The internet is loud, contradictory, and overwhelming when it comes to baby sleep, and no one knows that better than Chrissy Lawler. As a licensed marriage and family therapist, sleep specialist, and founder of The Peaceful Sleeper, Chrissy has spent over 15 years helping more than 400,000 families worldwide find their way to better rest, including celebrity and pro-athlete clients.
But this isn’t just clinical expertise. As a mom of four who navigated her own postpartum depression and anxiety born from sleep deprivation and hormone disruption, Chrissy brings both the science and the lived experience to the table.
In this episode, we cut through the noise around sleep training, explore the psychology behind baby sleep, and talk about why the right approach looks different for every family. Chrissy also shares a preview of her new book, The Peaceful Sleeper: An Intuitive Approach to Baby Sleep, and why she believes getting sleep right is one of the most powerful things parents can do for their mental health, their relationships, and their child’s long-term wellbeing.
- Website: https://thepeacefulsleeper.com/
- Instagram: @the.peaceful.sleeper
- Threads: https://www.threads.com/@the.peaceful.sleeper
- TikTok: @the.peaceful.sleeper
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/the.peaceful.sleeper
- YouTube: youtube.com/@the.peaceful.sleeper
Episode Highlights:
- Chrissy breaks down why the heated online debate around sleep training is missing the point entirely. Instead of taking sides, she walks us through her attachment-based, research-backed approach and why finding the right path for your family is far more effective than following anyone else’s rules.
- What do you really need to know about “cry it out”? Chrissy unpacks the science and psychology of baby sleep, how to confidently read your baby’s cues, and what most parents get wrong before they ever try a sleep method.
- Chrissy gets personal about her own experience with postpartum depression and anxiety after sleep deprivation and hormone disruption hit harder than expected. We talk about why prioritizing sleep isn’t selfish. It’s one of the most important things you can do for your mental health, your relationship, and your bond with your baby.
Sleep Struggles Solved + Results Guaranteed
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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 on which a happy home is built. So, let’s sleep together.
Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of the Kids Sleep Show podcast. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz, and I am joined this week by a very special guest, Miss Chrissy Lawler, The Peaceful Sleeper. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to chat. This is going to be fun.
I know Chrissy is out in Vegas, and I always use the example that says, “Do you sleep in Vegas with your curtains open?” No. So, it’s kind of apropos that we’re talking today, but I’m excited. You’ve got a lot going on.
First and foremost, tell the listeners a little bit about you. I’m sure many of them, like me, follow you on Instagram as The Peaceful Sleeper. How did you get into the space of sleep? I know your background was in mental health and therapy, so let’s take a minute and talk about that, and how you looked at the space of sleep and thought, “You know what, there’s a gap here that I can certainly fill.”
Yes, absolutely. Like you said, I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist. I’ve been practicing for 15 years, and I think, first, as a newer clinician, I started noticing that sleep was a massive mental health need for so many of my clients.
I’m really busy. I’m kind of go, go, go. I had my own bouts of insomnia here and there. As the Type A perfectionist, though, I didn’t like that I didn’t have great tangible skills and tools for my adult clients other than, “I don’t know, it seems like sleep is really important. Figure out how to prioritize that, but let’s keep chatting about other things.”
And then I serendipitously got a mailer one day. It was the number of continuing education hours that I needed, and it was all about advanced behavioral sleep medicine. I was like, “Okay, sure. Maybe I’ll learn a thing or two for myself and maybe some of my clients, and I’ll fulfill the requirements.” Turns out, the rest is history.
Two things that I learned in that training that I think have really stuck with me are, number one, 70% of people with a mental health diagnosis have underlying sleep issues. Sleep is not just a nice add-on. It is critical for our optimal mental health.
And in the postpartum stage, instantaneous and drastic sleep deprivation is a major driving factor of postpartum depression and anxiety. I told you a little bit before we hopped on that I’ve always been really optimistic and confident, and I kind of naively thought that I wouldn’t be able to get depressed because I’m already a therapist.
Then I had a baby, and I wasn’t sleeping, and she wasn’t sleeping. I was slammed with depression and anxiety, and then felt like a failure as a mom because I wanted her my whole entire life. I felt like a failure as a wife and a failure as a professional. Here I am, I’m a therapist, and I’m dealing with anxiety that I can’t kick. I’m supposed to have all the tools.
