The Sleep Nanny Show

I'm going to share with you today some really important things about the autumn clock change, and recap for you the different approaches that I have shared in the previous blogs, so that you're fully equipped and are ready to make a decision on how you're going to navigate the autumn clock change.  First up, this autumn clock change, it's a pickle. Not quite such a pickle as the spring one, let's face it. We would always rather gain an hour sleep than lose one.  Let me share with you a few facts that you may not know, but to help you see the significance and the impact that this measly one hour can really have on our lives. First of all, when we change clocks around just an hour's difference can cause a lot of havoc. Particularly in the spring, when we spring forward, we see an increase, in the following days after the clock change, there is an increase in road traffic accidents, fatal accidents on the road, there's reports of higher incidences in the workplace and injuries. We've got cardiovascular and neurological related complexities as well. All those have been shown to increase and rise on those days after. The impact on our sleep is huge. But what's, I think, fascinating, and this is a really fascinating fact, is that in the autumn clock change, some of these things have been shown to reduce. So for instance, strokes, heart attacks, road traffic accidents, they've actually been seen to fall down to unusually low levels, on the days following the autumn clock change, which suggests, and studies have shown, that the extra hour is really, really beneficial. So losing an hour can be detrimental, gaining an hour can be beneficial.  Either way, moving it around can really mess us up. As a parent, do we really gain an hour? I think the days of the autumn clock change, meaning, "Yeah, an extra hour in bed," is just not true when you become a parent. You don't get that anymore because there's a good chance that your child or little one is  going to wake at the same time anyway because they take some time to adjust, and then you actually end up losing an hour and feeling worse because the number on the clock is worse. So it's more difficult for parents and that's why I'm here to help you.  Now that you understand the importance of this, and you understand how it's not just an hour, and yeah, it doesn't matter, because it really does matter. I'm going to remind you of the three approaches that I have given you. Go back and check them out if you would like more detail or read on for a recap of each.  The first is the gradual approach. This is where you're going to move bedtime later by 15 minutes from Wednesday to Saturday, the four nights leading up to the clock change. So 15 minutes later for four nights.  The second option is the halfway, the meeting in the middle, where we go for just 30 minutes later on Saturday night, just 30 minutes later with bedtime for the autumn clock change.  The third one is all in one go. And it's where on Saturday night we let our little one stay up an hour longer, and they go to bed one hour later than usual on the Saturday night.  They're the three ways that you can approach this, depending on whether your child is super sensitive to time differences, super sensitive to their routine and their wake-up times, you might want to take it gradually, and if they're very alert. If they're more easygoing, they're more flexible, more adaptable, then you might want to go for the meet in the middle, or maybe you'd want to go for the whole thing and do all in one go, if they're really, really flexible, and perhaps a little bit older as well.  I hope you have found there's a little series of clock change tips, helpful. We would love to hear from you. If you have any questions at all.  Take our Quiz and get your free custom sleep plan today!

In this blog I'll be going into detail on the third idea for how you can handle the autumn clock change with your kiddie's sleep. Read on for one more exciting way that you could navigate the clock change this Autumn.  This approach is completely different to the previous two ideas I shared with you - the gradual approach and the meet in the middle approach - this is the all in one. It's really important when you go into this, that you're not kind of complacent about how you're going to do it and that you know that actually the clocks change tomorrow, or they change tonight in the middle of the night. Which way do I need to move my kiddie's sleep tonight by an hour? Because it's easy to get it wrong. It's confusing and it could be just as easy to forget as well. The clocks are going back an hour. And on Saturday night, if you are going to do this all in one, then you are going to move the bedtime later by one hour. So that means if bedtime for your little one is usually 7:00 PM, then on Saturday night, we're going to make it 8:00 PM. And they're going to be delighted because it means they get to stay up a whole hour later. Lucky them. So if you feel they have the stamina and they can do it, then this might be an approach for you. What's going to happen is they're going to go to bed at 8:00, but 8:00 is the new 7:00. You see? Because as we go through the night, that clock's going to go back an hour. So when you went to bed at 8:00 that's kind of the new 7:00. And that means that they get to have the same number of hours of sleep and wake up the same kind of time they do most mornings. And that time on the clock will read as it normally does and their bodies will have had the same amount of sleep as they normally have. So it helps to kind of keep things as much the same as possible for them. And then when they wake for the day, you start the day as normal. You have your meal times, your activity times as normal. And on that Sunday, then again, back to bed for 7:00 PM, the new 7:00, which was last night's 8:00. And so this is just a really nice way of getting one step ahead. Now, yes, you could just do this on the Sunday. But the clocks are going to be different. So when they wake in the morning on Sunday morning, if you haven't done this, then there's a really good chance that they're going to be out of sorts and out of whack. So it just really does help and have this up your sleeve and know what you're doing with it. That is the all in one approach.  If you're going to go for this all in one approach, who would this be best for? Well, if you have a very sensitive little one or a baby that's napping a lot, you're going to really want to go for the more gradual approach. This is a better approach, a child or maybe an older child who is more flexible. And if you know you have a flexible child, then lucky you. This is not the super relaxed, but this is somebody who's more flexible where if they go to bed an hour later, they tend to wake up an hour later. Or if you've got the child that's a bit like that and they do go with the flow a bit more easily, then this could be a great approach for your little one. If you're not sure if this is the right approach for your little one, then check out the previous two blogs where I share my other approaches and make sure you check out the next blog for the key information that you need to know about the autumn clock change.  Take our Quiz and get your free custom sleep plan today!

In this blog we are going to be talking about the clock change, the fall back, and autumn clock change, where the clocks go back by an hour.  This blog is about how you can manage this for good night's sleep and the effects that this can have as well on your little ones.  Clock changes. Oh, they're a pain, aren't they? They can absolutely wreak havoc on our bodies and on our brains, even that one hour, it has an effect. I'm going to start off today by giving you the first approach that I recommend for handling this clock change so that we can try to alleviate those effects on our bodies. It's a gradual approach. When the clocks go back, we need to adjust our timing forward. So let's take a typical bedtime of 7:00 PM. It's the easiest one to work with. So let's say this one's bedtime is 7:00 PM. With a gradual approach. We're going to start moving things on Wednesday. The clock change is early hours of a Sunday morning. So we've got up till Saturday bedtime to work on this. We start with Wednesday and every night, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we are going to shift the bedtime 15 minutes later, each night. So it's basically 15 minutes later each night for four nights. We start on Wednesday and if bedtime was 7:00, we're going to make it 7:15 on Wednesday. On Thursday, we're going to make it 7:30. On Friday we're going to make it 7:45. And then on Saturday night, it's going to be an eight o'clock bedtime, and that's going to feel weird. But that eight o'clock during the night is going to magically become 7:00 PM because the clocks will have notched back. By putting your little one who has a 7:00 PM bedtime down at eight that night they will still have the same number of hours sleep and as normal and wake up at the same time on the clock that they normally wake up at, and it will feel like a normal night and a normal wake up time for them. This gradual approach is really nice and gently eases the body clock to that new time. This is for babies and young children who are quite sensitive to change. So if they're typically quite sensitive to changes in environment, if they're somebody who really does like routine, and if they're a little one who is very susceptible to over tiredness, if they're super alert, this is going to be the approach for you because they're not likely to be the kind of child who makes up their sleep hours. If you've got a little one who, if they have a late night, they tend to sleep in a bit later in the morning, then this might not be necessary for you. But if you have a little one who is like, "Yeah, it doesn't matter what time I put them to bed early, late, whatever. They're still going to wake up at six o'clock on the dot." Then they are quite sensitive to this and it's going to be a gradual approach that you need to get through it smoothly.  If you have any questions, please reach out to us via email or social media and don't forget to check out the free sleep resource we have for you that will give you your free custom sleep plan. Take our Quiz and get your free custom sleep plan today!

