's mother caught a cold. The teacher cancelled class for the rest of the week.

And boisterous Amelie was thrown into chaos once again. 

I do my best to provide structure for her but the truth is, I never wanted to be a preschool teacher. What I love is being a sleep coach. And an entrepreneur. I'm learning so much from my clients. I don't want to take a few days off to hang out with Amelie, as much as I love her. I don't want to create things for her to do all day. I try, anyway, but it's not enough.

The tantrums returned. 

And the worst thing about them is that I take them personally. When she screams at me, "you never listen to me," I argue. Because of my thoughts about what her accusations and her anger mean about me. That I'm not a good listener. That I'm not doing enough to keep her happy. That I'm not a good enough mother.

That last one gets us all, right? We all think that if we just did enough, just tried enough, our kids would be happy. All of the time. 

On the surface, we all know that's laughable. But it's still what we want. Our children to be happy all of the time. Just like we want our friends to love us all of the time. That's not too much to ask, right? :)

I took my friendship conflict to my weekly coaching session to get help with learning about myself. She helped me create an unintentional model to help me see how I am currently thinking, and then an intentional model to help me get the result that I actually want. 

Unintentional Model

Circumstance -- "I think I need a break right now. Thank you for understanding." (The words my friend said to me.) 
Thought -- She doesn't have any right to be mad at me. The thought underneath that is, if she does have a right to be mad at me, it means there is something wrong with me. 
Feeling -- angry, defensive
Action -- obsessing about the situation.
Result -- I am sitting with a belief that there's something wrong with me because my friend said these words to me. What am I not doing? I'm not sitting in a place of compassion for either one of us. This is not how I want to show up in my life.  ​

I need to give my friend space to have her own model. I want to be in a space of love and compassion. But I'm not there yet. So I am working on an intermediate thought. One to bridge the gap and get me to a place of compassion for each of us. How about, "she's working through something right now." Or, "she's having some big feelings right now." Maybe I'm not ready for compassion right now. 

My coach said "she said some words. I'm learning to believe that these words don't mean anything about me. Her words reflect her model. I'm practicing believing this. I'm practicing the belief that she has a model that has nothing to do with me. I'm practicing the belief that I'm not responsible for her happiness or unhappiness. 

Intentional Model
​
Circumstance -- "I think I need a break right now. Thank you for understanding."
​Thought -- She's working through her own model right now that sounds hard or painful for her. I am not responsible for her model. I can have compassion for the pain she may be experiencing.  All of our feelings are based on our thoughts, not on our circumstances. Her feelings don't mean anything about me. 
Feeling -- relief
Action -- I stop obsessing and focus on things that I can control, like my own thoughts and actions.
Results -- I am available to people who want my time and energy, like the loving friends and family that called this weekend to wish me a happy birthday. 

What if it's not true that other people's feelings are not our responsibility? What if our children get to create their own models, too? What does it mean about us as parents if our children are unhappy?

If your children aren't getting the sleep they need, they can't be their happiest. But you can't force them to get better sleep or to be happier. When you change their circumstances to allow for better sleep, they may be sad or angry at first. We can create space for their big emotions without it meaning about us as parents. This isn't easy work to do. I'm still "practicing" it myself. 

I'd love to support you do this work to get your children the sleep they need so that they have the opportunity to be their best selves. Set up a free consult and I'll share with you how we can support your children through a challenging transition on their way to better sleep. In nearly every case, the transition is far easier than parents fear. 

Oh, and Amelie is back in school and after a week, the tantrums are gradually fading away again. Thank goodness. But I am ready to practice letting her have her feelings when they return. 



​

All new (and not-so-new) parents are tired. Parenting is hard work. 

But single parents take it the extra mile. They do every daycare drop-off and pick-up. They are the ones who go to work every single day, because there's no one else to bring in an income. They handle every night waking, every dirty diaper, every middle of the night vomiting session. 

All parents deserve great sleep, but single parents, my hat is off to you. (I am in a relationship now so I can no longer truly call myself a single parent, though my first eight years were absolutely solo and I will always identify with SMCs.) 

Single parents, you have an extra layer of responsibility. If you don't sleep, there's no one to cover for you. Ever. You can't be the parent you want to be, never mind the employee, friend, or just human being you want to be. You have to put your oxygen mask on before helping others.

When I was a single mother working full-time as a healthcare provider, I was terrified of being exhausted because what if I made a mistake that cost a patient's life? I couldn't accept that level of responsibility, so I sleep trained each of my babies before I went back to work after maternity leave. 

I'm not going to lie. It was scary. I was so worried about emotionally damaging my older daughter, back before I knew about the safety of sleep training, that I actually hired my postpartum doula to come and sit with me while I sleep trained. 