Then it just kind of dawned on me that if I could figure out her sleep, then I could sleep better. And if I’m sleeping better, then we will all thrive. The greatest gift I can give my entire family is to be a woman who is genuinely thriving.
Yeah, I love that, because I feel we have such a similarity in that it was my own postpartum bout where I was very Type A. I don’t think people talk about this enough, which is why I want to take a minute to address it.
Everybody’s like, “I’m perfect, everything’s great, and it’s Instagram-worthy. My baby’s sleeping and it’s super.” And it’s like, okay, that’s not the reality, right?
I came home from the hospital and I was like, “I’m going to nurse for 12 months because they said that’s what every baby needs.” I got so obsessed with the ability for my body to produce milk. I was doing all kinds of things. I’m not sleeping, I’m Type A, and I was a corporate executive at the time with a team of 40. I’m still answering emails, cutting the grass, having this baby, wearing the baby, and trying to be great at everything.
I naively thought postpartum was going to be this most beautiful, joyous 12 weeks where I got to be with this son that I wished for and finally had. But I really struggled postpartum, and I didn’t have the experience that I dreamt I would have.
It was very similar to you. It was like, “Okay, I feel like I’m a failure. I’m emotionally a wreck. I’m chronically sleep deprived. I’m having intrusive thoughts, which are so freaky because I never had issues, and I can’t control any of this.”
It wasn’t until I figured out that you could manage sleep in a child, and when they got better sleep, and I understood their routines, their needs, and their intake, I got better sleep. And guess what? All the other stuff started to dissipate. My confidence built. I was more clear-headed.
So I think it’s super important to address, first, that mental health challenges postpartum are normal. I want to normalize that and talk about it, and have people seek help professionally because it matters.
I went to a therapist once when I was in the postpartum period, and she was like, “Tell me about your dad.” I was like, “This isn’t going to work. Sorry, I’m not here to talk about my dad, but thank you.” And I never went back because I was just so turned off by the experience. That was my own experience.
Instead, I internalized it in my Type A personality and thought, “What can I control?” Then I started reading and researching because, as we talked about a little bit already, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. So I started to go back to the facts and ask, “How can I help this from a science standpoint, medical standpoint, and research standpoint?”
That’s kind of where your book that just came out came from, right? So talk about the story. You just came out with this book. It’s awesome, and I want to talk a little bit about it because, to your point, social media is a lot. There’s a lot of misinformation, and you need a source of record that people can follow, something that helps them through that period.
Other people are going to listen to this and go, “Yeah, that’s me right now,” or, “Hey, that was me with my last kid, and I’m expecting again, and I don’t want it to be me the next time around.”
The book really is, I’m so excited about it. It does talk about sleep, that’s kind of the central tenet, but it’s also so much more than sleep.
I’ve been a mom for 12 years. I’ve been a therapist for 15 years. I’ve been married for 16 years. Sleep is the cornerstone of family functioning, but it’s also about infant parenting. It’s about setting our kids up for success. It’s about having the whole family system thrive.
I’m sure you hear some of these things a lot too, but one of the things that just makes me so sad is when moms say things to the effect of, “I’m not thriving, but my child is, and that’s all that matters to me.”
And it’s like, yes, that’s beautiful for a time. But I will tell you, as a therapist for 15 years and being married for 16 years, if you aren’t thriving and you are expecting yourself to run on empty for years, it will catch up with you. It will negatively impact the people you are serving.
I love Dr. Morgan Cutlip. She talks a lot about maternal burnout, and one of the things she finds in the research time and time again is that if we are running on empty, we will start resenting the people we have served. And that’s true.
So I think it’s not just about baby sleep. It’s finding your confidence as a parent, finding your confidence as a mother, shaping your parental intuition, and realizing that there isn’t one right way to arrive at optimal sleep.
Everybody on social media is fighting about, “You have to do this,” or, “You have to do that.” And I’m putting on my science hat and saying, “Hold on a second. There’s not one right way to do pretty much anything in life.”
Let’s boil it down to the science. Let’s understand a framework that works, and then let’s empower parents to tune into themselves, tune into their baby, and find their right path.
Yeah, exactly. I think it goes back as well to the family unit and boundaries. The best thing I learned how to say as a parent was no.
Sometimes that had to protect me because I’m naturally a giver. You need me to come paint the school? Great, I’ll be there at 8:00 with my trousers on to paint. You need me to bake brownies? You want me to be the homeroom mom? You want me to work? You want me to do all the things? I was a yes person.