This blog is all about baby nap extensions. If you're stuck with those 30 minute little cat naps, and you know it's just not really working for your little one, then this is for you, I'm going to reveal how you can overcome that and extend those naps for quality sleep with your baby. So many babies are overtired because they're not getting enough nourishing nap time. Newborns will often nap for little segments at a time, and they will snatch little power naps, and that's okay. And I would take a 30-minute nap over no nap any day. So if you are stuck with those, it's not the end of the world, it is better than nothing. But this is really for somebody who is ready for the next step now, who perhaps is still struggling with these 30 minute naps beyond six months in. If you know that it's actually time now to improve that. Because for some people it's okay as it is. So what do you do? The first thing I want to tell you is the usual reason for the 30 minute naps once we are somewhere between four and six months or above is the fact that they're not settling for the nap. So the onset of the nap, we call it sleep onset. The onset of the nap is kind of happening to them rather than them doing it. So what do I mean, as an example if your baby or, or little one is in a pram or a push chair or in the car when they nod off, the motion has lulled them off. So there's very little left on the little one's part. And we all do it. How many of you have actually gone, "Let's go in the car at this time because I know that they'll have a nap now." We've all used motion to get naps to happen, and that's okay. It's a brilliant backup plan, actually. It's a great backup. However, if that's the only way or always the way, then they are not developing the skill of falling to sleep because they're not practicing it. And when I say the skill, it's really just a sensation. It's the body going, "Okay, I'm going to lie down here. I'm going to close my eyes. I might look around for a bit. And then I'm going to go to sleep." It's the ability to do that comfortably without crying and freaking out. And the reason babies often cry and seek help is purely that. They need the help, because they don't know how to do this instinctively from birth. It's something they learn through practice. Some learn it more easily than others. Some parents teach it accidentally and don't know they're even teaching them anything. But quite often, if your little one is having little 30 minute naps, it's because they're not responsible for the sleep onset. Now what happens when that happens? Another example could be, perhaps you've rocked, rocked, rocked, rocked, rocked, put them down to sleep. Done that kind of ninja move, okay, they're asleep and sneak out. 30 minutes later, they're awake and crying. It's because they didn't put themselves to sleep. So they've stirred. Now, at 30 minutes, 40 minutes, what's often happening in a sleep cycle, which is more like an hour in full cycle at this stage Is that they're shifting from deeper sleep into lighter sleep. Now what we want them to do is go into the lighter sleep and carry on and finish off the light sleep, and then tip into the next sleep cycle where they go back through and then into a deeper sleep again. We want them to be able to knit those cycles together. But what often happens when we get those 30 minute wake ups is that as they're transitioning, almost like coming up through from deep sleep into lighter sleep, instead of progressing through that and round, they actually almost kind of fall out of sleep. And they're like, "Oh my God, I'm awake. Whoa, what, where am I? What's happening? Where are you? I'm all alone." And naturally, they cry because they are confused. They don't really know where they are, and they either don't want to be there, or they're like, "I want to be asleep. I'm really tired. Why am I awake? This is annoying. Help me, somebody, I need to get back to sleep.

This blog series we are talking all about over tiredness and today we are going to be looking at solving that problem. If your child is overtired, it is key to be able to spot where the over-tiredness is coming from before you can start looking at ways to fix it, otherwise, you might be fixing the wrong thing. But once we've spotted it, we've got it so now we can fix it.  The key question is though…How do we get our little ones to sleep more?  First of all, we know where it's coming from, I want you to consider a couple of things. Is it the timing or the routine around that sleep happening? Because that could be everything. For instance, if you're trying to get your toddler to nap, take their daytime nap after 1:00 PM and they're really, really struggling. If you actually manage to get them down for that nap somewhere between 12:30 and 1:00, you might find they go down really easily. It could just be as simple as timing and that nothing else is wrong about it. It's just that the timing isn't good. It's that maybe you're trying too soon and they're not tired enough or you're trying too late and they've gone past it. They're overtired, they're into a second wind, which gives them a sense of adrenaline and then they can't fall to sleep. I remember this happening with my daughter, if it was after 1:00 PM, no chance, it was like I'd blown it. The opportunity was between 12:30 and 1:00 and if I tried too soon, she wouldn't be ready. If it was after 1:00, oh, oh, it's going to be a battle. But if I got that sweet spot, ah blissful, I could put her down. She'd lie down, she'd have a wonderful nap and all would be great.  Are you trying at the wrong time? And also the routine leading into that sleep, are you just trying to take your child from heavy stimulation and lots going on into, fine, go to sleep now, that's a tall order. Are there steps that you're missing or that you could try to set the scene, a bit like a bedtime routine. To set the scene and to help to bring them down a bit and destimulate them. Because from around eight to 10 months onwards, they're very receptive to outside stimuli. So is there anything you can do to bring them away from the busyness of the day and into a calmer and chilled environment that's conducive to good sleep. It could be that they're going to their room, it's darkened, shades are down. If you have a particular tune that you play or a story that you read, make it a bit like the bedtime setup so that all the triggers to the brain are, it's sleep time now, it's sleep time now. And then is helping them to prepare the brain, will start to release the sleepy hormones if the signals are given to it. So timing and routine is one part of it.  If it's not obviously down to routine or timing, then it could be that you're battling to get your little one to settle because of lack of skill to settle or too much stimulation. So if your attempts to get your little one to settle are too involved and you're, for want of a better word, fussing too much or trying too hard and doing all the things to try to calm and soothe your little one. And sometimes it involves putting on a song and all the things that parents do, we do anything to get our kids to sleep, wouldn't we? It might be too stimulating. It might be too much. So consider your role in the process but also consider your little ones settling in the process. Because if, and this is the classic mistake. If you are waiting, which means you've probably not got the right timing, for your little one to be so tired that they just conk out, well, sometimes that doesn't happen because they're overtired. The conk out tends to happen even after the overtiredness. So we're tired, we can settle. We're overtired, we're going to fight it. We're so tired, we're past overtired, then we might crash and burn. And if they do, if they zone out because they are that exhausted, then they are unaware of falling to sleep and there's a good chance that won...

https://youtu.be/dSZJfZg_QcM In this blog, we are going to be addressing the fact that you've recognized that your baby doesn't sleep enough, or your little one doesn't sleep enough. So we're going to find out why. Where is it in 24 hours that the lack of sleep is coming from? Because understanding this is key.  In the previous blog we started talking about overtiredness and what that does, and the effect of overtiredness. So today, we are going to fully understand where the overtiredness could be coming from.  First of all, could it be lack of daytime sleep? That's the first one I want you to think about. Is your child under three? If they are, then they probably do still need some daytime sleep. And don't get me wrong, sometimes they need daytime sleep beyond age three as well. But if they are under three, then it's pretty much a sure thing that they do need some. And if that's the case, how much should that be, at this current age and stage that they are? How much daytime sleep would be beneficial for them? And in what sections? How many? How many naps and how long would they be, if they're going to be doing the best sleep they can do? So if we can understand that we can then understand whether they're getting enough or not. That immediately gives us a fixing point like, "Ah, okay, my two-year-old, let's say, is having a half an hour nap in the day." Okay brilliant, we've identified a problem. It's not enough sleep for a two-year-old, we need to be aiming more towards the two-hour mark. So we already go, "Oh right, okay. That's what I need to do to help to fix things." It could be the amount, but it could also be the quality. So you might think, "Oh no, my child gets loads of sleep. They get the exact amount that they need for their age and stage." But if the quality of that sleep isn't great that could be the problem. It could be the timing as well. So what if they're getting the quantity overall, but the quality is poor and it's in little snatched naps of light sleep. And perhaps, in their case, it's not restorative enough, and the quality of sleep is down. Also, motion sleep, so the sleep that you have on the go, in the pushchair, or the car, or on the move, motion sleep often won't give the same quality of sleep as a proper sleep space and ideal sleep environment. It can, but often it doesn't. So that could be the key and the thing that is causing your little one to be overtired. So these are all things that you can look at and explore to spot it with your little one where's that overtiredness coming from.  The other thing with timing to look at is if they're awake for too long between sleeps. So sometimes people will tell me, "Yep, they're getting enough sleep." And they are, they're getting enough. Let's go back to our two-year-old, perhaps they're getting nearly two hours every day and it's brilliant, but they're taking that a bit late in the day. So actually, from their morning wake-up time until the start of that nap time, if that window of awakeness is too long, even if they're getting the ideal amount of nap after that, the very fact that wake window is too long could be the reason for their overtiredness, even if they are getting enough naptime. So timing does play a part in this as well.  Timing is something that can easily be overlooked or ignored because you think, "They get the sleep eventually." Yeah, but that extended wakeful period may have already done the harm and cause the overtiredness. When you look at bedtime itself. Is bedtime late, a bit too late or irregular? Does it move around a lot? That could be another reason for overtiredness, a bedtime that isn't consistent, or that is too late for a little one.  Most 0 to 6 year olds, some seven-year-olds, will do best with a bedtime around 7:00 PM. That's if you operate a kind of a day in the life of where you want to wake up between 6:00 AM and 7:00 AM, maybe you have school or preschool, or you are working,

