- Are your kids getting up multiple times
throughout the night?
Perhaps your five-year-old
is going through that classic phase
of being afraid of the dark,
or your four-year-old is having night terrors or nightmares.
Or maybe your toddler's just not used
to being in their own bed and still looking
for you throughout the night.
And maybe you just don't have the patience for it.
After a long day of parenting,
you need a long night of good rest
and you are not wrong for wanting
that for you and for your child.
I know there is so much guilt mixed up
in teaching children to sleep independently.
And I want to put your mind at ease.
Maybe for you like for me,
sleeping in the same room or the same bed as your child
means a compromised quality of sleep for you both.
And we all know the more tired you are,
the harder life is.
I wanna tell you that it is absolutely okay
to hold high expectations of your child,
to be able to sleep through the night
and preferably in their own bed,
maybe in their own room.
It is okay to hold high expectations of our children.
In fact, children need us to hold high expectations of them.
What we need to understand,
is with high expectations, comes high support.
So if you want your toddler or young child
to stay in their bed
without disrupting you throughout the night,
we need to set them up for success.
Let's look at these three key ways.
Number one is clarity.
Look, it's really hard to achieve any goal
when you don't have clarity over what that goal is.
And it's impossible to hold high expectations
when we don't know what those expectations are.
You need to think,
what is your expectation?
And take into your considerations,
your child's temperament, their age,
the structure of your house,
your own resources, emotional and otherwise.
How many adults are there to help out?
How many other children there are.
Your expectations of what your child can
and can't be held to,
with regards to sleeping in their bed throughout the night
will depend and change
as they go through stages of development.
Maybe your expectation is
that your child can come into your room
when they have a nightmare,
but not into your bed.
They need to sleep on a mattress next to you.
Or maybe it's the expectation that they need
to stay in their room but it's okay for them to call you.
Or, it's not okay for them to call you
but you'll leave them a nightlight
and, whatever else they need a lovey or a stuffy.
Maybe your expectation is
that you'll sit with them while they fall asleep at night,
but then they stay in their bed and you go to yours.
Or maybe your expectation is
that they co-sleep with your partner,
but they don't disturb you
while you're co-sleeping with the baby.
For example, there is no right and wrong
when it comes to expectations
and of course we all need to parent at night.
It's part of parenting.
But, you can set your child up for success
if you have clarity over
which expectations you establish and hold.
If you're changing your rules from day to day,
and sometimes telling them one expectation
and then changing it
because you're too tired to implement it,
you're never gonna make headway.
So crystal clear clarity is necessary
whenever we wanna establish a new habit
and make a behavior change.
What is the goal you're working towards?
Maybe it's an incremental goal
of first sleeping next to you,
and then moving to their bedroom with your partner,
and then, moving to their bedroom without your partner,
whatever it is is okay.
Depending on your child's age and needs,
you need to have clarity on what
it is that you're expecting.
Number two is creativity.
Based on your clarity of expectations,
you can start to get creative
with the solutions you can come up
with, to troubleshoot right?
'Cause your child is gonna have resistance
and maybe your child has fears,
or they just don't prefer this sleeping arrangement.
In which case, we're going to need
to support them with solutions.
Remember high expectations, high support.
So how can you support them?
Maybe you're gonna play games
and engage in playful parenting to act out their fears.
Like sweeping away any spiders
or, putting on a nightlight
to, you know banish the dark.
Maybe you're gonna make a monster spray
and spray the room so that there are no monsters here.
What can you do to help them solve
the issues that they're facing?
They are real issues that they're really struggling with,
that doesn't mean we can't expect them to overcome them.
We can and we should.
We shouldn't tell them and teach them
that they're too timid,
that they can't be brave in the face of their fears
or that they can't overcome those challenges.
But, we also shouldn't leave them to struggle alone.
We need to get creative
and find solutions with them.
And finally, our third C is consistency.
You have clarity on your expectations,
you've creatively come up with solutions.
That means you have high expectations,
and you're offering high support.
Now, you need to show up
for your boundary that you've set.
And this is the hardest part for us parents,
'cause on this night, the baby's sick
and on this night, we have a lot of work
and we just wanna get it done
and on that night, we're too tired.
But, if we don't show up consistently for our boundaries,
you can be sure that your child won't either.
If you want them to consistently establish
a new and healthier habit of staying in bed,
you need to be consistent in your reaction.
For example, consistently returning them
to their own mattress when they come into your bed.
Or consistently being boring and unengaging
and switching yourself off when it's bedtime.
So you don't engage in power struggles,
you don't go round and round with one more book
and one more glass of water
and one more trip to the potty.
You've done all of those and now you switch off
and you're consistently just sitting there
boring and sleepy and waiting for sleep to occur.
Maybe you need to be consistent in returning your child
to their room, and staying with them when they fall asleep
even if that happens multiple times.
There are no rights or wrongs,
except for being inconsistent when you're really trying
to establish a new habit
because it can't get established that way.
Remember, hold your own boundary consistently
and your child will eventually follow suit.
There is always an uncomfortable threshold
that we have to get through
when we are weaning a child off of something,
when we are moving into a next stage,
when we are establishing a new expectation.
You have to go through it, not avoid it
or you'll never get to the other side of a healthier,
more established better sleep routine.
Kids will stay in their bed
and sleep consistently through the night
when we show up consistently with high expectations
and high support to help them do so.
So, make yourself a plan right now.
What is an actionable, optimized, sleep plan
that you can start to implement
in your family or gradually work towards?
How can you communicate these expectations
with clarity to yourself, to your partner and your child?
I sometimes print out or write out,
what our rules are going to be
and stick them on the door,
so that in the middle of the night,
when I have no patience and no willpower,
I remind myself of my goal to stay consistent.
And then, how can you show up creatively
to troubleshoot and find solutions
to whatever resistance is coming up?
And then how can you hold that boundary consistently,
until you see the results that you,
and your child desperately need and deserve?
Of a healthy, long, deep, good, night sleep?
(upbeat music)