Balance365 Life Radio: Episode 65: Parents, Kids And Sleep: A How To Guide For Families (2024)

May 8, 2019

Balance365 Life Radio: Episode 65: Parents, Kids And Sleep: A How To Guide For Families (1)

Parenting can be exhausting,especially if your kids aren’t sleeping well. How do you help yourkids get the sleep they need? How do you get the sleep you need?Jen, Annie and Lauren discuss these important questions with Dr.Craig Canapari to get listeners and their kids on their way tobetter sleep.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

  • Misconceptions about sleep training
  • Therole of mom shame in the decision to sleep train or not
  • Harnessing habits for better sleep in yourkids
  • Sleepas a buffer for toxic stress
  • Sleepdebt - what is it?
  • Allor something - the value of incremental gains in your sleephabit
  • Atwhat age should you sleep train?
  • Social jetlag: what is it and what does it haveto do with sleep?
  • Howto shift your sleep schedule
  • Dividing sleep responsibilities
  • Sleeproutine in blended families or single parent households
  • Screens in the bedroom - why you shouldunplug
  • Howlimiting screen time can improve your sleep
  • Howto help your kid stay asleep or in bed longer
  • Howsleep impacts weight

Resources:

Atomic Habits by James Clear

It's Never Too Late to SleepTrain: The Low Stress Way To High Quality Seep for Babies, Kids andParents - Link when available

Dr. Craig Canapari’s Blog

Learn more about Balance365Life here

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Transcript

Annie: Welcome to Balance365 Life radio, a podcastthat delivers honest conversations about food, fitness, weight, andwellness. I'm your host Annie Brees along with Jennifer Campbelland Lauren Koski. We are personal trainers, nutritionists andfounders of Balanced 365. Together we coach thousands of women eachday and are on a mission to help them feel healthy, happy, andconfident in their bodies on their own terms. Join us here everyweek as we discuss hot topics pertaining to our physical, mental,and emotional well-being with amazing guests. Enjoy.

Annie: Welcome back to another episode of Balance365Life radio. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to sharewith you a really sweet review left for us on iTunes. SPagan84says, "I beg of you. This is what female need to hear. Annie, Jenand Lauren cover a lot of freaking rad topics. Women empowering oneanother, women evolving to be the best version of themselves andwomen learning to love themselves. This podcast is so much morethan fitness and nutrition though they have a no bs approach todiet and fitness that applies to real life. I love, love, love theBalance365 life." Thank you so much to all of you who have takenthe time to leave us a review on iTunes, we read every single oneof them and they all mean so much to us. Alright, let me tell youabout today's guest.

Annie: Dr. Canapari is the director of the YalePediatric Sleep Center, father and author of his first book, It'sNever Too Late to Sleep train. Shortly after becoming a father, Dr.Canapari realized that all of his years of 36 hour hospital shiftsdidn't come close to preparing him for the sleep deprivation thatcomes with parenthood. Inside his book, Dr. Canapari helps parentsharness the power of habit to chart a clear path to high qualitysleep for them and their children. Sound familiar? On today'sepisode, Lauren, Jen, Dr. Canapari and myself discussed theimportance of quality sleep for not just your children, but whyit's so important for parents and caregivers as well. Plus heshares a ton of great insight on to how to improve sleep for yourwhole family regardless of age. Enjoy!

Annie: Welcome to the show. We have a special guesttoday. Jen, do you want to tell us how you met our specialguest?

Jen: Sure. So this is Dr. Craig Canapari. Hello. Ifound his blog, it would be over four years ago now because I had,my third son was a nightmare between the hours of 7:00 PM and 7:00AM and I had never experienced this before. My first two werenatural sleepers and I was going out of my mind by the time he wasone. And so one night it was late and I was googling anything and Icame across his blog and I got some answers to my questions andI've followed him ever since.

Annie: Doctor, welcome to the show.

Dr. Canapari:Thank you for having me. And that'svery kind. I wish I could actually see what time of night peopleare reading my site relative to time zone because I suspect it'sprobably mostly in the middle of the night.

Jen: It was probably 1130 for me and I was likecrying and I just, yeah, so now I refer people to your site all thetime as, like, an evidence based resource for um, parents whosechildren have sleep issues, which it's hard, you know, there's justso much. One thing that I will tell you that I appreciate and thatI think a lot of our listeners might be able to listen to is thatthere's a lot of, I don't know if you want to call it pseudoscienceor opinion based sleep recommendations online. And when I had mythird, um, we lived in New Zealand and I, you know, they just, whatI'll say is I was very wrapped up in the natural birthing communityby the time I had my third and sleep training is just like "N-O" inthat community. Like, your kid's going to get brain damage, they'llhave neurological issues, attachment issues for life.

Jen: And so I really thought if I tried to intervenein my child sleep that I was going to give my child brain damage.And what happened is I pretty much got brain damage from that yearof trying to deal with him. And I mean I literally felt crazy whereI, when he was one, I pretty much had a nervous breakdown and wasin therapy and I was a mess. And it was, like, my marriage wasfalling apart, everything. And it was all because of, I wouldn'tsay all, you know, nothing happens in a vacuum, but in hindsightnow we're four or five years later, I'm like, that year of sleepwas like, it made me crazy, like crazy and this stuff is seriousand people don't take sleep seriously enough. But like there aresome women and men out there that are really, really suffering andthey don't know where to turn.

Dr. Canapari:Well, I think there's a, there's alot of good points in what you're saying and the first thing isthat I think that like sleep and bedtime are really personal thingsfor people and, it's a totally separate issue, but you know, in ourtown, and you know, I've been involved locally, regionally,nationally with sleep issues for teenagers and trying to get morehumane start times for teenagers. And there's something personalabout bedtime and what happens in your house at night. So peoplearen't always open to advice. And I think there's also the threadof, it generates a lot of strong feelings for people and peoplehave very strong opinions that aren't always grounded in facts. AndI always laugh about the the idea that crying can damage yourchild's brain. I mean, my kids used to cry all the time over likethe dumbest stuff.

Dr. Canapari:Like in the book I talk about mykid was four and found an ant on his donut and he was crying. AndI'm like, I don't think it damaged his brain, you know? But I thinkwe're also a little bit more vulnerable when we're sleep deprivedthat things that are, you know, if you stop for a moment, you'relike, you know, I think it's reasonable for me to expect that I geta decent night of sleep my child does. But you're more vulnerableto kind of this judgment that can kind of come in and, and you guysknow all this as moms too, I think that the whole sort of mommyshaming thing is real.

Jen: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Canapari:You know, my boys were both bornvia c sections and the first one was cause he, you know, hecouldn't be born any other way. And I remember my wife talkingabout, you know, some people would say things that almost made herfeel like she hadn't, you know, delivered my son.

Jen: Right. Like, are you mom enough?