https://youtu.be/7fvrgNaSkhY In this blog I will help you to establish whether or not your child is actually overtired and take you through the steps you can take to understand if your child is overtired and what you can do about that if that is the case. Is your child overtired, is your little one overtired, and does it even matter if they are?  It really does matter. Overtiredness is the main reason that you will see difficulty with your little one settling to sleep, disturbed sleep, so lots of wakings and light sleep that's disruptive, you'll also see also early waking, waking up early for the day, starting the day too soon. All of those are typical repercussions of being overtired. And I know that sounds crazy because we would think that if they're really tired, they would just sleep, right? But no, the opposite is actually true. These effects of overtiredness, not only are they probably a little bit annoying and disruptive, they may well disturb you and maybe other members of the family sleep as well, they also have a big impact on children, little ones. Your child's brain development, for example, is a really important thing that will be affected through lack of sleep or through this disturbed sleep. The deep quality nourishing sleep that they really need is absolutely vital for their brain development, as well as their health, their immune system, and all the other benefits that go with good sleep too. So it does matter. What can you do and how do you recognize if your child even is overtired? You might have some clues with indications other than those repercussions I mentioned. Indications like being fractious, clingy, just groggy, perhaps a bit unsociable, just not in the most cheerful and contented spirit. Those some of the obvious signs that your little one is overtired, and they just really seem to be a bit out of sorts. You often can tell you if ee things like eye rubbing and you can often look at their face and see when they are really, really tired as well. The other thing that you can do to help determine whether your child is overtired is to know what ideal sleep looks like for their age and developmental stage. For instance, did they ought to be having a certain amount of daytime sleep? Are they getting those naps in? And if they are, are they long enough? Are they deep and nourishing or are they short cat naps that are shallow? Are they awake for too long in between sleeps? We call those wake windows. Are those wake windows too long for them at this age and developmental stage? And this is where you cannot use your baby or your child as a guidepost for this because they will have you believe that they're fine. They will have you believe that they can be awake for five hours when really, the optimal time is actually two and a half hours. So understanding what that optimal time really is for your little one and helping them to get their sleep when it actually is going to be more beneficial for them is really going to help you move forward with this. Knowing what that sleep ought to look like, how much do they really need overall, in what sleep patterns should that come in? Is it naps, night sleep? What does it all need to look like? And then, with that knowledge, you can actually work on spotting where the overtiredness is coming from so that you can resolve it. Take our Quiz and get your free custom sleep plan today!

We have been talking all about sleep and crying in the previous blog posts, this post is all about personality and crying. I'm going to give you some really key pointers on how to understand the effect of personality on crying and how you can best use that information to make for peaceful, happy days with your family. The first personality I'm going to talk about is the child's personality. So your baby or child, they have their own character traits, their own personality, and they may be more or less of a crier. Some little ones some people are, they cry more easily than others. You'll know that from how you are, how your friends are. There are certain things out there about males and females and how people are different, but personality plays a part on how much of a likely crier that you are. Now with a baby or a young child of course, they will cry for different reasons. They'll cry for communication. They're also going to be more inclined to cry because they have to tell you something. They have to tell you what they need or what they want. It's literally their entire language is made from cries. That said how you respond to your little ones cries, based on their personality, may need to be different. So some little ones it's in their personality that when they cry, they need more reassurance, more hands on help, it takes more effort to help bring that cry down. Whereas other personalities, they do better with actually sometimes a bit more space. They need that response. They need that reassurance or that thing, they need the need met, but they might be quicker to stop crying. You might be able to respond and it's fixed much more easily depending on their personality. The other personality piece to consider here is the parent's personality. So your personality also plays a really important part. Whilst you may or may not be an easy crier, or you might cry a lot. You might hardly ever cry, your personality in terms of the meaning and your beliefs around crying are going to be key in all of this, in fact, in all of parenting. Because your past experiences, maybe your childhood, maybe any traumas or triggers that you have around crying are going to affect the beliefs you have and the meanings that you give to crying. So you may respond to your little ones cry based on your own head trash, as I like to call it, we all have it. It's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. But your response may be triggered by something that you've made up, that you believe that you are harbouring, a meaning that you are giving it, and that may skew your ability to see the reality of what actually is in front of you and what the cry actually is about. It's worth exploring that a little bit and knowing that, "Hang on. Am I responding this way because of what I feel or because of what my child needs?" What if your child cries, maybe you are somebody who lost a parent or have abandonment complexities and traumas in your past, so when your child cries, you're like, "Oh my God, oh my God, I need to make sure they don't feel like that." And actually they didn't, they were okay, that's your thing, not theirs. It's really worth sometimes just thinking about this and thinking how, in all parenting, how we can avoid projecting our own, fears, discomforts, traumas, and triggers, emotional meanings and beliefs that have come from our experience and to not just assume that or allow the triggers of our little ones cries to let that come up when it may not be actually relevant and it may not serve that child to the highest level in that moment. With this, and understanding your little one's personality and what works well for them and how they are as a little character of their own and a fresh blank canvas, most of the time too. And then your personality, perhaps what you feel in your beliefs and perhaps some of your history and why you may think the way you do and go, "Okay. Now I understand that.

In this blog, we continue our miniseries on crying, and I'm going to be answering the question, is crying harmful?  The first thing I'm going to do is try and answer this question, is crying harmful? In a word, no.  Crying in and of itself as an act of a thing that we do, crying itself is not harmful. It can actually be helpful. It causes a release of feel-good hormones, which can actually help, which is why we sometimes say, "Oh, just have a good cry and let it out." We also have a whole movie genre dedicated to crying, the tearjerker! There's a reason why. Crying can actually be helpful in many ways. But rest assured, when your little one cries, when your baby cries, the crying itself isn't harmful to your child. It's actually communication, really in infancy, that's what crying is used for. In adulthood, it's more of an emotional thing. But in childhood, for babies especially, they use it to communicate. They don't have words. And so they cry to tell you that they want or need something. And that's pretty much the main use of crying in babies. Of course, they will also cry because they have pain. Pain causes crying. They will also cry if they are scared. They might also cry if they're cross or angry. That it's always going to be an emotion and there will be something triggering that. That they want or need something. And the cry is to tell you about it. So we can feel all those things without crying, but a baby needs to tell you about it because they don't know how to fix it. They don't know how to make the pain go away, so they cry. You have a pinprick, you stub your finger on a rose thorn, and you don't cry because you don't need to tell someone about it, or you could say with words that you are okay. When a toddler pricks their finger on a rose thorn, they're going to cry because they don't know how to make that pain go away and they need someone else to do it for them because it's all too much for them and they don't understand. So they cry to tell you about it. It's all communication in some form or another. the other things I really want to share, and there are lots of studies and there are lots of inconclusive elements to this. So I'll share what I can share with you to date. Studies have actually shown that crying does not release toxins. Crying itself does not release toxins. Toxins and stresses come from other emotions, sure, and they can come with or without crying, but crying itself is not a cause of toxins to be released. There's not an adverse stress response. It's just because of crying. And there's no long-term effects have been found on attachment or bond with parents or on a child's emotions or behaviour just because they have done a lot of crying.  So it's not the crying itself. Now, some of those things can come about because of other factors. They can be stresses involved. A child who's been through a really traumatic experience, perhaps had certain levels of abandonment go on in their life. All kinds of situations can cause stresses and cortisol levels to rise and reactions that can last, but not crying standalone, just crying. Crying is not the harmful thing in this mix.  The thing that I really want to share to help you is to understand why. If you know why the cry, then you've got the key. So we've talked about different reasons babies cry. Communication is the main encompassing one, but you do have pain, hunger, tiredness, anger, frustration, just sheer dissatisfaction, fear. And sometimes these cries will show up differently. For instance, angry cry, you often see narrow eyes and disengagement. Pain cries often have scrunched up eyes like a real pain. Fear often has wide eyes, can sometimes it can come on suddenly if it's like a sudden fear like, I don't know, big, loud noise. A big loud noise scares the little one. You'll see, there's almost like a "Huh." There's almost a pause. There's a shock. And then there's an outburst. That could be a fear cry. They're different,

