Episode 169: Kandra Becerra Launches New Toddler Bedtime Book to Help Toddlers Sleep Through the Night

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep Show podcast where we dive into the magical world of sleep and all things parenting. Join us as we embark on a journey filled with expert advice, practical tips and heartwarming stories that will transform your little ones into sleep superheroes and empower you to navigate the beautiful chaos of parenting.

I’m your host, Courtney Zentz,

and I’m on a mission to change how the world views sleep and provide accessible sleep coaching resources for all families to build healthy sleep habits in their home for children and adults of all ages. As an award winning speaker, author and pediatric sleep expert, myself and my team of consultants work intimately with families around the world to teach healthy sleep habits to children and adults. I believe wholeheartedly that sleep is the foundation for which a happy home is built. So let’s sleep together. Hey everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Kids sleep show. I am excited to be joined by, actually, a friend in the sleep consulting space, which, if you’re in the faith, you know, we all know and love working together. And I’ve been friends with Candra for a very long time, and I’m excited to bring her on the show today, because she’s on a new mission with a new offering, and I want to take a minute to turn it over to her and have her tell us about her new passion project. When I heard about it, I immediately bought it on Amazon, and I’m excited she’s going to come on today and tell you all about it, because especially it’s especially as kids grow, their fears around bedtime can grow too so welcome to the show, Kendra. Take a minute and just introduce yourself. I know. I’ve known you for probably eight plus years now, but the rest of the world does not so welcome.

Thanks, Courtney, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. My name is Kendra, like you mentioned, and I own Rocky Mountain sleeping baby. We are out of Denver, Colorado, but we help families virtually all over the world. And I have been doing this for seven plus years now, myself and my incredible team, which has just been built over the years, has been an really incredible experience helping families, but something did come up while helping our families, especially our toddler clients and our older grade school kiddos, is a lack of literature around kids that are simply struggling to sleep because they’re afraid to sleep in their own bed. And I was trying to find books to recommend for clients to incorporate in their bedtime routine. And I just couldn’t quite find what I was looking for. And so that little seed was planted. Of you know, maybe it might be time for me to write a children’s book using my expertise on addressing that subject.

And I love it, I have to say it is such a challenge, because as kids grow, as I mentioned, their fears grow. And it could be for a variety of reasons. It could be a thunderstorm where you live one night, or maybe a bad experience personally with like a family member, or a traumatic event, right? And I think there’s all of these reasons. Sometimes just kids at school telling stories, right? Sometimes it that that the little one’s own imagination. I know my son watched Toy Story four one night, and then all of a sudden that night, couldn’t sleep because he thought his dolls were all coming alive. And I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, if you think about it, what that’s like, personal, perfectly reasonable, right from an expectation standpoint. Uh, he’s five years six years old, and in his mind, then bedtime became a fear. So I definitely see how like quickly and so accidentally, even, you know, this can become such an issue, which I think is so amazing, that you took that little seed and turned it into this amazing book. So tell us about, as you mentioned, you know, we work in the space of sleep coaching, right? So we have toddler clients, school age clients, and a lot of different anxiety. There’s a pandemic that’s never happened before. You know, parents were home a lot, then suddenly not. So all of these things, really, over the past several years, have sort of spiraled, right? So, you got this little seed planted,

like, talk about, how

did you come up with the flow of the book in the story? So I love the name, brave dream, little Owen, named after little Owen, which is fun. So tell us about kind of the way in which you took the problem that we see as weed consultants of children fearing bedtime, and turn it into this, like, beautifully illustrated book, like, take me on this journey with you. Well,

