Table of Contents
ToggleResources:
- Read the Blog on Traveling and Timezone Hopping with Children
- Free Sleep Training Workshop – Making Over Bedtime
Episode Highlights:
- Sample Scheduled for every stage of naps to adjust with ease
- Understanding how to adjust and how long it will take to go back to “normal”
Sleep Struggles Solved + Results Guaranteed
Podcast Episode Transcripts:
Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.
Welcome to the kids sleep show, where we help tired parents from around the world to get their children to fall asleep independently, sleep through the night and build healthy sleep habits for life. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz. Now let’s sleep together.
Alright,
hello, everyone and
welcome.
Day one, save your sanity sleep boot camp, I am excited that you are here and able to join. If this is your first time joining one of my sessions, welcome. My name is Courtney Zentz. I am the founder of tiny transitions. And I am here today and throughout the duration of this week to teach you all about sleep in quite a very different way. So to give you background on myself, if this is the first time that you are meeting me even virtually, I found a tiny transitions over six years ago, helping kids from all over the world to build healthy sleep habits for life. That is what I do. It’s what my team does. And I love it. I am based actually in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
it is
a nice summer day here. And the sun is shining, which is great, hopefully the same for you. And I am so excited that you have joined us. If you are jumping in live, let me know please couple things. First, I always love to know where you’re coming from. Because that helps me to understand the reach and the folks that I’m able to impact with my sessions. I’d also love to know a little bit more about your little one and some of the key challenges that you’re facing, that’s going to help me to customize who I’m speaking to during the week here. And also to make sure that the information I’m sharing with you is coming over in a way that’s going to be certainly most meaningful and most actionable. This is a very different session that I’m sure any you’ve ever joined before for a couple of reasons. The first is I am a huge believer in giving, I want to share a lot of information with you, you should all have the workbook it should have been received via email. If you don’t have the workbook, that’s okay. I’ll go ahead and share that out here again in the group just in case. But anyone that registered should have received an email this morning just in case with that. But I will post it out here in the slumber Made Simple Facebook group in just a moment, you won’t miss anything by not having it right now. So don’t worry about that, we’re going to dive into a lot of detail. There are details that I’m going to share this week that are going to help you to see sleep success in a matter of a couple days. A lot of people attend the session one two or three times really just to hit home, what they’re doing, how they’re working with their little ones and asleep needs change. There may be something from the last session that I did, that you missed, or that maybe you need a refresher on and they join again to get that information. This is not your typical run of the mill webinar. You can see I’m live here, this is summer, Courtney, I work out every morning. It’s good for the body keeps that immune system strong. So I am in summer mode right now. But I’m going to share a lot of information, I’m gonna tell you everything you need, why your little ones not having the best night of sleep, and what you can do to fix it. There are a few things in the way in which I handle these particular types of series. So first and foremost, as you have questions, please post them in the comments. I will be popping between the webinar here in zoom and out into Facebook to see what the comments are coming in to see what questions you have. And at the end of each session, I do a lot time to answer those questions so that you can take the questions you have based on the information that I’ve shared with you that day, and turn it into actionable steps right away. This session is most appropriate, frankly, for all children starting around four months of age. The sessions and the information that I share is going to be appropriate for all ages. And then I’ll do breakout sessions, depending on who’s here who’s listening and who’s watching and what the age of your little ones is, because that’s going to help me to understand where we need to do the breakout sessions. If we have a lot of folks attending that have reflux issues, we’ll do a whole breakout session. That’s a bonus kind of extra session on reflux. If your little one has reflux you can attend that session. Same with things like newborns or toddlers or infants. I try to aim to serve in the General Sessions at two o’clock each day in the capacity that’s going to be appropriate for everyone. And then I’ll reserve those breakout sessions for individual ages, specific challenges and struggles and that way we can make sure that I am meeting the needs of all of you. So let’s go ahead and dive in. Again. Thank you for joining us sure to tell me where you’re from and what some of those struggles are.