This blog will give you three key takeaways to help you understand infant sleep and crying, and particularly focusing on the responding that comes with that. First thing I want to share with you is an understanding of the difference between responding versus ignoring. Responding is when a response comes. Whether that be responding with soothing, responding with an answer, responding with comfort, responding with a nappy change or with milk, or whatever it might be, it's a response. It means that your little one has a response, it might not be a response that they wanted, it might not be the exact response that they were looking for, but it is a response. So you are there, you are present. It's pretty much, that's the minimum requirement of a response, is that you come and show that you are present. Ignoring is when you don't react. It's like, I can hear that crying, and I'm not doing anything about it. I'm just going to ignore it and hope that it stops. In a nutshell, that's the difference between responding versus ignoring. Now, the thing I think that muddies the water, and that can confuse people, is the length of time it takes for a response to come. Does a slow response mean ignoring? Or is it just a bit of a delayed response? So sometimes you might be tied up with another child, a sibling, and one is crying and you're like, "Yep, okay. Right. I'll be right there." Or you might have a baby napping and they're sleeping peacefully so you take the opportunity to go to the bathroom, and then, oh gosh, baby's crying. And you're like, "Okay. Right. I'll be right there." And you just have to finish up and get over there. Sometimes there are things that delay your ability to respond. You don't have to respond instantly for it to still count as a response when the response comes. If you don't respond for a prolonged amount of time, and I'm talking half an hour or more, then you're starting to get to the point of, yeah, that's just ignoring. But minutes are fine. Anyone can wait minutes for a response. And actually, it's good too. It's good practice. Anybody can wait that length of time. Once that response comes, then everything's calmed down anyway. The second thing I want to share with you is the response that you bring, ideally, needs to be one that best suits the child's personality and you. It needs to be aligned, it needs to match. Now, there can be loads of different responses, of course. You can respond to a dirty nappy, a need for food, a need for comfort in all kinds of different ways. A response to pain is going to be different again. But when you're responding to just, I don't know, just almost like, for instance, with a wake up in the night, that response needs to suit that child. So some little ones respond better or receive a response of lots of comfort and physical touch and really knowing you're there. Some little ones prefer that kind of response. They do better with that kind of response. Others do better with the less is more, they're like, "Okay. Yeah, that's cool. That's fine." They're more easily calmed. So for some, just going, "It's okay, I'm right here," is going to calm them. Whereas for others, it's like, "Hey, hey, hey, I'm right here," and they need the full-on touch and cuddle and everything. And that's just personality differences. And that happens. And we are the same. The third thing you need to consider, is once you know what response does best suit your child and that you feel comfortable delivering, and you've got that all aligned, is to then be consistent with it. So every time you get that particular outcry, be this night wakings, which is the one that we're most commonly talking about here. We're calm. We've woken up again. Okay, and we've got another waking. Is to be consistent. Every single time that they get that same response, they get used to it then. They come to expect it and they come to respect it, and they are calm and they are happy.

In this blog, I am talking all about the impact on parents when babies cry. There are so many things about this, so I'm going to break this down for you. I'm going to give you three key pieces of information today that's really going to help you understand that and why perhaps you feel the way you do when your little one cries.  First of all, I want to share with you that we are wired, parents are wired, to respond to babies cries faster than any other sound that we hear. It's nature's way of wiring us for human survival, because when the parent responds to the cry of their young, it's to ensure their survival. So it's to ensure the survival of the human race, and actually you'll find it's completely true of other animals in the animal kingdom as well. The mothers are wired to respond to the cry of the young and fathers too .Knowing that is quite reassuring, because we know that, there's a wire trigger here, in nature, that's making me feel like this is like an emergency, emergency, fix it, fix it, fix it kind of thing, when a baby cries. Honestly, I still feel that way now when I hear any baby cry, even though my children are nine and 11 at the time of recording this. When I hear other babies cry, I do still feel that, I need to fix that, I need to make it stop. It's an intuition. That said, just because nature wired us that way doesn't mean it's right. And it doesn't mean that we need to go and fix it, fix it, fix it. Sometimes it trips us up in the same way that we are wired in nature, fear, fear is sent to protect us. Fear is something we feel to protect us from danger. Sometimes fear prevents us from being brave and doing courageous things that actually can get us phenomenal, fantastic results and outcomes and it holds us back. So in the same way, our wiring to respond to crying and to treat it like, "Oh my God, it's an emergency, got to make it stop," can actually trip us up and prevent us from taking a more logical, rational view on what's actually happening in front of us. So let me go into that in a bit more detail. What is the meaning that you give to the crying? Because the meaning that you give to the cry is going to have a direct correlation with your ability to manage it.  Let's look at that in another way. It's more about you in this context than the child. Have a look at that one coming out very soon, but when a child cries there is a meaning, there is a purpose, there's a reason why children cry. Babies cry, young babies cry more because they have the only way of communicating is by crying. As a parent, if you attach a meaning to the cry that is, "Oh my goodness, my baby's crying. They must be so sad and miserable." When actually the cry is actually saying, "Can someone change this dirty diaper? It's really uncomfortable." Then the meaning that we are applying to the cry and the true meaning of the cry are not aligned. Consider that for a moment because we may not have that meaning right in our minds and that will change how we respond. When we know the meaning, the response is going to be more fitting and it's going to make the crying stop and everyone will feel better much sooner. Knowledge is really powerful in this. And this is my third point for you really in that when you know, and you understand those cries, it gives you the ability to respond more effectively. You can create a response plan, when I have this kind of cry, well, then I need to do that. That gives you confidence. And with that confidence comes a much more blissful experience as a parent and for a little one, because you know that they're not going to be crying because their needs are not met. Every time they cry, if there's a need to be met, you meet the need, but you also start to learn to differentiate the wants from the needs. There's a need where it's like, "Okay, crying is the only way I can tell them that I need this." But then there may be wants. Little ones do cry because they want something even if they don't...

https://youtu.be/lx4Kmk1UcVk To conclude my little series on traveling with your little ones and maintaining the best sleep possible, this post is all about the return home. These tips are going to help you to get your little one's sleep back on track and get them sleeping really nicely at home when you've returned from travel or being away, or on a holiday, or something like that. Number one, the journey home itself. So when you're coming home a bit like the journey out, you have this random day, it's a transitional day. It's going to be a day where you may find you or your child might get more sleep than usual, you might get less sleep than usual. It doesn't matter, it's a transition. It's when you get back, that really makes the difference in getting back into your routine. When you come back, try if possible, it's not always possible, but try if you can to factor in a recovery day. That's the day after the travel day. So you've got your travel day and then a recovery day. If you can, if your timetable allows. That's going to give you the opportunity to just play with timing, whatever time we start, the day is fine. Wake up when your body clock's ready. And then, look at, where are we now? What time is it? Right, based on this wake-up time we need to have, or not have naps. Based on what happens there, we need to do what we need to do in order for bedtime to happen at that time, which is your time at home. So having that recovery day, it's like having a buffer zone to really sort it all back out. The second thing is home routine right away. Get into your home routine right away. Once you've got back and you've done that, you're going to be starting to think, right it's breakfast time at this time, this is our dinner time, this is when bedtime is. Just get back into that routine and rhythm. And particularly when it comes to your bedtime routine for little ones and the environment that they're in. If they are in their own room, if they spent a week sleeping in a room with a sibling, but normally at home, they're on their own, it's hard and fast rules back to normal. That's where you sleep, your bed, your room. If they are usually in their own cot, but they've been sleeping in a bed or a different sleep setting or in with parents on a holiday, back to normal, back to their own sleep space. Whatever the rules are at home, they need to come back right away. The third thing to remind you of is jet lag. If you have changed time zones, especially big ones, jet lag can last a week. It can take a week to really get back to normal. But you're going to encourage that along and you're going to help that along faster by getting into your local time and your routine based on the time zone you're back in. And by getting into those cues, the environments, the meal times, all those things that make up the home routine. Catch-ups as well. If you are, or your little one is tired, more than usual, have little catch-ups. It's okay. Don't think you've got to keep your little one awake to maintain the perfect bedtime if they're tired, just because perhaps they don't usually nap or they've had their usual amount of naps. If there's additional tiredness there, a little catch-up sleep, really won't hurt. And then still go ahead with your normal bedtime, so you can get that back onto the normal path. Take care and I hope that this helps you and your little one if you are travelling soon. Take our Quiz and get your free custom sleep plan today!