Dr. Canapari:Yeah, totally. Totally, totally. SoI think that it's not that everyone has to sleep train their child.It's not that you have to use cry it out sleep training and it'salso that sleep training has such a negative valence in oursociety. People are like, "Oh, it's just cry it out. And it's justthis thing that a lot of people view very negatively." There arelots of things you can do that don't necessarily mean that yourchild is going to cry more.

Jen: They are not talking about it publicly, butwe're all googling it. It's one of those, like, it's become one ofthose secret underground things that we all want to do but we areafraid to admit it. I experienced this big time. I formula fed myfirst baby and um, that was horrific. I had a woman come up to mein the grocery store and ask me why he was drinking from a bottle.And it's just, yeah, like you, I've had three children and myyoungest is now five and in hindsight I wish I could take all thatpain away for new moms. Like I wish I could say, "Hey, it doesn'tmatter. Like, it really doesn't matter. Once they get up and going,you know, it's just, I can't tell the difference between my threekids who I sleep trained, who I didn't, who had formula, who hadbreast milk, who was born by epidural, who was born naturally.They're just, just choices that we make."

Dr. Canapari:And especially with the firstchild, it's so fraught. I remember one of the biggest fights thatmy wife and I ever had was about what stroller we were going toget. Right. You know, and, and, and you know, I wanted of coursethis really stupid technological thing that she didn't want. Andwith the second kid, you're like, "I want the cheapest strollerthat I can fit in my car really easily." It's just, you get alittle bit more perspective, but I think you're totally right. Likeas a parent, you kind of need to give yourself permission to belike, you know what, I'm going to do something a little bitdifferent from some of my peers and it's okay.

Jen: Yeah. In the end, you, you need to be okay. AndI guess that was my greatest lesson from having postpartumdepression, postpartum anxiety, and like, basically a nervousbreakdown as I just talked about. I was not okay. In my pursuit oftrying to find what was "the best" way to raise a child, Ipersonally was not okay. And now I just believe so wholeheartedlythat children need their parents to be okay and we'll and to beokay we'll all kind of make different choices in thatpursuit.

Dr. Canapari:I think that things have kind ofpendulumed away from self care for parents, especially moms. And,you know, when the term attachment parenting was coined, it was inthe 60s, and back then people were like, "Oh, if your child'scrying, you should ignore them because otherwise you're going tospoil them." And clearly that's not true, right? It's natural tocomfort your child. And, you know, there was a, uh, a lot ofpioneering work done by a woman named Mary Ainsworth that sort ofshowed that, well, that's not correct and it's okay to comfort yourchild and be emotionally available for your child. But when wethink of attachment parenting now, we often think of, you know,Sears and everything that's kind of come out of Sears'work.

And I agree with a lot of whatSears said is that like, you know, you should be close to yourchild and it's valuable to make time if you would like tobreastfeed to make that a priority. But, you know, there's littleroom there for the needs of parents, especially moms in thatconversation these days. And you know, I tell parents all the time,like, you know, it's okay to fix this for the reason that you'refalling apart. Like, you're a better parent if you're not supersleep deprived and your child will benefit. You know, it's totally,you know, and that's kind of my job. They know it's the case, butthey almost need someone to give them permission to make somechanges.

Jen: And there's not, and you know there's like zeroto 60 and then there's like level one, level two. Do you know whatI mean? Like not, and I think it's scary to go from zero to 60 butyou don't have to necessarily go to 60. There's interventions thatcan start here where you're comfortable and then you can assessfrom there.

Dr. Canapari:Totally. It's not a binary thingthat like you're doing everything or nothing or they're perfect orit's terrible. It's usually somewhere in between.

Jen: Right.

Dr. Canapari:And we all know as parents, youfigure some things out, you get your kids sleep the way they'regoing, and then all of a sudden another kids waking up at night orthey get a cold or it's never going to be perfect.

Jen: Right. I feel like managing my kids sleep islike this ongoing thing that, you know, there's always something.So anyways, yeah, as long as we're all sleeping good enough, I'mokay.

Dr. Canapari:That's my goal. Have you heard thewhole a good enough mother? Donald Winnicott was this psychiatristand pediatrician in England in the 60s and he coined the term"being the good enough mother." And it's just the idea is like ifyou love your child and you do your best to take care of them,they're going to turn out fine. You just need to be goodenough.

Jen: Right.

Dr. Canapari:And I, and I just love that idea.It's like, "Hey, look, it's not going to be perfect." And like somuch of parenting now is, like, full contact and be like, I've gotto get my two year old studying Mandarin or you know, they're notgoing to law school or something like that. And really it's just,you know, do your best. It's okay.

Jen: Right.

Annie: Doctor, before we get into some of thequestions we have for you, can you tell our listeners a little bitabout your book? I feel very special. Your team sent me, anunofficial an uncorrected proof that's not yet for sale. So I feellike VIP having this book here-

Dr. Canapari:It's full of typos.

Annie: You know what, that's great because I'm theworld's worst proofreader. Lauren and Jen-

Jen: It makes us feel good enough.

Dr. Canapari:I just went through, I think thefinal proof and I still found a bunch of stuff and I'm like, "Oh,"I'm like, I can barely read it anymore. I've read it like athousand times. Oh, I'm sorry. Go.

Annie: I thought it was great. It's called, It's NeverToo Late to Sleep Train: The Low Stress Way To High Quality Seepfor Babies, Kids and Parents. And what I loved about it is that youhave this little dedication right in the front of the book there toyour wife and kids and it says "You're the reason I get out of bedin the morning, in the case of Teddy, often, literally." It's likeyou've lived this, like, it's not like you're just somedoctor-

Dr. Canapari:I've been in thetrenches.

Annie: Yeah. Which I appreciate. So can you tell us alittle bit about the book? Like, when will it be for sale? Wherecan they find it? What's in it? Just give a littleoverview.

Dr. Canapari:So the book is coming out in May9th and you know, just to backtrack a little bit, I started writingstuff for parents online, in 2012, back when I was over at MassGeneral in Boston with the idea of that, my background was inpulmonology. I trained in sleep medicine as well, but I used to dosleep apnea research and the behavior stuff was kinda new to me andI was like, you know, I'm going to start writing these articles forparents and it's going to be my way to master this material as welland to have resources if someone's in the office and I don't havetime to go through everything and be like your go to my website,this is exactly what I think is important. And, you know, as goingthrough this over time and kind of learning how to do this as aparent and as a doctor, I realized there's a lot of great sleepbooks out there, but I generally felt like a lot of them are prettylong.

Dr. Canapari:You know, I think Ferber's book,which is great, it's about 600 pages long and it covers things likenarcolepsy in teenagers. And you know, if your one year old can'tsleep, you probably don't care that much about that. And I alsothink that there's been a lot of new research since Weiss, Bluthand Ferber wrote their books that kind of, perhaps demystified thisa little bit. And specifically looking at the psychology of habits,which is, you know, habits are such a hot phrase nowadays, right?There was the Charles Duhigg book, James Clear just came up withAtomic Habits. But just the idea of there is an underlyingpsychology that underlines all these automatic behaviors we haveall the time. Right? Those fights we have with our kids, every day,that's a habitual behavior, right?