I
again am Courtney Zentz. I am the founder of tiny transitions. I am from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Today I’m actually in the Christmas city of Bethlehem Pennsylvania. I came to visit my brother yesterday and it’s such a great day I felt like Stan so I am coming to you live from the most beautiful city at Christmas time known as Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And before To this next session, and I’m going to take you through a whole bunch of stuff. So give me one second. Let me pop over into Facebook, just to make sure. Looks like it’s coming over. Perfect. Okay, we’ve got some questions. Hello, Sonia. Hi,
Emily, thank
you for jumping in. That is perfect. So we’re going to keep those questions come in. And then as I get through some of the information, I’ll jump in and actually make sure that all of those questions are being answered. And one of the things I’m going to do is I’m actually going to pop right into my facebook group. Now the cool part about doing this live is it’s kind of fun, and I get to talk about what I want, because it’s my group. So let’s dive in. The first thing that I want to talk about when it comes to sleep and sleep foundations, and what we’re doing here, right, is to understand sleeps a skill set. A lot of people don’t teach sleep as a skill. But think of it this way, your little one is born, right, every baby has the ability to actually sleep when they’re born, it’s part of the human body. However, they’re born with a blank slate. And then over the first weeks and months of life, how they sleep and how they learn to sleep is the skill in which they adapt to go to bed, right. So if you’ve only ever rocked your child to sleep, they’re now 18 months old, you can’t just expect to magically lay them down, and that they’re going to go to sleep without rocking your movement. Right. A lot of parents struggle at various different points with their little one, maybe your little one was born was a beautiful sleeper. Now all of a sudden, you’re at eight months ago, and they were sick, went to hell in a handbasket. And I’m not really sure what to do. Um, there’s a lot of different ages, a lot of different transitions, and we’re gonna walk step by step through all of those today. The foundational element, though, is that sleeps a skill. So think of the first time your little one sits up the first time they stand up, right, the first step or two that they take, they don’t just wake up and start walking, right, they’re gonna pull themselves up in the crib, and maybe you come in and are a bit surprised that they’re, you know, standing there. And then the next day that you come in, and they’re standing there for a lot longer, and then they sit down, and then they’re standing there, and then they sit down, right. So over the course of a week, you know, what happens is they all of a sudden are scooting around the crib by holding on to the rails, right? That’s a build skill, right? You build that skill, you buildable and then over time they get better at it sleeps the same way, right? Children need to be taught how to sleep and what way we want them to sleep, and then they build on that skill set. So that’s why I say foundationally every child has the ability to be a good sleeper, we just have to undo sometimes some of the things that they’ve gotten preference to and rebuild it with better skill sets for them to independently sleep. The first thing I want to talk about today is actually the single most important thing that I’m going to tell you during this session. Okay, so write this down. The most important thing that you need to watch with your child, Aside from the obvious of putting them to sleep by rocking or bouncing things that you know, you have to get rid of, right? The single most important thing you’re going to learn is the awake windows. It is the number one thing that people do not necessarily understand when you come home from the hospital without a manual, right? So you’re awake windows for a child are going to change every few weeks that you have a baby. So I’ll give you an example. When a newborn comes home from the hospital, they can only tolerate being awake for 45 to 60 minutes. Okay, that’s it, and then I’ll start to explain what happens after I go through the rest of the ages. Okay, so newborn is about 45 to 60 minutes, okay? When you get to be around three months, you can last typically about 90 minutes, okay, around four months, somewhere around two hours or so.
Okay?
Five months, two and a half hours, six months, around two and a half to three hours, seven months, about three hours. And then between seven and 12 months, you can last typically about three to four hours in between when a baby needs to sleep. As you start to grow from 12 to 18 months, you kind of go four to five hours. And then usually around your second birthday, you can go a little bit longer. Most two year olds are still taking a nap. Okay, so they go about six hours, take a nap, go back down for bed. And then once you hit three to four is when that naps typically starts to shuffle. Okay, kids will drop the nap. And then they’re usually in bed about seven o’clock at night. They’re sleeping for about 12 hours, right? In an ideal world, a body needs about 12 to 16 hours of sleep the whole first year of life. Okay, that’s total sleep naps and daytime in the years past that you still need, usually somewhere between 11 and 14 hours, okay? It’s kind of the range for kids over the age of one. It’s somewhere within that all the way up through school aged children, right.
So kids need
a lot of sleep, and foundationally that’s the part where we have to pay attention. You’re awake window is the single biggest driver and the reason I harp so much on awake Windows is because actually that is when your body does a couple things from a biology standpoint. So let me explain if you’re not paying attention to your awake windows, and I see some comments coming in, which is awesome. So I will go ahead and check back those check back on those in a few minutes. So thank you, you’re awake windows are typically going to be the most important thing because what happens biology right, your body
clock,
a baby’s body clock regulates around three to four months. With the light and dark right, it starts to build what most of us are familiar with. It’s called a circadian rhythm. So those first three months of life or what many refer to as the fourth trimester, a baby does not have a circadian rhythm, okay, they sleep in stages. You’re either in a deep stage of sleep, or you’re in a light stage of sleep. And it’s the only time in your life where you’ll actually spend 50% of your time equally in both deep sleep and light sleep, which is why newborns sleep a lot. Okay. around four months of age, somewhere between three and four months, your body’s natural circadian rhythm starts to happen around eight weeks, you begin to develop melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that helps your body prepare to sleep, it is not a sleep aid.