https://youtu.be/-YPNH-pEFCM The last couple of blogs posts have been about travel with babies and children, in this miniseries I am sharing as much as I can with you to make the journey easier, to make your time away more enjoyable and so that sleep doesn't just become a complete disaster. Next up is my sleep tips for you while you are away. So whilst you are on your holiday or vacation, whilst you're traveling, how can you make sleep much better than just leaving it to chance? My first tip for you for improving sleep or making sleep good whilst you're away with your children is to think about the routine but different. When I say routine but different, it means you want to have some kind of routine, some kind of rhythm going on. If they're napping, let's work out where they're going to fall, where those naps are going to sit in the day, and bedtime, where's that going to be? We do want some kind of rhythmicity, but it can be different to what you do at home. For example, it's quite common when we travel, especially if we're on a vacation with our children, that we might want to shift bedtime to be a little bit later. Perhaps if they're going to be dining with us, we might want to move bedtime a little bit later. Or if there's a kiddie's disco or a children's club or something that they're going to go to, again, it might just mean bedtime is a little bit different. If that's the case, will they be the kind of child to make up those hours and sleep in a bit in the morning? Or are you like me where you have a child that it doesn't matter when they go to bed, they'll always wake up at the same time in the morning? If that's you, you might need to factor in a nap in the day that perhaps doesn't normally happen at home or an additional sleep in the day that you wouldn't normally do in your home routine. So you just need to allow for these tweaks so that you can get into a holiday routine with sleep. The second thing I want to share with you is about sleep location. Often when we travel, our little one's sleep location changes. It might be that they are sharing a room when they wouldn't normally, either with a sibling or with parents or the whole family might be in one room. That can happen. Their sleep location for naps might change. Maybe they normally take a nap at home in a cot and now they're going to be taking a nap in their pram or their push chair stroller whilst out and about. Because, let's face it, we're on a vacation, we want to be out and having fun, right? So the location of sleep can change. Again, set it up for your holiday rules, your vacation rules, so that whilst you're there, that's what you do and they get used to it. Don't worry. They won't see this as home. They'll see this as a different environment anyway and what happens there is what happens there. Make sure that you set up the room for comfort and safety and have a nap setting that you know works so you can also all enjoy your holiday. I remember doing this with ours. I remember when they were in a double push chair and being away and we had a lovely routine, they'd have their lunch, they were all nice and fed and it was the hottest part of the day. They'd go into the double push chair, shades over, laid back, and we would go for a nice walk which was perfect after lunch, they would nod off to sleep, we could park up in the shade with them, sun loungers, books, and enjoy whilst they would take a nap and it was just lovely. So it can work really, really well. I'm not saying it always goes that smoothly, but it can do. The same with bed times. Number three, bedtime routines. You can shift this. There's options here, and it will depend on what you're doing, where you're going, where you're staying, who you're with. You might be away with family, for instance, or staying at somebody's house, or you might be in a resort or one of these lovely places where you have the children's clubs. There's so many different setups on holidays for fam...

https://youtu.be/yNdjTUWlxeo This blog is the next in the minim series on traveling with babies and children, we're focusing on time zones and the tips for getting through the change of time zones, on the way there, when you come back, how you can manage them whilst you're away. The number one tip I want to give you about time zones when it comes to traveling with little ones is consider the travel day, first of all, as an opportunity to transition. So whether you are taking a night flight or you are driving all day long, that day is going to be a little out of routine. It's going to be a little different to the norm. Naps may or may not happen at the same time as they normally would. And the bedtime might shift. It's just an odd day, right? It's not going to be the same as normal. So use that as an opportunity. If you are traveling to a different time zone, use that as an opportunity to get adjusted. And it's just almost like it's a blank canvas then. The second thing I want to share with you is when you arrive. When you arrive get onto local time. I don't care if it's one hour difference or five hours difference. Get onto local time straight away. And that means start getting your body into the rhythm of the day where you are. So your mealtime's full at that time in the new time zone, breakfast, lunch, dinner. Your bedtime is at the time on the new time zone straight away. None of this, "Oh, wow. I know it's this time, but for me, body clock feels like this time," or you're thinking about your child where they must feel like it's this time. Don't think like that. That's psychologically going to hinder the adjustment. This goes as much for adults as it does for children. But with children, you need to use the subliminal messages of the environment and the routine to help their body clock to shift into gear into the new time zone. It may not be perfect, but it will certainly help. So mealtimes, bedtime routine, the light itself, the sun rising and setting, are all also going to aid the signals to the body clock to go, "Oh, okay, hold on. Yes, it does feel like more like lunchtime now, actually." And that will help. The third thing to understand with this is actually about the return, when you come back home. So when you get home, you've got the same thing. You need to switch back to local time straight away. No like, "Oh yeah, but I feel like it's tea time and it's actually only just the morning." Yep, sure. You might feel that way. But have breakfast if it's the morning. Have lunch in the middle of the day. Go to bed at the right time. You may have to do a little manipulation with little ones with naps. You might want to go, "Okay. Do you know what? We are going to skip a nap today because we need to get the bedtime back on track." Or you might say, "Oh, we need to add in a nap today so that I can keep my child in a good place and get bedtime at the right time at home." Whatever you need to do, especially on that first day back, whatever you need to do to get back into your local time and rhythm as soon as possible. It's all about rhythmicity at the end of the day. And our body clocks and circadian rhythms are a natural thing. But when we shift from time zones, rather than letting nature take its course over maybe a week or more, we can actually get there quicker by helping with all these triggers and cues around us and rhythm to our day. Hopefully this will make your time zone travel a lot quicker. It can take up to a week to overcome jet lag, especially if it's quite a big difference. And especially when you go from west to east, it feels worse. So that's worth knowing as well. Take care and in my next post I am going to be talking about sleep tips for your children while you're away. So if you're on a vacation or a holiday and you've taken some time out to travel, some tips for sleeping when traveling. Take our Quiz and get your free custom sleep plan today!