Much to my amazement, the process was much easier than I expected. Both of my children were fully night weaned (and no, they were not big babies) and sleeping through the night by the time I went back to work at four months postpartum. Best of all, they were contented little things, engaged with their world, eating on a schedule and almost never crying -- they had no need to. They knew exactly what to expect of the world. Their schedule assured them that their biological needs would always be met.

I can't come to your house to change diapers in the middle of the night, single parent. But I can make you a plan that gets you and your children the sleep you deserve. I'll reassure you when you worry.  And I'll celebrate with you when you achieve your goal and witness your children being the happy, healthy selves they were born to be.

As my former client, Verena, says in her powerful testimonial video, "Your children will thank you for sleep training." 

Set up a free consult and get ready to change your life.

Single parents, I got you. 

(And coupled parents, I'd love to work with you, too!) 

Verena courageously shares her story here of how she was so miserable and exhausted because her baby didn't sleep. She was crying every night along with him. She even fantastized about getting in a car accident, just so she could get some sleep in the hospital. 
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She says, "Of course as a mother, I felt guilty. Why isn't he happy? What am I doing wrong?"

"I felt very alone. I felt like no one really understood what I was going through."

Worst of all, she felt guilty that she wasn't enjoying her baby.  

Not knowing anything about sleep coaches but on the recommendation of a friend, she decided to sleep train with the help of Peaceful Parent Sleep Coaching.

"It completed changed my life. He's so happy now, always laughing. The times when he is awake are so magical. I'm so in love with him."

If you are ready to change your life, schedule a free consult and find out about the Better Sleep Guarantee.

We’ve been dealing with a lot of temper tantrums in my house. As my youngest gets older, she gets more skillful at being hurtful.

“You’re the WORST! I hate you! You’re not the best mommy in the history of mommies!”

Followed by a more pitiful, “Why does no one love me? Why do you hate me?”

It all feels really unfair. Obviously, I’ve never said that I hated her. I adore her… most of the time. Occasionally, I don’t like her behavior and I tell her so.

She can’t see the distinction.

And so I remind her that I love her, always, and that I also need her to clean up her mess.

I’m starting work this week with the family of a three-and-a-half year old boy. They successfully sleep trained him as a baby but now he won’t go to sleep unless his father lies down with him. The boy -- let’s call him Oliver -- is clearly exhausted. He tends to throw massive tantrums. His mother said to me, “clearly we can’t do Cry It Out with a three year old.”

I disagree.

Sometimes children need to cry. Sometimes we all need to cry.
Crying is not a problem. Screaming is not a problem. Having a tantrum is not a problem.

Oliver is crying because he’s exhausted and he doesn’t know how to get the sleep he needs. He’s rightfully frustrated. But he’ll tell his parents that he’s mad because Mommy wants to do the bedtime routine, or he’s hungry (after skipping dinner because he was too tired to eat) or he wants to play one more game.

Oliver doesn’t know that sleep is what he needs to feel better.

Maintain the limit -- that it’s time for bed and he can’t have one more game/a cookie/Daddy when it’s Mommy’s turn to do bedtime. Let him get upset.

He also doesn’t know that he needs to empty his emotional backpack. Both he and his parents are a little scared of it. He may be carrying big emotions about quarantine, or about Daddy working from home and not being available to him, or Big Sister taking his toy in the sandbox.

Whatever it is, welcome the tantrum. It’s not dangerous. Embrace the storm. Sit quietly and wait for it to pass. Don’t try to explain to him why his feelings are wrong -- that never feels good. Sit on the floor next to him and make comforting noises if he allows it. He may not. He might not want you to even look at him.

Just wait. When the storm has passed, he will crawl into your arms and feel so much better. He will know that his emotions aren’t a problem for you, that you can handle them, no matter how big. That you are still his fearless leader. No matter what. You are the adult and you’ve got him. 

So if I'm being honest, no, I don't love tantrums. They are really unpleasant. But I am practicing embracing them and letting them wash over both of us. I can see that things in our house are getting easier, gradually, as a result.

Ready to embrace some tantrums and get your family the sleep you deserve? Set up a free consult and find out how you can all be sleeping peacefully in two weeks or less. Schedule a Free Consult
​

Here is a dad's perspective on the amazing changes he saw in his 4-month-old son. Lucas previously only took 15-minute naps and slept 1-2 hours at a stretch at night. 

(Kent and Verena did not want to night wean yet so are thrilled with 3-4 hour stretches at night and 1-2 hour naps during the day. Other parents are ready to night wean and are looking for 12-hour stretches at night. The choice is up to the family.)

Life with my first newborn, almost nine years ago now, was often miserable.  