Okay?
very big difference. A lot of people think it’s a sleep aid, they can pop some melatonin they’re going to sleep doesn’t work. That way your body’s creates that as a hormone. If you introduce it synthetically, your body just stops making it. So Melatonin is created as your circadian rhythm develops. Okay, light and dark are what helps the body the most to regulate circadian rhythms. So what happens is typically in the morning hours, between four and six, your body starts to prepare these hormones for the daytime. And then typically around seven or eight at night, your body’s preparing to go to sleep, right? That’s where you go in and kick off the bedtime routine, you close the blinds, you do the bath and you start to unwind for your little one, just to make sure that their body’s preparing enough to fall asleep.
Okay.
So that is where with the weak windows, things get really important. Okay, when you are not following an awake window, or you’re saying, Well, no, my baby’s three months old and can stay up for five hours. I’m going to tell you they’re overtired. It’s either telling me their naps are short their overnight wakings. Or they’re waking up early because the body’s natural clock doesn’t allow for that. Alright, so what happens is usually around three or four months of age, you’re building up sleep pressure, okay? So based on the age of your child is how quickly they build up that pressure. When there’s too much pressure boom, explodes. That is overtired. We’ve all dealt with the toddler I at least have I have a four and a six year old, who have been overtired, they are freaking out, they’re throwing a tantrum, they’re not eating, they’re not doing well. They’re sort of just in this manic state. But they can’t settle because their bodies flooded with stimulant hormones. Okay? If you’re not paying attention to the awake windows in your little one, that’s what’s happening in their little bodies, even as a newborn, right? We’ve all been there. Our newborn is freaking out, right? And you’re trying to just figure out like, are you hungry? Do you have a verb, you have a fever, you have to poop like what’s going on, right? And it’s usually overtired, they get out of that window, and then you can’t do anything to call them. You can try to hold them and rock him and bounce him and swing them and drive them and whatever, just to get them to sleep because they get so chronically overtired.
That’s what happens with all kids.
If the sleep pressure isn’t monitored properly, your little one is going to struggle to sleep, they’re going to struggle to sleep longer. They’re going to struggle to fall asleep independently, they’re going to struggle to stay asleep through the night, and they’re going to typically wake early in the morning. So if you’re sitting there going, huh? My two year old does this. My 12 month old does this. My six month old does this. That’s why it has to do with sleep pressure. And the amount of pressure that they’re building up. If they get into overtired, what happens is there’s a spot in your brain that’s essentially triggering stimulant hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. So think of it like the last time you tried to pull an all nighter, right? Your brain is saying well wait a minute, if you’re not going to go to bed, then I’m going to help you to stay awake, right? So it triggers adrenaline and cortisol, you are able to stay awake all night study, study study, like you did in college, and then you crash. That’s what happens to kids. I mean, it manifests in a little bit of a different way. And they don’t actually know what’s happening. But their body gets flooded with stimulant hormones, their brain and their bodies are actually fighting each other because their body wants to go to bed, but their brains like No, dude, you’re cool, like you’re good to go. And it floods the system with all these stimulants, and that’s where when that happens, you know, you’ll start to notice a lot of those challenges, trouble settling, short naps, all that good stuff because the body’s got a bunch of stimulants in it. Okay, so that is the basis and foundation of probably, as I mentioned, the single most important thing that you’re going to learn during this session for today is going to be watching those awake windows. It’s not something that people talk enough about, frankly. So that’s going to be super important, as is monitoring The amount of sleep your little one needs and starting to figure out if you’re meeting those needs and making sure you’re avoiding overtired, depending on on how old your little one is. So give me a thumbs up. If that resonates with you. I’m going to pause for a second, take a look at some of those questions, and then start to see if there’s any specific to the awake times or anything around what I’ve chatting through. If not, I will hold any of the other questions towards the end, just so I don’t get off track because I tend to do that. But if there’s anything specific to a week windows, go ahead and send it over right now. And I will answer that for you. And then just give me one second and let me chat and see what’s going on. Alright, so my Facebook There we go. Hello, Sonia. Hi, Emily. Hey, Liz. I look forward to catching up with you next week. And we have Ole Miss Amanda. Hello. Hello again. Well, thank you. I so appreciate you guys coming. Okay, so what do you see? We’ve got a couple questions. Hello, Emily. I am in Westchester. Well, not today. I’m in Bethlehem, but I live in Westchester. So let me know where you’re from
in.