https://youtu.be/_qO6v4m3lNY In this blog I'm going to be giving you some amazing tips for when you travel with your children, and specifically in this post, focusing on the journey itself. I'm going to give you the three best things that you can think about when it comes to traveling with children. The three things that I want to share with you to make that journey and traveling with children a lot less stressful. Number one, entertainment. It seems obvious, but actually the entertainment that your little one's going to be most entertained by is going to vary at every age. What entertains a younger baby toddler age is going to be very different to a four, five, six, seven year old. It's going to change, it's going to evolve. What you can have for entertainment is going to vary depending on the form of travel, the form of transport. Are you on an airplane, a car, a coach, a train a ferry? The ability to move around might be different. Whether they can use wifi screens or whether they need to have books. What forms of entertainment are going to be appropriate for the journey. Consider that, what's going to be appropriate for the form of transport, and also for the age of the child. Also, think about what could be new. Now, this applies at all ages. What could you whip out that's brand new for the journey? For instance, for a toddler, could you get a little bunch of party bag type toys, brand new things that they've never seen before that you pop into a bag. Then, one by one, on the journey you're like, "Oh, what's this? Oh, what's this? Because we all know that, despite the fact they may have their favorite toy, it's the new one, it's the different one, the thing they haven't seen before, that's the most exciting that's going to captivate their attention and keep them content and entertained for a period of time. Being able to pull out a new unseen before thing is definitely going to be great and that can evolve at different ages. For a child a bit older, it could be a new book to read or a magazine. Or, if you like listening to audio books, or even in the car, for instance, it could be that you get that new audio downloaded and onto the device, the headphones prepared, everything you need so that they can have that brand new audio and be excited and get into that as well. Newness is also a great thing to think about when it comes to the entertainment. Think about where you're going to be able to provide that entertainment. Do they have restricted movement? What format it should come in and how you can make it new and exciting and different? Number two is food. Make sure you are equipped, no matter what form of transport you're taking, with that journey, make sure that you are able to provide food and water because we all know, and we are like it a bit too as adults, but children in particular, they struggle with their mood and their emotions when they're hungry, not hangry, and thirsty. Their hydration and their food is going to be really important. Just make sure you're armed with that. Think ahead, plan ahead, and also plan for delays and unexpected situations where you may be stuck without food or water. Plan ahead and be equipped. The last one, is that the sleep rules change. You're not going to be, necessarily, letting them sleep at the same times as they normally would or in the same space. They may be sleeping in an airplane seat or a car seat for a period of time. They may sleep at a different time. Don't worry about the nap schedule. Don't worry so much about the routine that you normally have, because if you are in transit, when you're traveling, you feel different. You might sleep on a plane during the day when you wouldn't normally, because that motion lulls you off. It's okay. It might actually prepare you for a bit of a deficit in your sleep when you arrive, or with the times zone. It really doesn't matter. What I'm saying here is let down any stresses about meticulous rules with t...

https://youtu.be/7OGW7GhXCX0 In this blog I am talking all about the early-rising child. The previous 3 have been focused on how to spot where the overtiredness is coming from that causes the early rising. I've talked about how to cope with early rising and strategies to solve all of this and what I want to share with you here is how to stay on track. Once it gets good, how do you keep it there? You've done the work. Everything I've talked about in the last few blogs, you've implemented it beautifully, and you've finally overcome those early wakings, and your little one is waking beyond 6:00 AM. Feels great, right? But I'm here to share with you how you can keep it that way because the problem is most people reach that stage, and it goes back off track. It falls off track again, and sometimes it happens with the seasons because it's got lighter outside in the mornings, and it's waking them up and that kind of thing, but I'm going to share with you exactly what you need to do to stay on track. First things first, don't get complacent because one of the reasons lots of people do fall off track is because they get complacent, so all the things that they set up and all the things that they've done to get this resolved, they kind of stop doing them. They think they don't need to anymore. "It's fine. They're sleeping fine now. Don't need to do that." Probably you do, so don't just let these things go. Don't get complacent. It's also really important to know that some little ones are just wired that way. They are wired as early risers, but that doesn't mean you have to succumb to wake-ups that happen before 6:00 AM. It does mean they may always be a 6:00-ish or just after 6:00 AM waker, which is an early-ish waker. My own eldest is like that. I've always had to stay on top of it, always over the years, because whilst I would not accept anything pre-6:00 AM, because that's still nighttime, I've had to do the work and keep up on everything to make sure that he is waking after 6:00 AM. So, where all his school friends might go to bed later, that's fine. They can manage it because they sleep in later, but because I know that he absolutely won't, I have to keep his bedtime earlier because even if he went to bed later, he wouldn't wake up any later. Some are wired that way, so you need to know your child and what's best for them. Then, you've got to stay on top of it. So, what can you do to stay on top of it? A really obvious but easy one to forget is to keep the room dark. We are so sensitive to the light, some more than others, but being dark means sleep time, and it tells our brains that, whereas light helps to... well, actually it prevents the sleepy hormones, and it suggests that it's time to wake up, and it wakes us up. This is why these wake-up lights work and these fancy blackout blinds that people have that come up to wake them. I mean, how amazing is that? It's because it works, and it's how we're wired. In fact, since the days of sleeping in caves, that's how our whole body clock and the circadian rhythm was born was through light and dark, night and day. So, keep the room dark. Use everything you can find to black out the natural daylight. I've known people put tin foil into the windowpane with all kinds of tape and all sorts. There are stick-up blackout blinds. There is static stuff you can put on the window, on the glass, that is a blackout peel-off thing, blackout blinds. I've often been a fan of blackout blinds followed by blackout curtains over the top tucked in around the edges so that you really are cutting out all the natural daylight. The only kind of light you want is a dim, amber or red-colored nightlight if you need some light, so keep it nice and dark. This is especially a problem here in the UK when we go into our lighter months, and the light starts creeping in. Also, be wary of that coming in the hallway and the doors, the bedroom door, so you may need to make sure the bedroom door is shut,

https://youtu.be/a_8qiXFzO_g This blog is all about coping when your little one is waking really early every morning, every day. I'm going to be going through three key things that you can use to get through this while you are working on the strategies I shared in the last two blogs about how to actually overcome this problem, and get your little one sleeping beyond 6:00 AM every morning. But, I understand that that can take some time, and so, this is for you whilst you're going through that. Tip number one for you on how to cope when your little one is waking really early for the day is to try to take turns in being the parent that gets up if possible. Now, I understand that's not possible if you're on your own, but if you're not alone, if somebody else can take a turn either every other day or every few days so that you can rest and have a little bit longer in bed, it makes all the difference because once you get up, it's really hard to go back to sleep. And even if your little one goes back to sleep, it's so difficult for you to then go back to sleep. It's like you're almost waiting in anticipation. So. You almost do have to resign yourself to the fact that you're going to be awake now to some level for the day, and having somebody else that can go and take their time with that. Just knowing, psychologically knowing, that it's not my turn today, I can stay in bed. Just by staying, laying down, and keeping your eyes closed even if you are awake and can hear what's going on, you're more likely to, first of all, fall back to sleep, and second of all, you're also more likely to get some degree of better rest than if you actually get up. So, knowing that somebody else can take care of it and that you can just rest is better than nothing. I actually quite like the two days on two days off pattern. And so, if you could take those kinds of times with a partner, then that could be great because then you get two solid nights where you know that you do not need to get up and respond and that you can wake up when you are ready to start the day, or at least after 6:00 AM. Take turns, if you can. If you can't, if you are on your own, if you're a single parent, then is there an occasion or perhaps once a week could you have a relative come and stay with you or a good friend come and stay with you? Or could you go and stay with somebody that would be willing to help and take a turn? Even if it is just once a week on a weekend and give you that little bit of extra rest. It's not as powerful as if you can do this every other night or every couple of nights, but it's better than nothing, and it's really worth asking for that help. The second thing that you can definitely, definitely do is grab a nap in the day. Now, I know that sounds simple, and I can already hear you going, yeah, if only it was that easy. It's not easy, is it? It's not easy to go, right quick, okay, here's an opportunity, little ones to sleep. I'm going to go to sleep. And I have talked about this in other episodes. We don't just go, oh yeah, just go to sleep. It's not that simple, but if we just dismiss it and we don't even try, then we are definitely not going to get that sleep. Here's what I recommend. Take that opportunity when it comes, when your little one's having a nap, and the opportunity is there. Do not pick up your phone, do not do the laundry, do not do anything. Just stop. Go and sit down somewhere quiet. Dim the lights, make it dark, sit back or lie down even, rest your head, put your feet up, close your eyes and do some nice deep breathing. If you are good at meditating, then do that. If you're not, you're quite a busy minded person, then just let your thoughts flow, but just breathe and really focus on taking those breaths because I know it sounds woo woo, but it's so powerful just taking those deep breaths, and letting it all go will put you into such a great state of relaxation, which stands you in good stead for a possible nap.