Dr. Canapari:So if you understand how thatworks, you can maybe tweak those behaviors to, for lack of a betterword, to kind of use the power of these automatic behaviors to helprather than hinder you. So in the book we talk about if you want tochange your own habit, and I bet you guys, in terms of what you do,talk a lot about habits with your client.

Jen: It's all we talk about.

Lauren: I have James Clear's book, like, literallyright next to me.

Annie: Same.

Dr. Canapari:Yeah, no, I heard it's great. Ihaven't read it yet, but I've followed his stuff for a longtime.

Jen: Yeah, he's good.

Annie: He's great.

Dr. Canapari:The difference is if you want tochange a habit, you're going to change the behavior. You know, ifwe talk about the habit loop, you have a cue that triggers abehavior and you have a downstream consequence. And it loops aroundand around. Your child is not going to raise their hand and say,"Hey, you know, mom, you're super tired and I'm just going to stopgetting up at 4:30 in the morning." Right? That's the behavior youwant to change. So you have to think about what are the upstreamthings you can change and how can you change your own behavior inthe way that you respond to what your child's doing to help toshape their behavior to what you want. So anyway, this book is mysummary of the things that I've learned in my journey as a sleepdoctor and as a parent. And, my specific focus is in a populationthat I think people don't focus on as much. Like there's a lotwritten about infancy and I think infant sleep training is actuallyreally simple.

Dr. Canapari:It's not easy, but it's simple. AndI cover that in the book. But also what do you do if your child's alittle bit older? What do you do in a toddler or an early schoolage child where the, when we think about sleep training, we maythink about cry it out. That's not going to work in a three or fouryear old. You know, it might work, but it would be horrible forparent and child. So what are other ways that you can change achild's behavior that really just aren't so unpleasant or scary forparents and kids?

Jen: The reason I found your blog was because myyoungest son, no, this wasn't why I found your blog. I found yourblog because of sleep aids, my son had a sleep aid and it was me.And, the second time I revisited your blog in detail that washelpful to me was that my youngest son has night terrors. And your,one of your sons had night terrors.

Dr. Canapari:Oh yeah. And now he sleepwalks too.We were just on a vacation with his cousins in the middle of thenight, we found him just sitting on the toilet with his pants down,but not awake. And I'm like, his cousins found this pretty amusingas did we, yeah, he's 11. He found it less funny but-

Jen: Right. So yeah, I mean you really have been inthe trenches and there isn't a lot of information once you movepast the infant years. And so yeah, that was the second time yourblog was very helpful to me, was seeing you had, you're not justtalking about this, you had experienced night terrors with one ofyour sons and just the science around it and what, how you guysended up dealing with it, which is now how I deal with it. Andyeah, I mean that stuff is scary and very stressful forparents.

Dr. Canapari:Yeah. And I think that, in some ofthe things you guys have, with the topics today, just sort oftalking about, sleep and sleep debt and I think of sleep as a, it'skind of a capstone skill for parents and families, right. If sleepis good, other things get easier. If sleep is bad, everything gets,everything gets worse.

Jen: So would you call it a skill? Cause I noticed,you know, you're not calling it a habit, you're are calling it askill. So would you say learning to sleep as a skill?

Dr. Canapari:Well, I think yes. I thinkespecially for, look, you said your two older children were goodsleepers. Right?

Jen: Fantastic.

Dr. Canapari:And, it just kind of came naturallyto them and we all have experienced this as parents. Like, youknow, my older son is a great sleeper, but when he was little, hewas a picky eater and every child is good at some things and bad atother things. So, like, I think some kids sleeping comes naturallyto them. Like self soothing, sleeping through the night is veryeasy. Other children need to need to be taught. And the way wecall, sleep training is the process, the term we use to describeteaching our children to sleep independently with our help, eitherfalling asleep or staying asleep. And it's funny, some of theresearch, one of my colleagues is doing at Yale now, Monica Ordwayis, we're looking at sleep as a buffer for toxic stress. Like, youknow, stress is, we all know what stresses, right? A little bit ofstress as good. You want to study for an exam, you need to be alittle bit stressed to do it. But being chronically stressed is, itcan really cause harm to health. Like when your son wasn't sleepingfor a year-

Jen: I ended up with a registered Dietitian who wasamazing, but I had gone down the woo hole, which Lauren, my partnerhere pointed me out, with diet, but I mean I was breaking out sobadly and I was like so inflamed and I thought it must be nutritionrelated. And there were a couple of people out there willing totell me it was nutrition related. So it's cutting out all thatstuff and it wasn't working. And I had, I did go see two GPs whereone prescribed this cream that basically burned my face off. Andthe second one wanted to put me on the pill, which is fine, but Ididn't think that I was like, "No, there's something, like this isnot, this is very abnormal for me. I've never struggled with this."It's finally Lauren had said, you need to get to a registereddietitian.

Jen: And she sat down with me, went through what'shappening in my life and was like, you need to get some sleep. Likeyou are so inflamed because your body is so stressed. And thatended up being what it was. It ended up being that when I buckleddown and we kind of dealt with these issues with my son andactually what happened was my husband took him away to his parentsfor five nights cause he just needed to be away from me I think.And within three weeks my, everything was calm. My face was calmeddown, starting to heal. Like, I would just wake up and look puffy,like when I was so sleep deprived, I wake up and look puffy andalmost feel hungover and that all just, once I fixed our sleepissues, that all went away.

Dr. Canapari:I find that totally believable. Andfirst of all, as a sidebar, how great to find a provider who lookedat your whole set of issues and really like, there's no upside fora nutritionist to say "It's actually your sleep," right,financially.

Jen: Right.

Dr. Canapari:But I think I know, Annie, you workas a trainer, right?

Annie: Yep.

Dr. Canapari:So I bet if your clients aren'tgetting results, you're probably like, how much sleep are yougetting at night, right? Like you can't, you're not gonna you're,you're going to struggle with your weight if you're sleep deprived.You are, I mean, I know you guys wanted to talk about sleep debt.Sleep debt certainly is a real phenomenon. It's hard to measurebiologically. It's not like you can do a blood test and say, "Oh,you have, you know, your level of this neurotransmitter is high,that means you're in this amount of sleep debt."

Dr. Canapari:But we know that it's a cumulativephenomenon and you can't really catch up on the weekends. Right.There was a study of teenagers, again, I know we're talking aboutmoms and little kids here, but I think it's very interesting. Thisresearcher named Dean Bebe had this fake summer school for kidsthat they were enrolled in as a research trial. And they'd havethese classes that were kind of boring and they'd sleep deprive thekids for like six hours of sleep a night for two weeks. And theylet them sleeping on the weekends. And what they found was everyday their performance was getting worse. And if they did, in termsof how they were retaining material, in terms of their vigilance,et cetera, and if they got catch up sleep on the weekends, they gota little bit better, but they didn't get back to theirbaseline.