You have a four month old. That’s amazing. We’ll be five months on the 25th struggling with sleeping through the night. Waking every two hours we’ve tried cried it out and she’s gotten hoarse, I stopped. Okay. So for you as Emily, a couple things I want you to look at, when you have a baby, that’s about five months of age, I would say your awake window needs to be roughly about 90 minutes to two hours. Okay. So when you have a morning, let’s say she wakes up about 7am, right, your first nap is going to be 830. Okay, let’s say she sleeps till only 915, that’s actually totally normal, it’s a one cycle nap, she gets up at 915. The next nap is going to be about 1030, right. And you’re going to go probably at this age on like a four nap a day structure. When you’re starting to try to teach a child to sleep well, you can start just with bedtime. But you can also start with just the first nap of the day, it’s usually the one that I find to be the easiest for babies. Because it’s the most closely aligned always on the same day, right? Like babies are going to wake up at 7am. And they’re going to sleep and wake up every day around that time. So their first naps, always at the same time. So I would definitely say like try starting there and see if that makes a little bit of a difference for you. You want to monitor those awake windows throughout the day. So baby sleeps an hour and a half still, you know, and maybe a 90 minute to an hour and 45 as far as the awake window. If she sleeps for like 10 minutes in the car and you’re like, shoot, I didn’t know she fell asleep, you’re probably going to have to dial the awake window back like an hour and 15 minutes. But either way, you want to monitor those awake windows.
Okay,
crying it out is a method, right? So people refer to me and say like, what kind of method do you teach when you work with families? To be honest, I don’t teach just one method. Okay, I think that there’s a lot of different ways that you work with families. And frankly, every child is unique, which is why the private coaching is something a lot of people opt in for because anybody can Google sleep training methods. And if you’re not getting that whole puzzle put together, you’re going to be missing pieces of the puzzle that cause unnecessary upset, lots of tears. And then frankly, a lot of parents give up, okay. But when you do things like cried out, if you’re not paying attention to be awake Windows, or that consistency is not there, it can tend to lead to a lot more tears and a lot more upset. And then inevitably, parents kind of throw the towel in and say, All right, we’re going to have to do something else. Because this isn’t working. There’s many, many methods, many approaches, you know, you can call it a shuffle or a check in or an extinction about like, the foundation of sleep training is built off the same research, right? So regardless of kind of who you’re working with write, I’d love it always for me to be me. Or maybe you’re just educating for me, it doesn’t matter. Everybody’s working off the same principles. Okay, so you can call it something fancy, the methods in the approach are only a 25% piece of the puzzle that goes into building healthy sleep habits, because it’s definitely a bit more of a complex issue. So I would say listen to everything you can this week, Emily, cuz I’m gonna teach you a whole bunch of stuff. Any tips when someone besides mom is putting the baby down for an aside from Mama. So I would actually say consistency and what you’re doing right? Like kids are super perceptive to the environment and the person. So they’re gonna start to know that, you know, if mom’s nursing and always puts you down nursing to sleep, they’re gonna know nothing’s coming out of dad, right? Or maybe grandma likes to rock you to sleep and then all of a sudden you tell Grandma, like you can’t rock to sleep anymore for every single nap you can only do it for one nap a day, right? Which should still be realistic. You know, baby may struggle because they’re like, Oh, hell, no, grandma rocks me to sleep. And that’s what I want. The biggest thing is around consistency and I would say starting start small wins, right? So start with like the first nap of the day. That’s going to generally be where I find the most success and then you build on it from the second nap and third nap as you have the timing sorted and as you have overnight sleep consolidated, because if you’re trying to look at awake windows and your baby’s waking up six times a night, those windows are actually going to be shorter because They can’t handle being awake. What they should based on their age, because they’ve had crappy sleep at night, right? Think about last time. You know, it’s actually your most of you are here. So you’re struggling with sleep, right? Think about the last time that you had. I don’t know, like a solid, eight hours of sleep. Right? You felt amazing. Well think about maybe last night, your baby was up twice. You go to bed at nine, you wake up at five, but they were up twice. Maybe they were up for 20 minutes each time. So they woke up at 40 minutes. Okay, you still slept seven and a half hours, right? But you woke up feeling like hell, because you were up twice, it was interrupted, your baby feels the same way. Right? They feel like you feel they just can’t express it. And that’s where when you start to
look at
those awake windows in the day getting to ideal is something that comes after they are sleeping through the night. Does that make sense? Give me a thumbs up if that makes sense. Because it’s something that you know, you can’t just jump right to like the awake Windows as we’re listening through this whole training every day is going to be important because I build on how you should start to do this to create good sleepers like I am a giver. Okay, so for those of you watching this that have never dealt with me before, this is not like your run of the mill webinar where I’m going to give you 30 minutes of information, and then try to like sell you on something. I’m here every day to teach you. Because at some point, if you can’t figure it out, you’re gonna come back, right. And if you need help, I’m here. And if you want help, I’m here. So I take things very differently than many in the space, which is why a lot of people come and watch me do these webinars and catch it on the replay. And I share it on a bunch of different places. Because I try to aim to provide that information. So if you’re struggling, make sure you ask questions, because I do answer all of them.
Okay.