https://youtu.be/6LggieGbXos This blog is all about early waking and specifically today, we're talking about how to overcome the early waking. This is all about early waking sleep training, we will delve into the steps you need to take and my three R's on early rising. Number one, you've got to spot where the overtiredness is coming from. If you haven't already make sure you've read my blog on early wakings and spotting the signs of overtiredness, I shared why little ones wake early and we're talking about 4:00 or 5:00 AM wake ups. We're not talking about night wakings, about how that happens, why that happens and the things you need to do to find out where the over tiredness is coming from in the first place. The first R is Resolve the overtiredness. What do we need to do? Do we need more nap time? Do we need to work on resettling a premature waking from a nap? That's when the nap should be maybe an hour and a quarter, but they're waking up after 30 minutes. Do we need to work on nap resettles or do we need earlier bedtimes or do we need a more consistent bedtime? Is it the wake window we need to shrink down or alter slightly or tweak the timing. We need to resolve the place where we can see that our little one's falling short of sleep and overcome that overtiredness. We know that's not as simple as it sounds. We don't just flick a switch and suddenly, we fixed it. They're not overtired anymore, but if we can spot it and we know where it's coming from, then we can apply a strategy to resolving it and helping to replenish their sleep and build up a more fulfilled sleep tank. That's going to be the key element to resolving this early waking. We do have two other things that we need to do simultaneously whilst we're over there working on replenishing that sleep tank. Second R for you is to respond to the early waking consistently. What do I mean by that? If they wake up 5:00 and sometimes you are like, "Shh, back to sleep, back to sleep." And sometimes you go, "Oh, whatever, I'm awake, let's start the day," or sometimes they get milk or sometimes they get loads of attention and other times you're like, "No, not happening." It's a mixed bag of response or sometimes it's feed and sometimes it's a nappy change and sometimes it's start the day and sometimes it's not. We need a consistent response and we need a response that says it's still nighttime. The environment they're in needs to say it's still nighttime. You and your body language need to say it's still nighttime. The whole message needs to come across that it's not time to get up right now. If you start conveying this just with cues and environmental cues right from baby stage, then when they're into toddler and preschooler age, this is so much easier because they can then recognize, oh, okay, yeah. This means it's nighttime. This means it's daytime. Mummy or daddy, they don't talk to me when it's nighttime. Maybe you just whisper. You might give them a little, "Shh, shh, back to sleep." You might communicate. I'm not saying don't communicate. You might communicate in a nighttime mode, but it's very different to how you are with them in the daytime and that's a brilliant signal and trigger that you can demonstrate right from baby stage. Respond consistently however, that may look. Now, we work out bespoke responses to families when we work with families one on one, because it can very much depend upon the child's individual personality, age, developmental stage, everything. There's so many factors that will determine the best response to givI can;t give you all of that detail here but what I can say is that it does need to be consistent. Once you know what it is, be consistent with it every single time so that they know exactly what to expect, and then they can count on you and then they can rely on you, which actually builds trust. The next R I have for you is reward. We all respond to rewards and incentives. That's how life works.

https://youtu.be/Buv4Z1vA2-g The focus for this blog is why does my baby wake so early? Why, why, why, why, why, why? I know what it feels like myself because when my eldest was little, this was a big problem for me, in fact he's a little bit wired that way. So I know firsthand what you're going through if you have an early riser on your hands. In this blog I'm going to go through everything to explain why this happens, to give you the insight and ability to overcome this problem once and for all. Starting at the beginning, why does your baby wake so early in the morning? When I say early, I'm talking pre 6:00 AM. In our general culture that we live in, where people work a nine-to-five job, we have our school hours etc, we're talking 6am or beyond is actually perfectly acceptable. I know some people might not like to hear that. But, if it's pre 6:00 AM, it's still nighttime and you do not need to start the day that early. So why is your little one waking up at that time? If you're getting wake-ups before 4:00 AM, then it's a night waking and that's another kettle of fish. Wake-ups at 9:00 PM, at 11:00 PM, 2:00 AM, they could be for all kinds of reasons. But the typical early waking time is usually between 4 and 5:00 AM, maybe 5:30, but roughly between 4 and 5:00 AM. That's what we call early waking. If your little one is doing that, then the reason is they are overtired. Now, think about that for a minute. They're overtired, so they're waking early? Makes no sense, does it? You'd think they're overtired, they're tired. They need to sleep in. They need to sleep longer. That's what you would think. But like most things with sleep, it's completely counterintuitive, which is why our lovely instincts and intuition when it comes to this, lets us down because what actually is going to work for a little one's sleep is usually counterintuitive. And that's why it's the hottest topic among parents. So yes, early wakings are caused by being overtired. It's to do with how it reacts in the body and how over tiredness creates actually a bigger influx of hormones that actually keep you going and keep you stimulated. And that's why we wake up more. You may have had this yourself when, if you've been traveling, maybe long haul and multiple countries and you've got to an airport and you're like, "Oh my God, I just need to sleep." But you can't. And I've got to get that next flight and you power on and you power on. And then all of a sudden you feel, "I'm not tired anymore." And you haven't slept, but you're thinking, "I'm over it. I don't even feel tired anymore." That's because your body has released these hormones to keep you going and you push past that tired window and you're actually overtired, but you feel wired. Little ones will often do this. They will zone out to sleep. They will have a certain amount of sleep, but then they're awake and they can find themselves awake and wired because they're overtired. But why? Where's this overtiredness coming from? That's the first thing you need to look at. I want to run through a few examples for you right now, so that you can start to understand, why is my little one overtired because it might not be obvious. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn't. First of all, let's look at naps. How many naps a day did your little one ought to be having? And for how long should each nap be? Because sometimes you might think they're napping a lot, but actually they're napping very short like cat naps, so the quality of the nap isn't great. So it's about the length and the quality. Also, motion naps, so naps that are induced by motion or kept going by motion can often, not always, but often be less of a quality nap as well because they going into deep sleep and it's like the motion is just keeping them down and keeping them dozing. Like when you nod off in a car or on a plane, as a passenger. You do that whole head thing and it's like, you're sleeping,

https://youtu.be/9IueYK86oNs This blog is all about dropping the nap, when nap times are no more. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I know people have mixed opinions on that but we will go through when is the best time for this to happen, how you can make it easier on your little one and avoid having it unravel and just destroy nighttime sleep. When are little one's ready to drop the daytime nap? Actually I would always recommend keeping it as long as you can, but certainly up to age three. Around age three, they may show signs of wanting to drop the nap and some are ready. Some may show signs and not be ready and others aren't ready until they're four or even over the age of four. So it's quite a broad spectrum of time as to when they're truly ready, but don't worry, because I've got some answers for how you can make this a gradual thing, which sounds weird because you'd think it either has to be a nap is there in the day or it isn't, but actually there are some little tricks you can use to make it easier. Whilst your little one may need a nap or not need a nap, there's also the parent perspective on this because for some parents, it's a case of, "Oh no, please keep napping because that's my little bit of time to do some things and have some head space." Whereas other parents are like, "Phew, I don't need to fight this battle every single day anymore. We don't need it anymore." So there are mixed feelings and I would love to know which side of the fence you sit on the nap going completely. Is it something you are excited about or dreading? If you are lucky, in some cases and especially if you have a little one who does already nap well, if they've got their nice nap rhythm in place, they're doing their nice one nap a day, you're most likely to be lucky and to see the nap very naturally get shorter. This is the organic approach, naturally their nap times just become shorter. You know that they're okay because they've been napping for two hours a day, it's gone down to an hour and a half a day, maybe an hour and a quarter, and they're waking up just as happy and rested as they were. They're not waking up prematurely from a nap and crying and upset and cranky because when they wake up like that that's usually a sign they're not done, they're not finished. Perhaps something disturbed them or they just woke too soon. But that's a sign that they haven't actually finished sleeping. But if they're waking up quite happily in the same way they were when they were having two hours and an hour and a half, you just start to see it naturally get shorter. If you get that, then you are very lucky. It's a lovely way to just see it slowly, slowly, disintegrate and you know little one doesn't need it anymore. When that happens, they usually also carry the stamina to go for the rest of the afternoon and through to their bedtime quite comfortably because they are comfortably ready and they're showing that organically. Some little ones it's less obvious and things are a little messier. Maybe they've never been a great napper. Maybe they've never really taken enough sleep. So it's harder to tell because you can't really see that the nap's reducing because it was possibly too short anyway and you've maybe been doing backup naps and early bedtimes to compensate for as long as you can remember. So it might not be quite so obvious. That's when you want to use a little bit of that guide of age but also What else can we look for? Look at how bedtime and nighttime sleep is going. If your little one is settling quite smoothly to sleep at bedtime and sleeping soundly all night long, obviously they do wake, but resettling quite easily with or without your help, if they're sleeping well at night on the whole, then it is a good chance that they may be ready if you're seeing signs like suddenly we're finding it more difficult to settle at bedtime or we're finding it more difficult to take that nap.