Dr. Canapari:So the next week they started offworse than they had in the beginning. So it just is going to keepsnowballing. And the classic example is of a parent. I mean I thinkthat there was a research trial published a couple years ago thatsaid single moms are the most sleep deprived people in the UnitedStates, hands down, which I find totally believable,right?

Jen: Absolutely.

Dr. Canapari:If you're working outside of thehome, you're a single parent, you know, you are getting your kidsto bed and then you have all the work of the household to do. It'sjust, it's nuts. And it's not like with airline pilots or busdrivers or something like that where we actually have rules saying,well, you have to sleep x amount to do your job. Nobody's, youknow, nobody's looking over your shoulder as a parent and saying,"Hey, you know what, it's 10 o'clock, you know, I'll take it fromhere." Right.

Annie: Wouldn't that be nice?

Dr. Canapari:Yeah, it would be prettycool.

Annie: That's actually, quite in line. You and I havetalked over the phone before this podcast that we address sleep inBalance365 as one of, kind of the habit foundations or habitaccelerators because we know, as people in the health and wellnessindustry that when you're tired, everything just seemsharder.

Annie: So in terms of sleep debt, if you have a sleepdeprived kid or adult, how can you get out of it? Likehow-

Jen: I don't think we defined sleep debt eitherbefore we started talking about, so sleep debt Is what accumulatesright? Once you go without sleep, you accumulate, you

owe sleep debt.

Dr. Canapari:Yes. Essentially. Essentially ifyou are consistently sleeping less than the amount of sleep youneed, and we know for adults it's anywhere between seven and ninehours of sleep at night. Your sleep requirements might be a littlebit different than mine. If you think back to before you had kidsand you imagined f you went to bed at a certain time and you couldwake up spontaneously without an alarm, that's about how much sleepyou need. If you do that consistently over a couple of weeks, ofcourse, none of us with children ever experience that. But it's ifyou are constantly getting less sleep than you need or your sleepis interrupted frequently as it is if we have a child that'ssleeping poorly at home, you're developing sleep debt, which isjust the biological imbalance.

Dr. Canapari:When you think about sleep it'ssort of like breathing, eating healthy food, breathing clean air,drinking enough water. We know if we eat poorly, we feel worse. Ifwe we're having too many calories, the wrong kinds of calories, butit's the same. It's the same deal with sleep and sleep is, it'svery easy to shortchange sleep, right? You can't manufacture extrahours in the day. It's easy to stay up a little bit later and youknow, either catch up on work, do your email, fold laundry or evenjust get caught in that cycle of say, binge watching or somethinglike that. Because we're surrounded by these addictive technologiesthat want to, you know, have our eyeballs instead of having us goto sleep.

Jen: And, and just to that point, I mean we do,we're human beings are amazingly resilient. So anyone can toleratea couple nights of bad sleep or a couple of nights of not greateating habits. It's really what we're doing day in and day out,week to month to yearly, right?

Dr. Canapari:Right you can catch up to a degreeon weekends, but again, most parents don't have that luxury. Ithink that the real key is, look, some people have weeks, months,years of sleep debt, the key is just going forward. How are yougoing to change your life to allow you to start getting caught upon that? And I think even if it's just allowing yourself to get anamount of sleep so you feel rested in the morning. In my clinic, welook at an incremental gains, right? Like if someone's going tosleep at midnight every night, again, I deal with a lot ofteenagers who are sleep deprived. I don't want immediately go andbe like, well, you should go to bed at eight o'clocknight.

We sort of start seeing, well,what, what can we do to get you to sleep at 1130 or 11? Likegetting those small incremental gains are going to make someonefeel better and be more successful even if it's not perfect. Andit's likewise if you're working on your child's sleep issues,again, like little kids usually aren't that sleep deprived, right?Because they're going to make it up during the day. They're goingto make it up in the car. They may have naps at preschool. They maynap great a preschool even if they refuse to now for you, which isa really frustrating phenomenon, right.

Lauren: That's happening to us right now.

Dr. Canapari:Yeah. And they're going to catch upbut as parents we don't have that luxury, right? We can't take anap. We need to be attentive when we're driving in the car, givingpresentations at work or anything like that. When you get intoolder children, think later elementary school, middle school, highschool, that's when those kids are going to have more difficultycatching up. The biggest reason to fix the problems in youngchildren is to me, it's the benefit for the parents.

Jen: Right, right.

Annie: That's actually something you also addressed inyour book, which I so appreciate as you have a section about whatsleep training will do for you. You know, it's like it allows, it'slike the snowball effect. As I said, everything's just seems harderwhen you're tired and all of a sudden when you're getting morerest, maybe you have more energy to get in a workout or have someextra time to go do Xyz or you're more productive at work or you'remore efficient in the home or what, you know, whatever. It justseems to carry over and spill over into so many areas outside ofthe bed.

Jen: What happened with my youngest son, and if youthink this is way off, Dr. Canapari, you can tell me to shut up. Ihad three kids in four years and then my last one was this terriblesleeper and then I ended up, you know with the doctor or with thatdietitian telling me you need to get some sleep. Even though myacne started clearing up after three weeks of consistent sleep, Inoticed that I didn't wake up feeling refreshed for about a year.Like it took like a year for me to feel like I was recovered fromthose years with the kids.

Dr. Canapari:So I think there's probably a lotof factors there, right. You know, working off a sleep debt is notsomething that happens easily, right. If perhaps your husband hadsaid, I'm actually going to take all three of the kids for amonth.

Jen: Right.

Dr. Canapari:You could've gotten caught up. Butalso, and excuse me for presuming you mentioned you were alsostruggling, struggling with some postpartum depression and thatprobably also could be factored into this as well.

Jen: And starting this business and you know, thereis stress definitely in my life. And also let's go over that year,the kids would get sick and you know, it's not like I had a year ofperfect sleep before I felt recovered, but I just remember at thatone year mark going like suddenly realizing, "Oh my gosh, I'mwaking up in the morning and I'm feeling, like, refreshed." Like,yeah. So it was just, I was just very tired for quite a while aftereven getting the sleep training and not that, you know, not thatthings didn't improve for me, right, just by getting better, right?We talk in Balance365, we have this saying called all or somethingand it's like, when will it ever be perfect? But you can always,you know, there's usually a better choice available to you. Itdoesn't have to be all or nothing and-

Dr. Canapari:Totally right.

Jen: So and we have a lot of women who talk about,you know, they're just so fried from work and parenting that theevenings feel like the only time they have for themselves, like getthe kids in bed at, you know, say 7:30, 8 o'clock and then theystay up til midnight because it's the only time they have forthemselves in their week. And they just, they're just like selfishwith it. They just crave that alone time so badly. But, and I, weall deserve that. Like, I get it and we all deserve that. But justeven saying, okay, well instead of four hours for yourself, can youtake three, go to bed at 11 instead of midnight. That gives yousomething. Right.