Miss Amanda, you’ve been amazing. And I love attending these trainings. Thank you. That’s a very kind. I have a six month old and we’re still doing two an hour, two hour and 15 minute a week windows? Is it time to extend? How do I know when I should be extending the week windows? So a couple things I would say for sure. Manda by seven months, you want to be at three hours. If you’re not you’re going to be struggling with either overnight wakings, early morning wakings or crappy naps? How you know it’s time to extend. And also it’s kind of the same for how you know it’s time to drop an app is frankly, there start fighting the naps, right, either the one nap of the day will be really short, they’ll struggle to go down. That’s typically your key and also age. I mean, sometimes I have parents that I’ve worked with that have six month olds, and they’re like, No, no, they can’t go more than 90 minutes. I’m like, I’m telling you, they can and they have to, or they’re not going to sleep well. Right. So some of this is biology, some of its body clock, some of its habits, some of its overnight sleep, which is why I say like sleep can be complex. And it’s something that we need to work in these building blocks on to try to address so I would say for sure by seven months, you want to start to get to three hours, because that’s going to force a two nap a day schedule. At seven months, a nap realistically should be at about 10 o’clock in the morning and somewhere around 230. Again, depending on the duration, you want three hours of awake time, three hours of daytime sleep at seven months of age. And that seven to 12 months is going to be pretty consistent until such time as they go down to to nap or to one nap a day, somewhere between 12 and 14 months depending if they’re in daycare or if they’re not. And ultimately, what that looks like. Okay, so hopefully that’s helpful. Hey, Tiffany. Oh, wesgro Very cool. Emily. I love it. All right, Megan, my son is eight months and currently awake at the three hour window. Good. Okay, what should I look for his cues? I need to lengthen it. So you’re actually pretty good right now? Megan, I would say typically you can lengthen to about three and a half hours, somewhere around 10 1010 or so months. I think staying right where you are for the three hours is perfectly fine. You don’t want to push them too far. Because if you do, they’re gonna get into overtired, they’re gonna fight going down and they’re gonna have sleep suffer somewhere else, right? It’s always a balance. I don’t care if your seven month old or eight month old takes three naps a day as long as they’re getting three hours of sleep. And it’s timed out properly in the day. Okay, so as an example that I gave, like, oh, a seven month old should be on a two nap a day structure. Both my kids went to daycare. So they were on the daycare schedule, which was if some kid threw a pacifier and whacked my daughter in the face, she would wake up right so there were days I pick her up, she take three naps days I pick her up, she take two naps, it didn’t matter. She slept through the night, because we wanted her the amount of sleep she got. And then if she did have an off day, or something was going on, I would just err on the side of earlier bedtime, right to make up for the gap a bit.
You can put
a child down at like 630 at night for the night. They will sleep through the night it is so much better than trying to hit some arbitrary number of like seven o’clock that time. If their last lap their last nap was at like four o’clock. And they’re four months old and you’re like I don’t know what to do put them to bed for the night. Do the routine close the blinds and down for the night and make sure that they’re getting that sleep because by putting them down at like 630 for example. They’re gonna make up some of that nap that they lost or if they end up trying to fight that kind of final power nap a lot of parents try to do you end up having a worse night so just get them down early. I always err on the side of of that from a family standpoint when people ask me what to To do so are right. Ooh, Duluth, Minnesota very fun.
All right Miss Sanya, 14 month old waking several times a night we co sleep into attachment parenting, but this isn’t working. Oh, right. We tried to pack and play but it was awful and hyperventilating. Okay, so we certainly want to balance that Miss Tanya. First thing I would say is, you know, where do you want the long term goal to be for them to sleep? Is it in a pack and play in your room? is in a crib in your room? Is it going to be in their own space? Like, where are you ready to make the transition, I often tell parents to start where you want to end up. And the reason is, because you don’t want to make three transitions, right, you’re gonna transition them here, and we’re gonna transition them here. And then we’re gonna transition them here, five transitions, you can save them some time and do some time but just kind of starting where you want to end up and maybe a crib or a pack and play in your room. It may be their own space, it there’s no difference really in either with one exception, if you are going to continue to rule share, but you want to get out of the bed, putting some sort of a divider between you guys, one of my biggest hacks for traveling is I tell parents pack thumbtacks put them in your travel bag, forget that they are there. Because at some point your child is going to see you. And when they do. It changes the ballgame. Because now they’re standing right next to you going,
Mommy, Mommy,
I see you Hello. And they want you and they’re pissed that they don’t have you right, putting a sheet up between you are getting one of those wood dividers can get some cute ones. They have some really cute ones on like wayfair and Johnson main. You can actually kind of create that division between you guys if you’re going to continue to room share. So I’m not sure if you answered that or not. Let me just double check. Okay. You didn’t and that’s totally okay. I just wanted to check to make sure. So yeah, depending if you’re going to reshare or not, the thumbtacks are great, because they create a boundary, right, you tack up a sheet on the ceiling, you could do it in a hotel. Again, you
can buy one of those
wood dividers, I’ve had parents that put kids like half into a closet somewhere or like their heads in the closet, right and their bodies out. You just want to create their own sort of space and separation. I had a client with twins who went on a Disney Cruise. And they’re like, what the hell do we do, we’re in this like small room, we actually just situated the crib or the pack and plays behind the couch. So like mom and dad’s bed was over here, but the twins were behind the couch, so they couldn’t see mom and dad, creating that division is the first step, the next is going to be a gentle sort of progression away from the CO sleeping, if it’s not working, it doesn’t mean that like you have to rip the band aid off and cry it out. And all these things that I think people talk about on all these Facebook groups, it’s more about a gentle weaning,
right.