She was generally pleasant during the day but by late afternoon, all hell broke loose. She cried for hours. I felt like the worst mother in the world. And I used to be a neonatal ICU nurse! How could it be this hard to comfort my own child? 

I sat at my mother’s dining room table with a breastfeeding pillow around my waist and my shirt bunched above Calliope’s bald head, doing my best to wolf down food one-handed. 

My mom would take Calliope from time to time and bounce her repeatedly, which calmed Calliope momentarily but then she would cry even harder a few minutes later.

About the time that I was nearing my breaking point with the crying, having not left the house all day, my mother would hand the baby over and chirp cheerfully, “well, I’m getting tired, I think I’m going to go get ready for bed now.”
​
I frantically swaddled and swayed and nursed and rocked Calliope in her little swing. Nothing seemed to help. I was exhausted. And as a single mother by choice, I didn’t have a partner to turn to. My mother changed diapers and burped Calliope after feedings when she could, but she was a full-time attorney and busy with her own life. 

My blog from 2011 says, 

Calliope doesn’t seem to have any comfort mechanisms besides nursing. I know they say you can’t overfeed a breastfed baby... but I don’t believe that. If she is eating for reasons other than hunger, to my mind, that’s not necessarily healthy, just like it wouldn’t be healthy at any other age.

However, I still let her nurse whenever she wants to... but when she cries and roots while the nipple is still in her mouth, I feel beyond frustrated and helpless. Clearly she isn’t hungry. But I just don’t know how to help her.

Finally she fell asleep and II left her swinging in the den. I gathered my strength to climb the stairs to my bathroom. And cried in the shower.

I don't know how I can keep going like this. I love her but I can't bear the exhaustion." 

Then my friend Catherine, another Brooklyn single mom, told me about a book called The Sleep Whisperer, by Tracy Hogg. She said it helped with her newborn son, Jack, just a few weeks older than Calliope.

I was desperate. And so tired I couldn’t imagine staying awake long enough to read a book. Desperation won out. I didn’t love the author’s tone. It was a bit too colloquial for me -- she addresses her clients as “luv.” But I forgave her for that because the information she shared changed our lives. 

I finally understood that I was keeping Calliope awake too long. At just a few weeks old, she should have been awake for only an hour at a time. She should go to bed before she even looked tired, at the first sign of a yawn. And those too-late naps were thus too-short naps... which were absolutely causing the late afternoon witching hour(s). 

My bad. 

I promptly put Calliope on Hogg’s EASY routine. EASY stands for Eat, Activity, Sleep, You. 

Eat. Rather than letting her eat all the time, and especially before sleep, I only fed her when she first woke up from a nap. I aimed for feeding every three hours. I stopped feeding her to sleep. 
​
Activity. For a newborn, activity was simple. Mostly it was a few minutes lying on her activity mat but other times, it was even less. It turns out that newborns don't need all that much in the way of stimulation. As she got older, this period gradually lengthened out. 

Rest. I aimed to put her back to sleep after only an hour awake. If I saw a yawn after only forty-five minutes, I would put her down even sooner. I used four of Harvey Karp’s 5 S’s: swaddling, sucking (a pacifier), swinging and shushing (white noise). Back then, it was acceptable to let babies sleep inclined in swings. Now we know this is a risk factor for SIDS, unfortunately. All babies must be put down to sleep on their backs.

You. The part I lived for. This was time for me. To shower, exercise, call a friend, check email or (less fun) pursue the disability insurance folks. Getting a guaranteed break for myself made all the difference in the world to my emotional health. I never managed to nap but getting time off during the day meant I didn't stay up too late at night, trying to soak up some personal time. 

Within a few days of putting Calliope on this schedule, she was a different child. She literally never cried. I could figure out her needs just by glancing at the clock. 

It was hard, sometimes, to be so ruled by a schedule... but it was worlds better than hours of crying every afternoon. And I found I could compromise let her nap in the stroller occasionally without suffering the consequences at night.

And with just this routine, including the feeding schedule, Calliope was naturally sleeping 8 hours at a stretch at night without any formal sleep training by 6 weeks old. (The swing might have been an unfair advantage, though!)

I am not exagerating when I say that this schedule saved my sanity. I know I was lucky that she was a good sleeper... but I know it wasn't all luck, since she wasnt' a good sleeper before this schedule changed everything for us. 

Moreover, it saved me from having to do any hard sleep training. This method didn't involve any crying at all. (In another post, I'll talk about the sleep training method that got me to 10 hours by 10 weeks. That was even better.) 

It's never too soon to instill great sleep habits in your child. I started this schedule on our first day home from the hospital with my younger daughter. I never did any sleep training with her at all. She slept ten hours by ten weeks, too. 

If you would like to get your little one on track and aren't sure where to start, schedule a free consult with me and get your life back on track.