Dr. Canapari:Well also, I mean, I think that ifyou can convince someone to get an extra hour of sleep at night,they're going to be like, "Oh, that is for me. Right?" Like gettingthat extra sleep is actually a really powerful tool I have to makemy life better.

Jen: Right.

Dr. Canapari:And, you know, I certainly, youknow, Annie and I were talking like, you know, to have finallydeveloped an early morning exercise practice and now I just go tobed earlier cause I feel tired at like 10 o'clock at night and wow.You know, I used to stay up til like 1130 or 12 and I'm like, "Wow,I actually feel *inaudible*" and I'm like a sleep doctor, I shouldknow this, right? It was very easy to stay up and like, you know,watch another show on TV or just kinda, you know, the time getsaway from you when you're tired, right? You can just sort of bescrolling through Instagram or watching Netflix and all of a suddenyou're like, "Holy crap, it's like 1145." Right. And I see parentswhere their young child is going to sleep at 11 or 12. It's morecommon than you'd think.

Annie: Wow.

Dr. Canapari:And I'm always saying to people,I'm like, "Look, I love my kids, but I am so done with them by like8:30 at night. You know, like, they need to go to their place andbe on their own so I can, you know, my wife and I canunwind."

Jen: Right, right. Is there any truth to this factthat getting every hour of sleep you get before midnight is liketwo hours of sleep that you're getting after midnight? Is there anytruth to that?

Dr. Canapari:I think that's probably, I haven'theard that. I would say that when it comes down to is, the fit ofwhen you're sleeping versus when your body wants you tosleep.

Jen: Oh, okay.

Dr. Canapari:I don't know if you guys have everheard the phrase social jetlag. It's something we think about a lotin teenagers, but it can happen a lot in I think mostly not parentscause we get up early on the weekends. But if you think back, I canthink back to before I had kids, I had a weekday bedtime and waketime and a weekend wake time and bedtime and wake time,right.

Jen: So your weekends are maybe 2:00 AM to 10:00AM.

Dr. Canapari:Exactly.

Jen: Yeah. Okay.

Dr. Canapari:So I'm sort of like, on theweekends I was living on California time and the weekdays, I wasliving in Boston time.

Jen: Right.

Dr. Canapari:And we know it's not just theduration of sleep, it's the quality of fit to what your naturalbody clock schedule is that has a lot to do with it. Like, we knowthat shift workers, even if they get adequate sleep, are morevulnerable to certain types of cancer, certain types of chronicdisease because they're not sleeping at a time where their bodyreally wants them to do it and, we know, you know, you probablyknow, we all know, are we more of a night owl or a morning lark? Alot of us as parents, we become morning larks because we have to,and there's actually, if you look up online, you can look up amorning-ness, this evening-ness questionnaire that will actuallytell you where you fall on this continuum.

Dr. Canapari:You know, teenagers are, you know,kids are naturally kind of morning larks. Like most kids beforepuberty, they tend to want to go to sleep earlier. They want to getup earlier on average though there are exceptions. When they hitpuberty, their sleep schedules shifts two or three hours later. Sothat is our, you know, in the, and that's when all of a sudden yourkid that was going to sleep at eight o'clock, can't fall asleeptill 11 o'clock at night and it's not just cause they're onsnapchat or their smartphones and doing homework on the Chromebook.It's also just their natural biology. So I think that thing you'rereferring to is probably, you know, get to the idea of are peoplejust not sleeping at a time when their body wants them to do it?That being said, most people are naturally, you know, I'd say ifthey go to bed between 10 or 11, get up between six or seven.Again, this sounds like a pipe dream for a lot of parents, right?But around there we'll probably feel pretty good.

Jen: Can you shift that too, so if you foundyourself to be, I mean it may mean some of us are forced to becauseof our morning lark children, but I recently, I would haveconsidered myself a night person but starting in November I startedgetting up at 5:30 in the morning just because it feels like theonly I can exercise or on days I'm not working out. I can get somework done before my kids are up. I'm less distracted in themornings that I am in the evenings for whatever reason. And I feelmyself shifting where I'm like-

Dr. Canapari:It absolutely is something that youcan shift. So generally, the levers you have to pull are, the mostpowerful one is light exposure. So light exposure in the eveningswill tend to shift your body clock later and these are slow changesalthough it is always easier to stay up later, than go to bedearlier. Right.

Jen: Right, right.

Dr. Canapari:If you want to shift your sleepperiod earlier, you could probably go 10 or 15 minutes a night. Ifyou wanted to shift your sleep later. Again, it's not usually whatI'm trying to do in the clinic or what most parents are like, "Boy,I'd like to stay up three hours later and get up three hourslater."

Jen: Right.

Dr. Canapari:But it's easier to go in thatdirection. So light exposure in the evenings is going to push yourclock later and think about, well what's the light emitting devicethat we hold about 12 inches from our face?

Jen: Smartphone. Right.

Dr. Canapari:So smartphones will tend to pushpeople's sleep schedules later. Evening exercise will also push itlater.

Jen: Oh, okay.

Dr. Canapari:Conversely, exercising in themorning light exposures, the best is natural light exposure willmove things earlier. So someone wants to get in the, you know, likeyou said, getting up earlier, exercise in the morning. If you can'texercise outside, that's great. Probably in Canada or Connecticut,we're not exercising with natural light in the morning at 5:30 inthe morning cause it's still dark out and it's below freezing butthose are really helpful things. In our clinic too, we use a lot ofMelatonin. Melatonin in the early evenings will help shift peopleshift their schedules earlier as well. Certainly that's somethingsomeone wants to talk about with the doctor.

Jen: Right. If melatonin is right forthem.

Dr. Canapari:Right.

Jen: Okay. So back to sleep training kids. I know wedon't want to talk too much about infants cause that's not even, wejust don't want to spend too much time there because actually ouraudience has a wide range of age of children. But when I think oneof the most controversial things is when to start sleep training ababy.

Dr. Canapari:Sure. And I think that, you know,it's funny, there was a couple of years ago, there was an articlein New York Times about a group in Tribeca, which is a very trendyneighborhood in Manhattan, was recommending the people sleep, traintheir kids at two months of age. And you know, they didn't publishanything on this, but they said they were getting good results. ButI think that's a little bit too early. If you look at your averagebaby between four to six months of age, that's when they're goingto start going for longer stretches of sleep at night. They'regoing to start to be able to fall asleep without being soothed bytheir parents at bedtime. So that implies to me that naturallyspeaking, they're evolving the capacity for longer periods ofsleeping night.

Jen: Okay.

Dr. Canapari:I would say for most parents,between four to six months is probably the sweet spot.

Jen: Okay.

Dr. Canapari:But before then, you really, youknow, the best thing to do is to soothe your baby to sleep, rockthem, nurse them, give them a bottle, lay them down in a bed whenthey're asleep. Then around four to five months, that's when youcan start trying to put your baby down drowsy but awake. And, ifthey fuss a little bit, that's okay. If they're screaming andyelling, maybe they're not quite ready from a biologicalstandpoint. Right. It's, you know, the funny thing about when I hadmy second son is I'm like, "Oh, he's not exactly like the firstone," which if you asked me intellectually I would've said, "Oh, ofcourse they'll be different," but you expect your child to be thiskind of the same. And, you know, and I say, parents just tryputting them down drowsy but awake and see how it goes. If yourchild's hysterical, then wait a week or two and tryagain.