it has been exactly a journey. And so it’s funny because it is named after my oldest, Owen, who is the reason for the business, the reason who lit the fire for all of this. And it’s funny because this book came out and I’ve had friends and family go, Oh my gosh. I had no idea that Owen struggled with sleeping in his bed. And I was like, Oh, that’s cute. He is a phenomenal sleeper. It’s just named after him. He’s the inspiration for it. But the the way that, like this journey really started, is a very specific way I was meditating in 2000 18, and it was like an idea hit me like a brick wall. Of you should write a children’s book, and I am not qualified to write a children’s book. It’s not something that I am trained in doing. I do really enjoy writing. I wrote for my school newspaper growing up. I loved writing my research papers for college, so I did have a bit of that writing bug, but when it came to children’s literature, that wasn’t there. But when I was meditating, when I got this idea, Courtney, when I tell you, I got like, this euphoric high of like, this idea came in, and my body and brain was like, Yes, this is such a great idea. And so I was so excited. But like everything, it went on the list of things to do. And so I make a vision board January every year, everything that I want to do. And so 2019 2020, 2021, here’s this idea of this book, the number one bestseller I wanted. And I had this on the vision board. But then in 2023 I actually took it off the board, because I got so sick of getting to the end of every year and realizing I have not accomplished this thing that is in me, this desire I have. And then what happened is, in the beginning of 2024 January, I actually added it back in. I said, I have to do this, but I still didn’t get started. And I know this sounds ridiculous, but it was like a podcast or a Tiktok or something, some motivational speaker, and they’re like, if you have a dream, a desire, the first place to start is actually starting it. And I was like, Well, that sounds obvious, but like, I actually had to start writing the book. So I had the idea of the book in my head for years. I knew exactly what I wanted it to say, and I put my pen to paper, and the actual writing of the book was super fast. It took me a couple days because it had been marinating for so long, and so the writing of the book was fairly easy, but I learned that was, like the very starting place of everything. It was all the other details after

that. Like, I think the story in and of itself, right? Like in the space of motivation behind it. If you’re listening to this podcast, right, and you have a toddler or a school aged kid, what starts to happen right at bedtime. I don’t want to go to bed. I’m afraid to go to sleep. I’m going to come find you in the middle of the night. I’m scared to be in my room. I heard a noise, right? And, you know, kids have these things fast, fester, and then over time, what starts to happen? Parents get exhausted. They either go sit in the room with the child or bring the kid into their bed, right? And that causes a whole heap of other issues. Now, everybody’s tired, everybody’s getting broken sleep, because as much as you think sharing that bed’s good, right, your little one’s going to kick you multiple hours every night, right? So, you know, I think, to your point, like behind the idea of how it starts with families, right, there’s an aspect, I think, on the parental side, where they’re just trying to manage, right? You’re trying to get through the day. You might have other kids. There’s a lot going on. But then there’s also the way that you can take that storyline, right, candor, and then turn it into something that’s like the opposite, which is, I love what you did with this book, and I want you to explain it, because you took what is like a child coming into your room, and you know, being scared and expressing that fear in his parents, like I tell our sleep clients all the time, it’s important to be accessible always just not excessive in our response. So I’m like, be acceptable, but not accepted. If your child needs a drink of water, you get it, but don’t sit there and then rub their back to sleep and cuddle and hold you know what I mean? Like, be accessible, but not excessive, right, in what you’re doing. But I love that you took what in the moment can be a negative thing for parents. If they’re listening right now, they’re like, please just go to bed, you know, right? And turned it into, like, this amazing story, where it actually can transform a young child, right? They have to be able to understand the concept of the book, which you’ve illustrated beautifully, into the fact that, like the book can be, or bedtime can be, as you explained in the book, a place of curiosity and dreams and a place where you can have adventures, right? So like the book itself, I know you can’t see it if you’re listening to the podcast, but it is beautifully illustrated along that story. So I want you to kind of just take folks through, you had this vision, you wrote the text part, and then you have this beautifully illustrated book that takes them through this story, right where, in the end, you know, I don’t want to give the book away, but it’s also motivating for people to want to buy the book, because that’s beautiful. Is there’s this whole world, you know, they say the world is your oyster on the end of this book, where it’s like no man, when you go to bed every night, little guy or little girl, you can dream and do all of these amazing things. So like, talk to me a little bit about that process. Like you wrote it, and then you have to draw it, right? And I know you had someone illustrate it for you. Ivy trasny. C or traz C, I’m going to say it wrong, but oh my gosh, it’s beautiful. So like talk us through that part of it. So you wrote the book basically after years of working with tire families who experienced this challenge, right?