I would say, “Oh, I can help you with that. I can help you with that.” And then I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m burning out.” I’m working a lot and I’m doing all this stuff.
Even with family, like, “Can you do this? Can you come out? Can I come sit?” And I’m like, “I’m sorry, that doesn’t work for me.” It was the most freeing statement.
I read it in Kelly Ripa’s book. She said, “I’m sorry, that doesn’t work for me.” I read it a couple years ago and I was like, “Damn, that’s it.” Because it’s the power to protect your mental health.
We talked a little bit about my tiny task boards when we were just talking, but my husband would come home from work, and I would feel resentful. I’m like, “You got to go all day and work, which I love, and go to the gym, which I love, and have free time to listen to your podcast on the way home, which I love.”
And I’m sitting here with a pump attached to me, milk shooting out of my nipples, an ice diaper on, and I’m exhausted, slamming lactation cookies like a boss. This is not working for me.
As I was cutting the grass while wearing my son, I was like, “I can’t. This isn’t working for me.” It was very, very overwhelming.
But I took what I could control. A lot of it comes down to, as parents, it is beautiful for a time when you say, “Maybe I’m going to sacrifice this thing because I’m learning, because I have a new child, because we’re in this change.” Change takes time.
But it’s also looking at the situation, which is where the tiny task boards came up. When my husband came home, we are a team. We are a team unit. It’s looking at it and asking, “How can I help you, Courtney?”
Instead of me getting resentful and saying, “I don’t know, man. Change the diaper genie,” it was, “Look at the board and see without asking me that the bathroom hasn’t been cleaned, that the laundry needs to get done, that maybe the plants in the house weren’t watered.”
They’re so stupid and little things, but they all add up to time and the mental load that parents are carrying. Particularly a lot of times, it’s the mom who’s managing all the things.
I think, to your point, managing the family unit is asking, “How does everybody thrive?” It’s okay to have boundaries around things, and to ask for things, and to do things.
I was joking when my husband said, “Get a whiteboard,” the first time. I was like, “Are you crazy?” He’s an accountant. But I was like, “Are you crazy?” And it was the best thing we ever did.
It just relieved the mental load of, “This is the boundary.” Then it comes with the little gumball machine where the boundary is that you do X, or here’s the consequence. You go to practice, you get a gumball. You don’t, you lose one. Life is not full of rewards.
So I think, to your point, having a conversation as a family unit, whatever your family unit looks like, is important. I know a lot of people might not even have one, so it’s looking at your unique situation and asking, “How can I control some of these things to start prioritizing my own sleep, my own wellness, and my own mental health?”
That will ultimately trickle down to being a better parent. But then it’s also looking at my child and asking, “What in this can I control?”
I don’t like in the space where people say, “Oh, well you just have to deal with no sleep for X, Y, Z years.” Sleep is a skill set. Please, let’s go back to the science. Sleep is a skill.
How your child learns to settle to sleep, if you’re managing the other variables like intake, timing, and environment, they will learn to sleep well.
Yes. And I think to your point about boundaries, figuring out what I am available for is important. One of the things that I talk about in my clinical practice a lot, especially with women, is realizing that every yes is a no, and every no is a yes.
We are already making this trade-off. So when we love to say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to everything, we have to scale back and look at the big picture.
That is one of the things that I find a lot, especially in the sleep space, especially with a lot of the misinformation about attachment and the quote-unquote harms of sleep training.
It is kind of framed as this attachment-superior modality to co-sleep. If that is genuinely working for families, safety aside, we always want to make sure that we have a safe sleep space for our child. But if co-sleeping is genuinely working for your family, I’m not going to fight you on it. That’s fine. If you’re all getting good sleep in a way that works for you, have at it.
Where I do take issue is when a family system is not thriving, when people’s sleep is not optimized, but you feel like you have to do that or else you are not a good and loving parent.
I always zoom out and say, “Hold on, let’s look at the trade-off.” If you are being quote loving and responsive and attuned and attached all night long while your baby is sleeping, and the result is you’ve gotten crappy sleep, then during the day, when your baby is awake and aware, you are short, snippy, drowning, exhausted, and grumpy with your partner.
We’re all going to have toddler tantrums about, “I said I wanted a blue plate and not a pink one.” I promise your sleep quality impacts your response to the very normal toddler meltdown.