Jen: Right. Okay.

Dr. Canapari:If your child's sleeping throughthe night and you know, no matter what you do, you don't have tosleep train. Right. You know, it's not something you have to do.The reason you do it is so your child can fall asleep independentlyand stay asleep for the night so that we can get a good night ofsleep.

Annie: So two and a half is maybe a little too old tobe coddling to bed. Is that what you're saying?

Dr. Canapari:I mean, I think that it's fine ifyour child sleeps well at night, right? Like, you know, I alwayssay like, if what you're doing is working, great, you don't have tochange a thing. There's nothing, you know, sometimes I lay downwith my kids at night at bedtime. My younger ones, like, will kickyou out in five minutes. It was like, "That's great dad. You cango." As his words are, "I want to go to sleep in my own time." Hedoesn't even want me to see him setup his blankets and the olderone wants me to stay a little bit longer. And I'm like, "Well, thisis precious. He's 11. Pretty soon he's going to want nothing to dowith me." So I'm happy to lie there. And I don't think there'sanything wrong with it if your child is sleeping great and you'rehappy with how your child's sleeping, however, if you're not happywith how your child's sleeping, if you have to spend three of thoseprecious hours in the evening laying with them to get them to fallasleep, if they need you multiple times during the night, then youmay want to make a change.

Dr. Canapari:Right? But you don't have to changeanything if you're happy with the arrangement. The same thing withbed sharing. If you have a family bed and it's going great,provided that you're observing safe sleep practices with an infant,more power to you, that's wonderful. But if you're not happy and ifsomeone's not sleeping well, then you may need to make achange.

Annie: I want to keep the cuddles at bedtime and lether fall asleep on me. I don't want her waking up atnight.

Jen: Yeah, that's what I like.

Annie: I want the best of both worlds.

Jen: But I think that's quite common. It's, sothere's getting the child to sleep, you know, baby, toddler, child,what, how do you keep a child sleeping?

Dr. Canapari:Now that's the trick, right? So youknow, I think it was actually, it was Richard Ferber, which came upwith this idea of sleep onset associations. The idea that yourchild falls asleep under a certain set of circumstances, and thennaturally, as he or she goes through the night, she wakes up atnight. We've all experienced that. We may wake up at two or threein the morning, adjust our pillow rollover and go back to sleep.You may not even remember it if you're up for five minutes, but youknow, as Ferber talks about in his book, if you woke up in anotherbedroom, you might be like, "What the Hell is going on?" And youmight go investigate. So, it's hard to know what babies arethinking. But if your child falls asleep with you present and thengoes through a natural awakening at night, she might need you to goback to sleep.

Dr. Canapari:That's why working on independentsleep at bedtime tends to make those nighttime awakenings go away.Because once your child is able to put herself to sleep, she can goback to sleep with a natural awakening. And this dovetails nicelywith a phenomenon we've all seen. Your child will have three hoursof the deepest sleep of the night, stage three sleep, slow wavesleep at the beginning of the night. So that's like if you'redriving back from somewhere, your kid falls asleep. You can pickyour kid up, change the diaper, put them in a bed, they don't wakeup and that's about two or three hours of sleep.

But then, say you put your childto sleep at eight o'clock, you're getting to bed 11, all of asudden you hear your kid calling for you, right. Because that'swhen they come out of that stage of sleep and they go through aperiod of REM sleep, REM sleep, or dream sleep clusters in thesecond half of the night. And it happens every two to three hoursafter 11 o'clock, that's when your child is going to wake up andrequest your presence.

Jen: That's exactly what's going on in my house. Itstarts around 11.

Dr. Canapari:Yeah, exactly. Just when you'regetting the bad and you're lying-

Jen: Yes.

Dr. Canapari:Maybe tonight's going to bedifferent, right?

Lauren: Right. I remember that sense of dread. 11o'clock.

Jen: And that's actually when my sons, my boys go tobed at about 7:30, between 7:30 and 8 and they go to bed reallywell independently. But when my son was having really intense nightterrors, I could almost set my watch to it. It was around 10 30 or11 when he would start screaming. But now he's not having his nightterrors s just getting up and coming to find me. And you know,parents are too tired, you're too tired to take them back to thebed. So he crawls in bed with us and I'm not happy with that, butit just seems like our best option right now. And I think what Ifound, cause I had mentioned earlier, I found on your website totalk about sleep aids and I think I'm my son's sleep aid. Like it'sme. It's actually, and when he goes to his grandparents' house, hedoes not wake up through the night. He sleeps all night. It doesn'tgo looking for anybody.

Dr. Canapari:Is it frustrating?

Jen: It's so frustrating.

Dr. Canapari:I guess you're doing it wrong. Youknow, I always like my parents applying like the finest seventiesparenting techniques. No, when my kids are over there and I'm like,you know, I just, you know, give them like Coca Cola, like all thestuff that I'm like, I would never permit in my household and, youknow, it's fine. But that is one of those things. And that's why Ithink one of the things in your outline, is I think is, I just wantto get to is, is dividing sleep responsibilities in the household.If there's a two parent household, it's very important that bothparents participate at bedtime. And, I can't tell you often I hearthe story of you know, someone and it's, let's be real here, ifit's a mom and a dad in the household, it's usually the mom comingin and saying, "Well, he'll only go asleep for me."

Dr. Canapari:And the dad may say, you know howdads are, "I can't do this. You know, you have to do it." And, youknow, I think that best practice is at an early age, get bothparents involved at bedtime. But if, you know, sometimes, as yousaid, sometimes mom needs to go out of town. Right? Like if youcan't, if you leave town for a couple of days, guess what? Thedad's gonna figure it out and your kid will figure out it as well.It's not like if you, you know, if you had to go away on a worktrip, your child would not sleep for five days. Right? Like, that'sjust not how it works. And I think it's really important that anyone of the household who is a caregiver helps.

Dr. Canapari:And, you know, I even give parentsa script. I mean, I to say, you know, "I know we're both concernedabout our son's sleep. I really need your help. You know, like, thedoctor says you need to help at bedtime and I'm going to go out."You know, it's likewise in blended households, if parents areseparated, like single parents, et cetera, it's very important thatkids have the same set of rules and have consistency at both homesif there are sleep difficulties. This is the struggle for a lot offamilies. I mean, you know, many, you know, every parent wants thechild to sleep well, but say they're at mom's house on the weekdaysand on the weekends the Dad may let the kids stay up later, andjust lie with them to go to sleep and that you know, that it's fineif things are going great but if things aren't going well it'sreally important that everyone who cares for the child get on thesame page.

Jen: Right. And with the same routines.