Yep, and the illustrations were. Finding the right illustrator was absolutely the hardest part of this entire process for a couple reasons. A lot of people have really big promises of what they’re going to provide you, but it’s a big leap of you know, what is their actual ability? So when it came to the illustrations, there was a couple things that were really important to me. One, I wanted a child who couldn’t read to essentially be able to look at the illustrations and have an understanding of what was happening in the book without even having to read it, and I think that was really beautifully captured with Ivy’s illustrations. But the other thing that was really important to me is when I started looking at portfolios and interviewing different illustrators, I found that a really common trend for children’s illustrated books is black dots for eyes. And I really wanted actual eyes drawn, because I wanted to be able to see Owen’s fear in his eyes. I wanted to see that he was sleepy, and I think that that was really properly communicated with drawing of his eyes. And there were two, well, one two specific places in the book that working directly with clients, which really motivated parts of the book, and one of them is a page where he’s afraid and he goes running into his mom and dad’s room. And I really wanted to provide exact, almost wording of what our parents are trying to reiterate with their kiddos on a daily basis of I love you so much, but it just doesn’t work for you to sleep in our bed anymore. And giving parents permission it’s okay to say you can’t sleep in our bed anymore because we’re having a hard time sleeping. You move around too much. This doesn’t work for us anymore, but I really wanted to capture that in a book to help parents facilitate that language of what they’re already telling their child now, the child is like, Oh, I’m I’m reading the same thing in a book. And so that page was obviously formed from working with kiddos that I don’t think if I was working in, like the pediatric sleep world, that specific page would have landed in there, but I’ve had a lot of feedback of how helpful that is with just providing that language for

kiddos. And I think the visual too, to your point, like toddlers can’t read, but they can understand, and as they’re listening to the story and they’re internalizing it, I think there’s an aspect of visual, right? And then there’s the aspect of the auditory. Like my kids, whenever we get a new book for school, I have them read it and listen to the audible, because they’re internalizing it differently, and maybe they’re picking up on things. And, you know, I think the way that you to your point illustrated that in the book is wonderful. And it’s the realities of falling asleep on the stairs or coming into a parent’s room, or just being so tired that you’re not your best. You know, I tell families like how you feel in the morning, it’s how your kid feels. They just can’t always express it, and I think it’s so important. Like sleep is the foundation for which the house is built. But a three year old doesn’t necessarily know that. They just know that they kind of want to get in their parents bed, or have mom and dad come in with them, which, again, there’s balance with that, but if it turns into a bigger challenge, where then no one is getting sleep, like that’s not good for anyone’s immune systems and development and growth and sleep is so awesome when you show kids that confidence. And I think that’s where in the line of work that we have this is about building confidence in a child, and that’s what a parents we want to do right? Like, we’re trying to teach our children to be confident and independent, yet we’re not affording them the help that that we know they can do it. They just don’t know they can do it right. And I think that’s why, like, I love working with toddlers at this age, because you’re really able to communicate with them in a way that they understand. But also, you know, that sleep is so important, and they’ll feel so good when they get it, and that they actually have the ability to do it, and they don’t have to be afraid. And you can change the narrative to the fact that sleep is really this, like positive place that you can do all of these different things in. So, you know, I want you to talk a little bit about that, because I think it’s a cool way that you framed this book. And I want everybody to go out and get this book, and we’re going to put all the links in the show notes, because it helps a child understand that when they go to bed, they’re the world is their oyster, right? Like there’s this open door of dreams and possibilities and places that they can go visit. You know in those dreams, when they’re going to sleep, and then you know when they’re waking in the morning. And that’s one of the things I know I do with our clients, as I’m sure you do as well, which is like, hey, at bedtime, we’re going to do this. And you go through a story, right, something like this, and then in the morning it’s like, well, tell me where you went last night, and what cool things did you do or see? I. You know, and it just helps to kind of close the loop on that positive perspective of a situation versus, you know, just time to go to bed and lights off. And, you know, what kind of perceived as like a very cold, cold exit strategy, right? Absolutely.