Are we rolling our eyes and saying, “What? No. Take what I gave you,” or are we gentle, calm, kind, and managing that because we’re operating from a full tank?
With every decision that we make, we have to look at the full big picture and assess, “Is this actually working for me, or is there room to make a change and optimize something?”
Well, and I think to your point, it’s to the person, right? You could put out something about this topic and get 35 people who are like, “Yeah, that’s great,” and 35 people who are like, “No, that’s not right, and you’re not loving.”
There’s always going to be two sides to every statement or situation. Again, you have to look at it and ask, “Is this working for me?” Because if it’s working for you, great.
Most of the people who seek out our help, it’s not working for them. There are a lot of different things that are causing challenges.
I also think there’s this acceptance, like a badge of honor. Tired is not a badge of honor. The best thing you could do is give your child the gift of sleep. Teach them the skill because it will transfer with them.
I work with so many infants and I’m like, “You will never, ever need me again once you understand this.” Because if your child understands the foundational skill of sleep, you’re building that strong foundation, and everything else dissipates.
The regressions that people talk about are really just a blip that shouldn’t necessarily even have to happen. But I think people just expect that sleep’s going to be bad.
So I want you to talk about that from a science of sleep perspective. You hear a lot of people say, “Oh, my pediatrician said just cry it out,” and “I don’t want to cry it out,” or “I’ve tried sleep training before in the past and it didn’t work.”
Foundationally, I want to get down to the science part of it. A child will sleep through the night when they have the skill, when they get the intake, 24 to 32 ounces, when they have the right environment, and when they have the right timing in the day, which is going to balance their circadian rhythm to feed proper bedtime.
But I want you to dive into it a little bit more and talk about this misconception that what we do is we are going to let a baby cry it out.
Children have the ability, and should use that ability, to regulate their bodies in certain degrees. I think there’s this misconception that with baby sleep training, it’s like, “I just stick them in the crib and close the door.” That is the furthest thing from what we’re actually doing. So please take a minute.
Yes, yes. I agree 100% with everything that you just said. I take the developmental psychology lens and recognize that in every aspect of development, we follow kind of a formula.
First, we establish the thing with full support so that the child can get used to that thing. Think about walking. Tummy time leads to rolling, which leads to the muscular structure for sitting and crawling and pulling up to a stand and walking.
You don’t just take a two-month-old and plop them on their feet and say, “Hey, you should be fine.” The developmental support goes in order.
Same with swimming or learning to ride a two-wheeler. First, we spend the first four months fully supporting our infant’s development of their sleep architecture.
Like you said, we have our four pillars of a newborn sleep foundation. That’s optimizing feedings, optimizing timing, mastering soothing and calming strategies, and eradicating sources of discomfort.
For the first four to six months of a newborn’s life, their sleep architecture is developing. As we support our infant to sleep, we are supporting their brain learning the habit, skill, and foundation of good, solid sleep.
Like we do with every other developmental milestone, as they are ready, we’ve established the foundation, and then we scale back in the way that works for them as learners and for us as teachers.
That is going to look a little bit different. My five-year-old, we just recently taught her how to ride a two-wheeler. If we think about sleep training, so many people have this misconception that you just toss them in the crib and say, “I’ll come back in the morning and whatever happens, happens.”
I would compare that to giving Nolan a two-wheeler and being like, “Hey, figure it out. I’ll be inside making dinner.” That’s not actually what we do.
First, she learned on a trike, then a balance bike, then a two-wheeler with training wheels. Then, because she had all of that support, at some point we took off the training wheels. We’re holding on to the back of the bike, but at some point, we let go and we let her wobble, catch herself, and stumble.
There was no serious accident. There’s no major injury. But as she’s learning how to ride that two-wheeler, is there protest along the way? Absolutely. Because it’s really, really frustrating to know that I want to do this thing, and I just can’t get it right now.
It is not our job as parents to take away discomfort. It’s actually the opposite. From a developmental psychology standpoint, we need to give our children opportunities to deal with manageable discomfort in a supportive and loving environment.
Our kids are going to have discomfort in their whole entire lives. They get safety not when we rescue them from all discomfort, but when we stand on the sidelines with our thumbs up and say, “Sweet girl, you’ve got this. I believe in you. You’re doing so great. I’m going to give you some room to figure this out because I believe in you so much.”