Dr. Canapari:I mean it's not going to be thesame in both households but as close to possible in terms of thetiming, in terms of what you do and specifically in terms of is aparent there when the child falls asleep or not?

Annie: Right, right. Okay. Do you have any, I know youhave a whole chapter in your book dedicated to sleep environmentand location and I think there's probably a lot information in thatchapter that could apply to adults in addition to kids. Do you haveany, are there any like non negotiables are things that you wouldreally encourage people to consider in their sleepenvironment?

Dr. Canapari:Oh man. I'd say getting the screensout of the bedroom and, I think there is, when I started working asa sleep doctor, when I finished my training in 2007, the bigargument was does your kid have a TV in the bedroom or not? Right.That was what, you know, that was often the conversation. That'soften the conversation I was having with families would be like,"You need to remove the television from your child's room becausethey're sleeping poorly." Nowadays it's not a conversation abouttelevision in the bedroom, it's about tablets, smartphones, etcetera. And we know these devices are corrosive to sleep, you know,as we were talking about earlier, the bright light can actuallyshift your biological clock later. We also know that these devicesare profoundly addictive, right? Like Instagram doesn't make moneyif you're not looking at Instagram.

Jen: There's a lot of research put in to how to keeppeople there.

Dr. Canapari:The smartest psychologists in theworld are in Silicon Valley trying to addict you to theseservices.

Jen: Right.

Dr. Canapari:Yeah. And, I encourage people tokeep them out of their bedroom and really to be pretty strict. Ilove now on, what's the feature called on the iPhone? It's screentime.

Lauren: Screen time. Yeah.

Dr. Canapari:It's generally been a positive withmy kids, except when I'm at work on a snow day, say, and they keepsending me messages to give them more screen time, but I think theykind of get it. And I also liked in my phone says at 10 o'clockbeing like, you know, it basically kind of shuts it down and I canbypass it. But taking that step being like, "Do I really need tokeep scrolling through this right now?" You just need that littlecheck and really ideally keeping the devices out of the homebecause, you know, I'm very careful about shutting off alarms on myphone. My wife has all these alerts on her phone. So if likesomething on the Guardian website, the UK goes off a news alertgoes in the middle of the night, she gets an alarm and I'd be like,do we must we know what, what the queen said in the middle of thenight? Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and I turn offher phone.

Jen: So just getting all those alerts offnotifications, like just-

Dr. Canapari:Yeah, if you can keep out of theroom and if your kids are little, setting this example now will paydividends when they get older. Right.

Jen: Yeah. My son, I did this as an incentive forthem to get their butts going and get ready for school in themornings. They are allowed to watch TV or play video games oncethey are ready for, ready to go for school. So that just got themgo hustling. Right. So they could watch some TV before school andwhen it started they would, that meant 10 of TV before we had toleave for school. But I have found over the last year that it hasincreased because they're getting up earlier and I am not sure. I'mwondering if that's because there's some kind of habit or somethingbuilt in where they're there, maybe start rousing a bit in themorning, but then all of a sudden it's like "TV, I can watch TV."And so it's, I didn't mean to, so there's, it's like they'resleeping less and I don't know if there's any science behind that,but I swear if I cut out TV in the morning, they'd sleep longer inthe mornings.

Dr. Canapari:Well, I mean, how badly do you wantto do that, right?

Jen: I don't know, I don't know if it's negotiableor not.

Dr. Canapari:In general, I like incentives forbehaviors that are desirable and really getting kids ready in themorning are one of those situations where you have so littleleverage, right?

Jen: Right.

Dr. Canapari:Like if your child, if your childis difficult in the morning, what is the outcome for them? You haveto drive them to school. Like they know that they have you over abarrel. I think that maybe putting a limit on being like, well youknow, here's the maximum amount of screen time you could get. Butit is one of those things like as you go through the night, yoursleep gets lighter and lighter. Right? That's why it's so muchharder to get kids to stay asleep. Especially to do early morningawakenings than it is to get them to fall asleep. Both in terms ofbehavioral techniques and even, cause I see kids with sleepproblems bad enough I write for prescriptions.

Dr. Canapari:Any medicine that can last longenough to keep a kid asleep in the morning is going to last toolong. You just can't calibrate it that way. So I think that if yourchildren are functioning well in the morning and going to sleep ata reasonable hour, they're getting enough sleep. I wouldn't worrytoo much about it unless it's disruptive. But if you feel likethey're really struggling during the day, like if the teachers aregiving you feedback or they're falling asleep on short car tripsduring the day, then maybe you want to think about a differentincentive to get them going.

Annie: Right. Right.

Jen: Right.

Lauren: I'll say, Jen, something that we did withElliot this year is she would wake up at like 4:00 AM and come inmy room and wake me up. "Is it morning time yet?" Cause it's dark,you know, when she would wake up I'd be like, "No, go back tosleep." She'd come in at five. "Is it morning time yet?" So we gotthis little alarm clock thing that lights up green when it'smorning.

Dr. Canapari:The "Is It Ok To Wake?"clock?

Lauren: Yes.

Dr. Canapari:Yeah. No, I think, I think thatworks really well. And, you know, it's, I think Andy alluded at thebeginning, my younger son was, for a while, was a real early riser.I mean, I remember going to Disney World when he was like seven andtaking him for walks so my older kid and wife could sleep until6:30 in the morning, you know, like, I like the okay to wake clockand an older child to who can get it, you can be like, look, "Youcan get up and play in your room and read books."

Lauren: Yeah. She's five, so she's old enough tounderstand, you know.

Dr. Canapari:Yeah. I mean a two or three old isjust going to roam, right. You know, but and that's the importantthing too, you know, in terms of the sleep training conversation,it is very clear that sleep training, even cry it out sleeptraining is effective and it's safe. But the best study, looking atthe safety of it, they were looking at things like that always getstrumpeted as side effects of sleep training, elevated cortisollevels at all, et cetera. It all was fine at the time where kidswere age five and it really seemed like most kids were sleepingpretty well by age five, no matter what you do. There areexceptions to this, right. You know, I've explained this in myhome, in my clinic certainly, but I think the message to parents ispositive. Like address the problems you need to address for yoursanity. If you're doing things that you know aren't quite bestpractices like lying with your two and a half year old until theyfall asleep and they sometimes crawl in your bed at night but youcan live with that, that's okay. Your child is going to be fine. Ifyou are okay, if you can live with it, right? It's like parentingis an exercise in compromises. You can't potty train your kid andsleep train your kid and like you can't fix everything at once. Soit's okay, pick a problem you want to work on and work on that. Letthe other stuff slide you're going to be okay.

Annie: I think that's a wonderful message to wrap upon because it's like, it's very much in line with our program aswell. Like, find what works for you and it's good enough. That'sall the is really important. Even if it's not best practice, youknow, the ideal or whatever it is.

Dr. Canapari:Well. Yeah, and I think that if,correct me if I'm wrong, I believe one of the focuses that you guystalk about with, is clients the right term?

Annie: Members, yeah.