So it doesn’t mean that we’re like ripping the band aid off. I mean, try something as small as you know, put the crib mattress on the floor, right? And say, Alright, for this first nap, instead of you co sleeping with me for the nap, we’re gonna do it where I’m next to you. But I’m not quite as involved as I normally would be right. And then over the course of a couple days, you sort of wean off like think of it as that, you know, something you need to wean off of every day, like, let’s say, today, you hold their hand to sleep, right, you have a toddler, you hold their hand, it’s the same for babies, right. And then you don’t want to hold their hand every night, you’re going to be in their tillery team the next night, maybe hold their hand for a few minutes, and then you let go. And then you hold the hand and let me let go, maybe it’s gentle pressure on the belly, and then you let go. Or the next night, it’s gentle pressure over here. And then it’s you know, you’re kind of next to them. If they need the pressure you here but you let go. You have to empower them to recognize they have the skill. It’s a skill set, if they don’t know that they have the skill, they’re never going to do it. They’re never going to fall asleep wherever you put them, right. You have to show them and do it thoughtfully that they
actually possess
this amazing ability to go to sleep independently. They just don’t realize it yet. And that’s one of the really cool things that you can do. As far as sort of building those healthy habits very slowly. Again, it doesn’t mean you have to rip the band aid off, cry it out, do all this different stuff. It’s starting with actionable steps. The first is watching awake windows. The second is trying to slowly begin to decouple yourself from all of those sleep situations while empowering them to go down independently. So hopefully that’s helpful. All right, so let’s see what other questions Hey, Miss Erin. are right. I will have a three to four month old when I go back to work we leave the house by 615 should the bedtime be 6pm to accommodate for the early wake up time, he will probably need to be up by 530 so he can eat and get ready. So if you’re going to have to take them out to get in the car to go to something like daycare grandma’s or what have you, then you are going to have two ways to handle it. I don’t necessarily care about the number of naps. It has to do with your total sleep. And I’ll give you an example Erin, so I had a client in New York City, okay, they worked in Manhattan. They worked in retail so their hours were sometimes till like nine o’clock at night. Okay. The baby was with grandma in New Jersey. So mom had Leave Manhattan, get to New Jersey, get the baby, get her in the car, get her back to the house, and try to do it in a way that balanced and worked for the schedule that they were looking at, right? So what we did was we put the baby down for the night at mom grandma’s in the pack and play seven o’clock, okay, mom would come from work, she would pick the baby up, move to the car seat, drive home, shuffle around, in the crib down for the night, you could call it a nap. Or you could call it bedtime, I don’t really care, the baby was sleeping, right? That’s the important part and setting them up for that conducive sleep is what’s going to be important you want there to be the right amount of sleep. So for a three to four month old, they still need to be sleeping 1617 hours in a 24 hour period. So you know, you don’t have to necessarily put them to bed at six, as long as they’re getting the right amount of naps and the right amount of sleep to make up for it in a 24 hour period. So hopefully that’s helpful. Okay. Hello, Miss Allison, you’re almost 10 month old fights with the afternoon nap and wants to play jump in his crib. excetera we start the afternoon nap for three hours after his morning nap. How can we help him get cold and ready to sleep without being a crying match.