I love that. In our last decade or two of parenting, we have become incredibly anxious as parents and incredibly overprotective. That’s kind of the big flag that I want to wave to parents.
Hey, I can play the tape forward. I’ve seen the tape forward. Being a therapist for 15 years, moms are not thriving and our children are not thriving.
We’ve got to scale back and let everybody. Moms have to stop burning themselves out, and we’ve got to give our kids some opportunity to be uncomfortable and learn resilience and mastery, because that will benefit them their whole entire lives.
Absolutely. I use the analogy a bit, which I think people can appreciate. You have a Phillips head screw, right? Kids generally have two screwdrivers. They have the flathead screwdriver and the Phillips head screwdriver.
As new babies, you have a Phillips head screw. The flathead screwdriver works on that type of screw. You can build a deck. It’ll take you a bit, but you can put that screwdriver in that screw and turn it. Now, go out and build a house. It’ll take you a lot longer.
When you give them the tool, all of a sudden they go, “I didn’t even know this was in my tool belt.” By the way, it turns the screw twice as fast. Now you have a power drill. I can build the deck in a day.
A lot of times, the kids that we work with don’t even know that the other screwdriver is out there because they’ve relied on something else to sleep.
I think there’s this misconception that it’s like, “Oh, well, I want to do all that.” I’m like, “Do you want or need this?” We are always there as parents to be accessible, not excessive.
Do you want the bottle to sleep, or do you need it to go to sleep? Feeding a baby in the middle of the night if they’re hungry is absolutely biologically appropriate. It depends on their intake and their situation.
Feeding them as a mechanism to fall asleep is a habit. They’re never going to learn the skill if they’re reliant on this. Then you perpetuate that for months at a time.
Yes, you do have to change that because their expectation is that they need it to go to bed versus wanting it to fall asleep. You give them the right tool, and pretty quickly they go, “Oh, you know what? I don’t want you. I’d rather just go back to bed on my own. Now that I know how to do it, this is great.”
It’s just teaching children that, if you’re managing all the other components with the right skill development, it is a pillar.
When I was always someone, and I’m sure you’re the same with your children, we didn’t go to the birthday party if it interrupted nap time because I knew that was going to cause a challenge at bedtime if they didn’t nap.
We drove during nap times, or I’d be driving and tickling coming home from church on Sunday, like, “You can’t fall asleep. It’s only a mile.” Because it messes up the rhythms.
There’s the science of this in their body, and the hormones, and the management, and misalignment throws everything into a tailspin.
That’s why I think people look at sleep training a baby like it’s the method. The method is a tiny part of the jigsaw puzzle. There are so many other components to that puzzle that if you don’t have them right, sleep training will fail every time.
Exactly. That’s why I love to focus on, “Hold on, it’s not about to cry it out or not to cry it out, or cry it out versus co-sleeping. It’s how are we laying a good foundation for optimal development, and how does our child best learn how to master independence?”
We know that if a baby can get from all the way awake to all the way asleep on their own, then they will be able to sleep cycle transition on their own too.
We all have sleep cycles. We have periods of deeper, more restorative sleep, and we have periods of light sleep. If a baby is waking up 10 times at night to nurse back to sleep, that baby is not thriving either. That baby is not getting the sleep that they are able to get.
Like you said, just to echo that again, it’s a gift for the child. It’s a gift for the family system. Good sleep is critically important.
I think it’s important to look at the cues. Talk about baby’s cues, because people go, “How do I know if they’re hungry, or if it’s just habit, or they’re waking up?”
If your child’s eating 11 times at night on the breast, guess what? They’re probably not eating as well during the day. You’ve got to throw in some weighted transfers to see where this milk is transferring because it’s a numbers game.
If you’re not getting it in the day and you’re getting it at night, they’re going to keep waking for it. So it’s that slow movement of the milk into the day. It’s not rip the feedings out. It’s move the milk. Your supply then can adjust properly and maintain that.
I think, to your point, there are a lot of cues. As a professional, you’ve done this a long time. You’ve worked with a lot of families. There are things that are consistent across children where you can start to isolate those cues. Why don’t you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah. I think the first two big pillars are feeding and timing. Timing is an area that a lot of parents miss the mark because babies don’t always signal in exactly the same way.
We want to have one eye on the baby and one eye on the clock to know what is your optimal awake window and when you are ready to go to sleep. If we can master the timing, everything else goes so much easier.