Dr. Canapari:Your members is weight control,right? And I just want to leave with you with, I think that'ssomething that's so important is we know that sleep curtailment isassociated with increased appetite and increased weight gain. And,I just saw a great research talk showing that the hormonal reasonsfor this were different for in men and women. But the outcome iskind of the same, that if we sleep poorly, we accumulate moreadipose tissue, more fat. We have more hedonic eating, craving forsalty, sugary foods. So I think, and of course I'm biased, but forpeople that are struggling with their weight, improving their sleepis such a important thing to do. And if the way you do that asimproving your child's sleep, think about that as another goal whythis is worth your effort, right? If, we'd all like to, most of us,you know, want to maintain a healthy weight, and working on sleepis going to help people do that. So I think that's an importantmessage even if your members don't have kids, working on their ownsleep is going to be a really high yield thing for them to do interms of their health.

Jen: Right, right. So like regular sleep will leadto more regulated eating, which leads to a stable regulatedweight.

Dr. Canapari:Absolutely.

Annie: There's not much that more sleep wouldn't dogood for people. I can't think of any, too many negative outcomesfor more sleep.

Dr. Canapari:Yeah, no, absolutely. I think thatmost of us professionals, grownups, we're working on sleep debt, weneed to chip away at it because it's going to help us be healthier,feel better, and you know, to kind of be the people we want tobe.

Annie: Yeah. Thank you so much doctor. There's so muchgood information here. I can't, I think our listeners are justgoing to really, really appreciate this. And we will send links togo find your book because I'm sure by the time we release it willbe out. So congrats on the book and thank you for joining us. Weappreciate your time.

Dr. Canapari:Thanks guys. It was fun. And yeah,I'm sorry we didn't answer all the questions you sent me inadvance, but I'd be happy to come talk to you guys again sometime.

Annie: Yes. We'll have to have you back for sure.Okay.

Dr. Canapari:Take care.

Jen: Thank you.

Lauren: Bye.

Dr. Canapari:Bye guys.

Annie: This episode is brought to you by theBalance365 program. If you're ready to say goodbye to quick fixesand false promises and yes to building healthy habits and a lifeyou're 100% in love with, then checkout Balance365.co to learnmore.

Balance365 Life Radio: Episode 65: Parents, Kids And Sleep: A How To Guide For Families (2024)

FAQs

At what age should you stop cuddling your child to sleep? ›

Transitioning Away from Cuddling to Sleep

Although there is no right or wrong age to stop bedtime cuddles, most experts suggest that it is best to start the process when your child is around 18 months old. At this age, they are developing their sense of independence and starting to recognise bedtime routines.

At what age should you stop letting your child sleep with you? ›

According to Liz Nissim-Matheis, a clinical psychologist in New Jersey, it's best to end co-sleeping when a person reaches puberty, or at around 11. “Once we get into that territory of bodies changing, that's when you really want to take a step back and say, 'What is going on here?

Why can't my 11 year old sleep? ›

In pre-teens (9-11 years), common persistent sleep problems include: poor sleep habits – for example, caused by having a screen-based device in the bedroom. anxiety, including being anxious about getting enough sleep. sleep apnoea.

How to wake a child from a deep sleep? ›

Gradual wake-up: If your toddler is a heavy sleeper, try waking them up gradually. Turn on some soft music or a night light to help them move naturally from deep sleep to wakefulness.

At what age should kids stop having a bedtime? ›

The answer depends on your teen and your situation. A 13-year-old may need more help going to sleep at an appropriate hour, and parents can help. A 17-year-old shouldn't need as many reminders about good sleep habits. Rather than give an older teen a strict bedtime, it's better to educate your teen.

At what age can a child safely sleep with parents? ›

Co-sleeping with a child over 1 year old has a little less risk than with one under 12 months. At a toddler's age of 1 to 2 years old, they can roll over and free themselves in case they are trapped in the bed. As a child gets older, it becomes less risky to co-sleep, but it's still best for them to sleep on their own.

Is it OK for a 12 year old to go to bed at 11? ›

3-5 years old: should go to sleep between 7:00 and 8:00 pm. 6-12 years old: should go to sleep between 7:30 and 8:30 pm. 13-18 years old: should go to sleep around 10:00 pm. Bare in mind that once puberty hits, it will be difficult for teenagers to fall asleep until around 11 pm.

Is it normal for a 12 year old to not sleep? ›

Rapid body changes, especially in adolescence, can disrupt sleep. This happens because the growth phase they're in causes their circadian rhythm—the body's internal clock—to reset, delaying their sleep cycle. Stress, anxiety, and worry are other common reasons for sleep problems.

What happens if a kid stays up all night? ›

The problem starts when your teen is staying up all night because their brains release critical hormones between 2am and 5am that are necessary for growth, metabolic regulation, academic performance, better focus, and staving off depression and aggression.

How to wake up an extremely heavy sleeper? ›

Here are eight options that may help stir a sleeper in a safe manner.
  1. Music. A 2020 study that compared a standard alarm clock tone to musical sounds found that people preferred to be roused from their sleep by music. ...
  2. Wake-up lights. ...
  3. Natural light. ...
  4. Phone. ...
  5. Mental stimulation. ...
  6. The right scent. ...
  7. Distant alarm. ...
  8. Stick to a schedule.
Dec 15, 2020

What is it called when you don't want to get out of bed? ›

If you have a really hard time, you could have something called dysania. This means you simply can't get out of bed for about 1 to 2 hours after you wake up. Doctors don't recognize it as a medical condition, as it is not an official diagnosis. But if you experience it, you know it can be a serious problem.

Can deep sleep cause bedwetting? ›

Bedwetting is most often related to deep sleep—the bladder is full, but the child doesn't wake up. Some children have smaller bladders or produce more urine during the night. Constipation can also lead to bedwetting because the bowel presses on the bladder.

What age can a child sleep with a cuddly toy? ›

Don't let your baby sleep with any soft objects, including stuffed animals, until they're at least 12 months old. Soft toys, blankets, crib bumpers, pillows, and other bedding increase the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and death by suffocation or strangulation.

What age should you stop holding a baby to sleep? ›

You can help your baby learn how to self-settle from 3 months of age with positive sleep routines and environments. When your baby learns to self-settle, they don't need to rely on you to settle them. They can get back to sleep by themselves if they wake overnight (except when they need to feed).

At what age should a child fall asleep alone? ›

Nishtha Grover, Child and Adolescent Psychologist said, "Children above the age of 3 or 4 should be encouraged to sleep by themselves." If you're a parent who can't get their child to sleep in their own bed at night, you're not alone.

How do I get my 3 year old to stop cuddling to sleep? ›

  1. Gently and slowly.
  2. First, mummy can cuddle him until he's almost asleep, but awake enough to know she's getting up. ...
  3. Gradually reduce the amount of time Mummy is in bed, until she just gets in for a short cuddle and the child goes to sleep independently.
  4. Make sure the child is happy and comfortable in their room.
Dec 18, 2015

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