So depending
on the duration of the morning nap, Alison, that’s where I would say watching the awake windows. So if the morning nap is only like 45 minutes, at 10 months, you may just want to try like two hours and 45 minutes. Sometimes you have to play with the awake windows a bit depending upon the duration of the morning nap. If the morning naps three hours long, they’re not gonna sleep in the afternoon. So I have sometimes parents are like, well, we’re trying to get them down. But they’ve already slept for three hours. And like you got to wake them up at two hours to make sure that they’re ready for the afternoon nap. Sometimes it’s a timing thing around the manipulation of the day, just to make sure because when they’re crying, there’s two things happening making sure one that they’re settling independently if they can do that, and they have the skill to settle independently. Typically the issue is then timing. Right. So I would say start there and play with the timing a little bit and then be sure to join us for the rest of the sessions this week. All right. So let me see. We’ve got a couple more questions coming in. And then I’m going to jump back into some more education. Okay, Miss Taryn. Hello, a six week old Oh, congratulations. I’ve six week old chickens. Now to compare, but they’re beautiful. So I’m sure your daughter’s the same I love. I love having chickens. They’re quite fun. We got them during quarantine. And it’s been cool. But they’re six weeks old to again, not to compare chickens with children, but they are fun if you need something to do. And we have them in suburbia kind of hidden. They’re not super loud. They’re attached to my garden. But regardless, we’ll get back to the six week old and your little one, she sleeps five, three and two hour stretches at night, which is great. We struggle with the daytime naps, how many naps should we shoot for and how long for each nap? Okay, there’s a couple things I’m going to do when we’re done here, I’m going to post a link to the recommended sleep by age and then also the amount of hours. So it’s a new thing I actually just created last week. So it’s not going to be in the workbook. But it breaks out total number of maps that are ideal total sleep and all that good stuff. So I’ll share that in this group here. When we’re done. Al’s also out on my website, tiny transitions.com forward slash tools. That is all my downloads. Okay, there’s a bunch of downloadables out there for a whole bunch of different stuff, sample schedule generators, seven tips to sleep through the night,
like
all my resources are out there in one spot for you to download everything I’ve ever shared on social media, it’s all out there. And I will put a link to the awake windows out there as well. So take a look out there. I will say for six weeks old, you’re still focusing on
the awake window. So
again, I don’t really care how many naps what I care about is making sure you’re protecting the 45 to 60 minutes at six weeks, you should be about 16 minutes in between sleeps, regardless sleeps are not going to consolidate yet. So don’t be worried about you know, they’re not taking longer than a 45 minute nap. That’s totally normal at this age, frankly. So you really just focus on that awake window and you may have five nap days, you may have six nap days you may have for nap days. Really, what I would suggest is I do have a six week old sample and that sample schedule generator out on tiny transitions.com forward slash tools. And in there you’ll be able to see kind of a sample day for six weeks just to know what like a goal is. I hate using the word schedule and six weeks in the same sentence because a lot of people you know, no baby is going to have the same day twice. Right? They fart they wake up they have gas they wake up they’re hungry. They wake up right like there’s going to be always these different things at this age.
But sometimes people do well
I was one of them. I’m like super type A that knew like okay, every day at this time we’re going to try to do this so we get the sleeping. I worked really well that way I’m attorney leave otherwise I would go up small about crazy. So I would say start there and we will and we will see how you do through the rest of the week. All right. Hey, Alexis.
Hello. Hello.
What is going on? I am so excited to see you out here. Okay.
I’m
refusing to get into her crib now. Once we finally get her down So 22 months is interesting, actually, Alexa. So you’re starting to get into behavior based changes, right? So I don’t want to sleep at something can’t sleep is that you don’t want to start by one reward chart,
I will
comment again out here with a new reward chart that I just built there, they can be helpful even at 22 months, they still start to grasp the concept of stickers, the biggest thing is setting a boundary and then a consequence, right. So it’s 22 months, they understand right from wrong, they know that if they throw the Binky, you’re going to get it, they know that if you know, they cry, you’re going to do this, they know that if they if you want the light on, they turn the light off. And then they cry. Like, it’s behavior based actions, right? Like, if I throw something out, mommy’s gonna get it. If I, you know, I don’t know, rip my pajamas off, mommy’s gonna come in and fix them. So it’s behavior modification, more so than sleep training. So the first thing I would say is set a boundary and then a consequence, it’s time to lay down and go to sleep. Other wise consequence, I am leaving the room, taking your Binky turning the light off, like whatever it is, set an expectation, and then consequence, the choice if they choose the wrong choice, right? At this age. And what I’m going to get into later in the week here is around toddlers, what I would refer to as kind of 18 months and up right, older toddlers and smaller children where it’s not asleep challenge. It’s a behavior challenge, right? So you’ve got to set the expectation and then stick to it and let them be empowered to make the choice. It is your choice to go to sleep if you don’t, here’s the consequence, right? So incorporating consequences into what’s happening, that’s going to be the best way that you solve some of those challenges. But stay tuned, because I’m going to get into older, older babies young or older toddlers, young, school aged children and stuff later this week in a breakout session.