And there I, what I wanted to really display is there’s a part in the book where he finally peaks in his room after wandering around trying to find where he wants to sleep, and all of a sudden, he just sees it in a different light. He sees his bed there that’s warm and cozy. He sees his favorite teddy bear. He sees the potential of how amazing this space can be. And the reason I really wanted to have that transition for him is, I think as adults, for the majority of us, when we look at our beds and our bedrooms and the sleeping space, we’re like, I love this space. I love going to sleep, because we know how incredible that can be. But for a lot of kiddos, they’re like, yes, sleep is the last thing that I want to do. There’s nothing fun and exciting about this, and so building that narrative from a young age of your bedroom is actually one of the most comfortable places, and really getting them to love that. And it’s funny, because throughout the book, Owen goes on a little adventure through the House of trying to find different places to sleep. And I’ve had a lot of feedback, of parents that are like, okay, my kid actually found that very funny, like he was asleep in a bathtub, and he’s asleep on top of, you know, the kitchen table. But what’s funny is, working with kiddos, you understand this that was actually derived from one specific client, and as a little girl, she cracked me up. She wanted to sleep everywhere but her bed on the floor outside of her parents room, in her brother’s room, on the stairs, like and so she was really kind of like when I started this I remember just cracking up working with her because I was like, girlfriend, you are going to the most uncomfortable places if we could just gravitate you towards your actual bed. And so it was derived from, you know, working real life with the client, and then finding that narrative of how amazing your room can be.

And it’s such a place you spend so much time in, you know, and just the comfort aspect, right? Like, as we speak, I have eucalyptus and lavender diffusing in our bedroom, and it’s like when I walk into a place, I want it to be a serene place of calm and rest. And I want my sheets to be comfortable. I want my mattress to be comfortable. I want my pillows to be comfortable. You know what I mean? Like, that’s where my body and brain is like strengthening and restoring every night, you know, and, and I’m such a psycho about it, I guess, because it’s our, you know, our day job. It’s the same with our children’s rooms, you know, and just creating an environment that they’re invested in as well, which I think it’s super important, and that they have a comfortable mattress or or a comfortable pillow at the least, right? And that it’s a nice, cool, calm, dark environment, not, you know, like a rave in Vegas at 2am or anything like that. You know, right? Like paying attention to the situation that your child loves, the space that they’re in, and helping them have vested interest in it. You know, I just did a reel the other day about kids being scared and like missing their parents. And I was like, I tell my family, I’m like, print out a photo and put it in a zip lock, put it under their pillow, or tape it onto the wall by their bed. So if you miss me, you can see me right there, and I’m always watching over you, you know. Or sometimes I’ll take, like, painters tape, you know, because it peels off everything. And I just leave messages. My son has a bunk bed, and so if he’s had, like, maybe a different day at school, or a really good day and something happened, or I’m trying to, like, get him to be grateful, or to I, you know, I mean, there’s like, a million examples, but to have positive self image all these different things, right? Like on the painter’s table, actually, just write messages and I leave them above his bunk bed, so that I he, you know, so he can read them at night. And it’s like, you know, I am loved, I am cared for. I am what, you know, whatever, like, I’m strong and smart, you know. And I just leave like, little messages here and there with painters tape. But all of those little things are great, in addition to creating and understanding for your child that, like, the boundary is, My bed is off limits, right? And so I’m going to help you to learn to love your bed and your space like mommy and daddy love ours. And I think, to your point, there’s nothing wrong with setting that boundary. I think too often parents are like, yes, people, right? Like, yes, you can come in bed. Yes, you could do this, yeah. Like, it’s okay to say, No, my bed is off limits, you know? And sometimes I work with families, as I’m sure you do, where we have to get there a little slower, they’re a little hesitant, but they want to make the change. And I’m like, your bed’s off limits, but then you can sleep on a hard sleeping bag on the floor, you know, right? And I’m like, that’s the best we’re going to do. And believe me, after three days on that hard floor, they’re going to end up back in their bedroom, you know. And, and they always do, you know. But. I think, for for this type of story, which is just so beautifully done, it helps the child have that confidence, which, you know, is a big challenge in kids these days, right? Like that. They want that independence, and they they, they sometimes lack that self confidence, you know, especially in other parts of you know, their day, where something like this, it’s like, when you sleep better, you feel better, so you’re innately helping them in the rest of their day, right by getting them good sleepers, right?