Generally, we have some sleepy cues around, depending on the age. Newborns are like 45 to 60 minutes. Sometimes as they get a little bit older, it can be 60 to 90 minutes. An older baby that is sleep trained can go to two and a half hours.
Usually, we’ll get kind of a lull, quiet in their play. They start staring off into the distance. They’ll have kind of a deep sigh. Their activity slows. They’re still cheerful, but they’re calm and content. You might see a subtle yawn. That’s when we start preparing ourselves to head toward bed.
Some babies always stay chill and happy, and they’re not really demonstrating these tired signals. So we just put them down anyway, and then we learn and fine-tune.
If we have a baby that was chilling, happy, and content, maybe they rubbed their eye once, had one subtle yawn, and if you plop them in bed and they’re asleep four minutes later, then guess what? You mastered that timing. You recognized the sleepy cues.
A lot of times, we wait until they are actively tired and crying. They’re jerking their limbs, flailing, fussing. They’re tired and grumpy. We’ve probably missed that ideal window at that point, and helping them get to sleep might be unnecessarily tricky.
The other thing is that, as adults, just for the sake of ease, I call them sleepy chemicals and awake chemicals. The more that we power through our sleepiness, babies can’t regulate those chemicals as well.
They’ve overpowered their sleepiness, and they’re pumping themselves with awake chemicals to try and hang. Then they get wired and tired. The unfortunate thing is, in the middle of the night, they get these random jolts of chemicals because everything’s been firing off willy-nilly all day and all night long.
So we have worse sleep at night if daytime sleep wasn’t buttoned up and optimized. I love the simple phrase, sleep begets sleep. If we can optimize their sleep during the day, their sleep at night will get better.
I think it’s important, too, for parents to understand that it’s all connected. A lot of times, I’ll see families that are like, “Well, that doesn’t work for me. I want to go to yoga at 10:00,” or, “Why won’t this three-month-old consolidate naps? They’re only sleeping every 45 to 60 minutes.”
I’m like, “That is biologically appropriate.” They will move from stage to cycle sleep as a newborn. Between three and four months, they will then start to consolidate their circadian rhythm and get more of that biological clock that’s balanced.
At that point, with the skill, your child will start to connect sleep cycles. Some of it is developmental. Some of it is timing.
Sometimes people will come back and be like, “That sleep window doesn’t work for us.” I’m like, “Well then, it’s not going to work for your child. They’re going to get overtired, which then is going to cause them to be overstimulated, which is then going to cause them to have a short nap because their brain’s fighting their body.”
By the end of the day, it will be a bit of a dumpster fire. Then going into bedtime, they’re tired and wired. Then they’re waking more. They’re up in the early morning hours.
Often, sometimes parents will come and say, “Well, we just have a problem with short naps.” I’m like, “Well, do you? Let’s talk about the day.” And it always ends up being more like, “Oh, and this is a mess, and that sucks, and this isn’t good, and my supply is a mess.”
And I’m like, “Okay, that’s okay. Let’s just talk through the whole picture of the scope.” Because it does feed everything, and it’s a domino effect.
You’ve got to fix this and then let that domino fall, and then fix this and let that domino fall. When you do it by understanding all the pieces, it does work. There’s a science behind what we do. It’s not voodoo witchcraft.
Yes, because I think sometimes you get the hate and the pushback, especially on social media, where they’re like, “That doesn’t work for me.” And it’s like, all right, great. Your baby’s probably not sleeping well. You can unfollow.
But I want people to realize that you can change things that then slowly will evolve into the next thing. Timing is the most important.
I tell parents, if Grandma’s just sitting there rocking them to sleep after an hour and they’re five months old, that’s not going to bode well for you.
I’m always someone who’s a big proponent of, I would prefer a child be supported to sleep while you’re working through naps than to try to do everything independent, because you’re going to have a bunch of short naps that are going to cause overtiredness at bed.
As you’re working on sleep training, starting at bedtime and overnight, support the naps to protect the schedule. I will happily tell a parent, “Go for a walk. Go for a drive. Hold them for this nap if it protects them actually getting a restorative nap. Then try again for the next one.”
Yup, exactly. I have parents always start at bedtime the first night. We’re not doing a whole bunch of this learning and skill development in the middle of the night.
We’re going to practice a little bit to see if we can learn how to fall asleep independently for naps, but it’s kind of a short stint of practice. Then, yes, to your point, protect the nap. We just need the good sleep to happen.