Okay,
lots of good stuff. All right, one more question. And then I’m going to jump back into some education. So Miss Tiffany is saying we have a seven month old about three, three and a half hour week windows, typically making it six 930 for 45 minutes for the first nap and then two hours around one, but we struggle with the bedtime he’s sleeping around five, but if he takes a short nap. If we take a short 30 minute nap, then he won’t sleep until roughly eight or nine. What do you suggest? Okay, yeah, so a couple things, what I would actually do is push the morning nap. So if there’s one thing you’re going to do, it’s going to adjust that morning nap for snack time, regardless of the wakeup time to 10 o’clock, okay, because what you don’t want to do is start conforming to an early morning waking,
okay? So you want to force
it to be 10 o’clock, okay, then you start pushing the day up. So then you’re going to have that first nap, if it’s an hour, they’re going to go till 11. And then three hours later, 12, one, two, now they’re going to sleep till about four, then they’re going to be ready for bed at about seven. So you see what ends up happening then is if you keep that structure for about a week, the body clocks going to reset, you’ve got seven o’clock week, 10 o’clock nap two o’clock nap seven o’clock bed. And with those durations, the awake window being about three hours, you’ll get yourself into a better spot, so that you’re not trying to do an earlier bedtime, you can have a little more time to play. If they’re getting tired. It’s definitely like a timing thing. And also sometimes boredom. And I mean that like the nicest way possible. So sometimes you have to I have a Pinterest account, it’s tiny transitions in there is a sensory board that you can actually go in and follow. And there’s a whole bunch of activities for babies even as young as seven months, that can help to stimulate them in different ways. Sometimes kids just get bored by the same activity. And so they they show signs of being tired despite actually being tired. So I would say start there and take a look for the sensory board. Again, my Pinterest account was tiny transitions, and then forcing the naps to be about 10 to 30. Okay, so, alright, lots of great questions. So the next thing I want to talk about is how we start to look at the changes that we’re making and what I do here to help you during the sessions this week. So today’s a lot about foundation setting. As you’re going through these sessions with me every day. I am going to educate and inform you on new building blocks to get you through building good naps, building consolidated independent sleep at bedtime and throughout the overnights. The needs of a child are very unique and different. So that is something that is going to be not a one size fits all solution. Okay. I’m going to talk about feeding over the course of this week because a lot of people question when should my babies sleep through the night? When should they be weaning? When should they be starting solids will rice cereal or milk mixed into the bottle with the milk helps them to sleep longer? We’re
going to talk about behavior modification children and toddlers who are doing things to get a reaction to get their cup filled and what that looks like. We’re going to talk about newborns and when they should be expected to hit certain milestones. We’re going to talk a lot this week about nap trends. How to make that transition what it looks like how to salvage this summer, if you’re planning on vacation and what travel looks like, with your little ones, we talked today about things like overtired and your awake windows, those are the very single pillars that I look the most importantly at. Because I think it’s very important for you to understand what the needs are, I don’t care about the number of naps your child takes, what I care about is that you’re getting the right amount of sleep at the right times, because that’s going to help regulate them naturally. This whole week is going to be an education session for you. I got into this industry about seven years ago with my son Max, because I didn’t want to feel exhausted and overwhelmed. I didn’t like how I felt as a mom, I knew I wasn’t doing right by him. And I really kind of found this new fueled passion. My background is not in the medical field. I actually have a master’s degree in marketing. I was in corporate America for about 15 years in a senior level marketing position for a large fortune 500 company. And I left there after I had my son and just became enthralled in the gap that there was around support for new moms. I was a working mom, I had a very demanding job. And I felt like I had nowhere to turn. And there was no resources at the hospital. They made sure my son was strapped in properly. And that was it. And they said Good luck. And, you know, call the lactation counselor if you can’t properly nurse and I thought, wow, this really sucks. There’s no manual. First night I was home. I was up at two in the morning my son was freaking out. I was sobbing as I walked him around our we had a split level at the time. And I remember it as though it was yesterday walking around between the kitchen and the living room through the little circle Island thinking like what the heck did we just do? And I felt lost. And that’s when I you know, realized I needed to ask for help and find help and seek help. But I realized there wasn’t a lot out there I became a certified sleep professional. I trained under one of the top pediatric sleep specialists in the country. I got my postpartum doula certification through Dona, I became a certified lactation counselor, I went through a lot of different infant mental health trainings, I’m going through an adult training now. I am a huge into fact based experience based education. I’ve worked with 1000s of families around the world, I have a new team that is going through training now to kick off and learn everything that for seven years I have built into this business, because it is a very complex challenge. And I want to be here to serve you this week in a way that no one has. And I’m super excited that you were able to join me today. I want to keep these sessions to somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes each day, every session is going to be recorded. And as you see I’m live I’m here. I’ll be at home tomorrow. So you’ll see my office at home. And I’m going to teach you every single thing that you need to know to build these building blocks to build that solid sleep. Hold on one more thing before you go. As a valued listener of the kids sleep show. I want to help you build a great sleeper not just in the times you’re listening to the show. But all day every day. Every week of the year. I have a new Facebook group called slumber Made Simple. It’s a place to gather with other parents looking for sleep support laughs and the latest in sleep research to build a family that is rested and at their best day in and day out. If you want to be part of the community where you can get free sleep support, weekly training sessions, unbelievable content and so much more. Head on over to tiny transitions.com forward slash community that’s tiny transitions.com forward slash community or head over to Facebook and search slumber Made Simple. drop me a note and let me know when you join. I can’t wait to see you there.