Well, as we know, the majority of parents who are wanting to change their sleeping situation, they’re already having this conversation on the daily, and it’s just providing a book where they can curl up in that bedtime routine. We know that bedtime routine is so essential, and reading in that bedtime routine and just providing, like I said, that extra narrative to a conversation you’re already having with your kiddo.

Yeah, no, it’s wonderful, and I’m excited. Are so I know you did one, yes, where can we find the one? And then are you going to do any more? I would just want to know you

can find the one so many places. Obviously, Amazon is going to be the easiest place that you can get it, but it is distributed online through Barnes and Noble Walmart target. If you Google it, there’s all different places to buy it. At the end of the day, Amazon is going to be the easiest place to find it. And just a little personal plug. If you do get it and you love it and you’d love to leave a review it, I am getting into the line of like, finding out how like, everything works and literature and reviews on Amazon are massive, like they really, Amazon really picks up on, oh, people are really liking this book, so Amazon’s going to be the best place to get it. And I definitely have hopes for at least one more I have one very specific idea that I want to write it for. I want to write it for my second son, Cody. But something that caught me off guard was the monumental financial obligation that writing this book would cost me. And so because I wanted to play pay for quality illustrations, so that, in itself, is definitely an investment. And so we are going to work on saving for the next one, and once that is in place, I will write at least one more. I don’t envision having, like all these series. I want at least two, but it was the number one best selling new release on Amazon the first week it came out, and we’ve sold over 500 copies in the first month, so it’s been wildly successful. I’ve been really thrilled. Good

for you. That’s great. And it reminds me I have to leave a review, because I purchased it in that first week. But I don’t think I left the review yet, so I’ll go out and leave one. But it is lovely. It comes very quickly. So if you’re looking to get it in in your mailbox this week from Amazon. I can tell you I ordered it and then it was here a day or two later, which is, you know, good for the instant gratification and all that totally but it’s beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing about it. For those of you listening that are driving right now, don’t worry about it. You can just jump out to tinytransitions.com and hit the podcast tab and you can find all the show notes. You can find all the links to every place where Candra selling it, and I’ll put a link out brave dreams. Little Owen is quickly if you’re going to be searching, maybe you’re listening at the park right now while your kids are playing, you can just quickly pull it up on Amazon. And thank you so much for jumping on today. I know it’s been so fun, you know, like I said, Chandra and I have known each other for many years now, both as fleet consultants. But it’s always fun to help and support a friend who’s got this amazing book, and I’m happy to do so, and I’m glad you could join us on the show.

Well, thanks for having me, Courtney. I really appreciate this is fun talking about it. Well, thank you, and be

sure to include everything, and hopefully we get some more stamps for you. But thanks again. Most importantly, hopefully we get your little ones sleeping better and being less fearful at that time, because certainly that’s our mission here, both at Tiny transitions and at Rocky Mountain sleep and babies. So it’ll be good, good to see and hear all those reviews of folks that have made the sleep transformation. So yes,

I always welcome any feedback. I absolutely love that.

Thank you. Thank you.

One more thing before you go, did you know we offer the industry’s first and only sleep coaching membership program? We want you to come for the sleep and stay for the community for just $47 a month, you’ll have access to the entire library for newborn, infant and toddler sleep training, weekly live coaching calls with myself and members of my team, plus a robust community where you can ask questions 24/7, and get answers to your biggest sleep and parenting questions. Jump over to tiny transitions.com. Forward slash sleep steps to learn more you.