We’ll have a little bit of practice here and there and see how you do. Again, sleep begets sleep, so we have to have good daytime sleep so that they’re in an optimal learning condition to be able to take the next steps.
I think, too, if people understand that sleep is a skill set, then as the skill builds and the wants go away, you ultimately have the ability to put your child down for their first nap, and guess what? They know what to do.
It alleviates two weeks of bad advice and “let your child cry, then just pick them up and rock them.” How about you just support the naps for the first week and get the bedtime and overnight sorted, then slowly start with the first nap of the day where you’re allowing them to settle independently?
You’ll see they go to bed so much faster. It is just the whole picture. Honestly, I always say it’s a jigsaw puzzle, and if you’re missing one piece of the puzzle, the puzzle is not complete.
Yeah. Yep. Totally. I agree with that.
So real talk, mom of four, all different ages and stages. What would you say would be your best advice for somebody who’s kind of in the state of overwhelm right now? Maybe they have a toddler not sleeping well, a baby, and another one on the way.
What would be your best advice, both from a clinical perspective, from your experience as a sleep professional, and as a mom of four, with the realities of parenting right now in 2026?
Yeah. I kind of joke that sleep is a family value, but I really think that’s so important.
I have an almost 13-year-old that can self-identify, like, “I’m kind of fragile today. I think I didn’t sleep well.” I have a five-year-old that asks to go to bed and says, “I’m tired and fragile today because I didn’t sleep well.”
Recognizing that we are all really happy when we get good sleep matters. I’m so excited to be able to go to bed tonight. Or we wake up in the morning and say, “Don’t you feel so great? Sleep is the best.”
Then, when we send all our kids upstairs to go to bed, there’s not this protest. Sleep isn’t lame. It’s something that we all really love that we get to do.
If they’re not tired yet, then take away the power struggle. You can read in your room, draw, color, or journal, but this is your quiet time.
During the day, we’re very go, go, go. So I think it becomes this really beautiful part of our family life.
All of the conversation, connection, and snuggles that so many families do right around bedtime, that then draws out the bedtime routine as you’re talking to your four-year-old for an hour and telling stories as they’re falling asleep, you can get that connection all throughout the day. You can and should.
Bedtime can just be bedtime. That can be a quick, “Love you so much. Goodnight.” Have your warm, meaningful connection all throughout the day. It doesn’t have to be at bedtime.
Yeah. In our family, we call them awesomes. You get three awesomes and one not awesome. We do it every night at bedtime, and then that’s it. Then they go to bed, and my kids know it.
Each person goes, and we say three things that were really awesome today, and one thing that was not awesome. We do that in our room, and then the kids, we have two kids, disperse. It’s like tuck this one in, tuck that one in.
It’s so funny because my son is 11, he’ll be 12 this year, and he always sleeps with a light on. I hate it as a sleep professional. I’m like, “That is not what your body needs.” So then he wears a face mask.
We were in Ireland last week for my daughter’s Irish dance contest, and we were there for a quick long weekend. My son wanted to come, and I’m like, “You can come.” They adjusted perfectly. We slept great over there. We came back, they adjusted perfectly coming back. It worked out really well.
But my son made a kind of self-reflective moment at 12. He said, “I don’t want to sleep with my light on anymore. I think it wakes me up.” I’m like, “It does wake you up early, buddy. But every time I turn it off, you freak out. So put your eye mask on. That’s the best I can do. You’re 12.”
Now he just, it was just this weekend, said, “I like sleeping with my light off. I sleep better when it’s dark.” I’m like, “Yes, there we go. Amen. Score.”
So I want to have you take a few minutes. Where can people find you? Where can they follow you? How can they work with you? And when is the book coming out? Talk to us about it, what you’re doing with it, and tell us all about it.
Yes. It’s available now on preorder, and there’s the advanced digital copy that goes out with the preorder. It ships on March 24th. Everything is The Peaceful Sleeper. The title of the book is The Peaceful Sleeper. My website is thepeacefulsleeper.com, and then you can find me on all social channels at @the.peaceful.sleeper.
Awesome. Thank you so much for tuning in today, everyone. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Chrissy, for coming, and I hope you enjoy this episode. Certainly be sure to reach out to Chrissy because she is awesome, and you’ll find lots of great, helpful information.
Thanks for being on the Kids Sleep Show.
Thank you so much.
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