https://youtu.be/Q-4R6xt_BfM We are talking naps again today, this time we are talking all about the dropping down to one nap per day. So that's when we're going from two naps down to one nap. Now this one can take a bit of time and it can cause a few hiccups along the way, but don't worry. I'm going to address all of that and give you the tools you need to make a smooth transition down to one nap a day. The first question is when do our toddlers or little ones feel ready to drop down to just having one nap a day instead of two? Usually it's between 13 and 17 months. Occasionally, we see signs around 12 months, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're ready to make the move. And sometimes little ones aren't ready until closer to 18 months. But typically between 13 and 17 months, this nap transition will start to occur, but this transition is longer than 3 naps to 2 naps. It can take a while. So don't despair. If you do have a little one that seems to want to make this transition on the earliest side, at 12 or 13 months, you're more likely to be in there for a slightly longer ride with this, where it might progress a bit and then go back a bit. Hold onto those two naps for as long as your little one seems to be needing them and taking them. If they are enjoying three hours a day, split over two sleeps in the day and sleeping well at night, then don't change it. Don't change it just because age changes or just because their friends are changing, stick with it because they're telling you that that's what suits them right now, when they are ready to make the change you will start to see signs. What are the signs? What you're going to see is probably one or the other of the naps becoming a little bit shorter in length or challenging to settle. So it could be the first nap or the second nap. Quite often, it is the second nap, but it could be the first nap. It might be that they take the first nap and they don't have quite so long. And then they really struggle to settle for the second nap. That's quite a common example and you just know that something's changing, something's shifting. Now I always like to give you what not to use as a sign and don't confuse this with actually a timing issue because sometimes people think, "We are ready to drop down to one nap now," when actually they're not ready to drop to one nap, they just have the timing of the two naps a little bit off. And so if the timing is off, you might find that you have bedtime struggles and feistiness at bedtime. And it's because the little one is either overtired or untied at bedtime. But that could be because the naps aren't placed quite right for them at this point in time. And that they're not having adequate awake windows or they're too long or too short. So always look at that first, whether it is timing related. On a two nap schedule, we're usually looking for about three hours in total and no more than three hours a week between sleeps, assuming they're having a good full nap. Short awake windows, if the nap is shorter than we would like, this can be a timing issue that can confuse us and let us think that actually little one's ready to drop a nap. Which might be the worst thing to do. So be sure. How do you go about it? And what steps you take? Well, there are a few ideas and things that do work differently for different people, but I would definitely, recommend my favorite approach, which is where you nudge the first nap. So the morning nap later, so you extend the morning wake for window. So instead of waking up at let's say 6:30 and then nap time happening around 9, 9:30, we start pushing that out. Now we want to push it to as close to midday as we can get it. But sometimes especially if these are early stages with your little one making the transition, they're not quite ready to go all the way to midday. And you might find that they are falling asleep on their early lunch. So it might be 11, it might even be 10:30.

https://youtu.be/h5LgdneAUF4 We're going to be addressing the change to two naps a day, three to two naps a day. When does this happen? How do you know your little one's ready and how do you actually go about it? First and foremost, when exactly is a little one ready to drop from three naps a day down to two naps a day? Typically this is going to happen around eight to 10 months. Now that's typically, of course, you will always get little ones that fall outside of this. Of course, you get little ones that are premature and might be working to an adjusted age and some are just not ready until a bit later, but it will usually, more often than not fall in the eight to 10 month area. What signs might you see that confirm that your little one is ready to drop from three naps to two? Well, assuming you've got three naps established, it's going to be a lot easier to see because you'll know what normally happens and how you normally do your two core naps and probably your third shorter nap because that's often how three naps look. If naps are already a complete and utter shambles and you're like my little one's nine months and still only cat naps for 30 minutes at a time, all over the place anyway, then it is going to be a little harder to see and you might have to go a little bit by age and developmental stage. But if you're lucky enough to see the signs, here's what you may see. If you have three naps in place already, you might find the third nap, it becomes a little more difficult for your baby to settle for the third nap. So you find that the first two naps are fine, third one, more fussing, suddenly more fussing. And we're eight to 10 months, good chance that they're ready to get rid of that third nap. It could be that the first or second nap actually becomes a bit challenging too. Maybe they are struggling to settle for it or waking up a bit sooner from it than they usually do. And that could be a sign that they are ready to stretch that wakeful window. They're ready to be awake for a bit longer in between sleeps, again, it's telling us that their timings are shifting, the body clock you're shifting and their needs around sleep are shifting, quite possibly to drop from three naps down to two. What is not a sign is being cranky at bedtime. So if you are thinking, "Oh yeah, my baby's become really cranky at bedtime. And bedtime feels like a real battle, maybe we need to drop one of the naps." That on its own, isn't a sign. And just be really careful because actually that bedtime crankiness could be over tiredness. And by taking a nap out of the equation, you may make that worse. So just be careful and look for other signs and cues along with that, because exclusively just being cranky at bedtime is not a reason to drop a nap. Moving to a two nap routine, how do you do that? What does it even look like? When we go down to two naps, we are ideally looking for 90 minutes each, about an hour and a half times two naps. But what we do want is three hours a day. So if we can get three hours total daytime sleep and the spread is roughly even, you are okay, just if one's a little bit longer, the other's a little bit shorter, that's fine but we want them reasonably balanced. What we don't want is one being really short and one being really long, but reasonably balanced would be good. When you're making this transition and know the wakeful window, the wakeful window is around about three hours. So about three hours awake, then nap one. If we have a full nap one, about three more hours awake, then nap two. If we don't have a full nap one and nap one ends up going wrong or being a bit short, don't go the full wakeful window before nap two, you want to shorten the wakeful window a bit, to make up for the fact that the first nap wasn't long enough. Whilst you're making this move down to two naps and getting into a nice two nap schedule, you may find your little one is a little bit tired and you might find jus...

https://youtu.be/mw3pxnt3eJk If you are ready to overcome nap challenges and win a good night's sleep, then you are in the right place! This is all about new baby naps. We're talking about how napping looks in those first months, 0 to six months and everything you need to do to get your little one napping to the best that they can in those early few months. First and foremost, I just want to say that napping in the early weeks is pretty disorganized. It can be really quite haphazard. They're napping. It feels like they're almost napping 24 hours a day, and taking little sleeps on and off all the way through the 24 hour cycle. And that's normal. So if you're in that phase right now, don't worry, it will get better and it will become more organized and more rhythmic, but it is quite common for it to be a little more disorganized in those early weeks. However, there are things you can do to help to get it a little bit more rhythmic and a bit more organized. Some little ones do fall into this quite naturally really early on. And I find that's often when they are either on the larger side. So they have the capacity to sustain a bit more of their milk, and they're not waking up so much from hunger. If that's the factor, it can play a part. So their capacity, their weight and their size can have a role in that. That said, there is no reason why a smaller and breastfed baby who obviously we know that breast milk doesn't keep you feeling as full for as long, but there's absolutely no reason why a purely breastfed baby on the smaller side, can't sleep just as well as a larger baby or a formula fed baby. They all can do it. It's just that there are sometimes factors that can play a part in how easy or how challenging it comes. They may sleep little and often in the beginning and that's okay. What we want to look for is, when can they do their longer stretch and ideally we want that longer stretch to be in the nighttime, not in the daytime. I'm sure some of you can relate to this concept of' my baby is awake all night, but sleeps all day'. You can help shift that. We want to get their body clock and their circadian rhythms firing up so that it recognizes, the system recognizes when it's daytime, when it's nighttime. And you can do that with environmental cues, just things like making sure it's light and bright in the day and dark and dim at night. Those are simple signals to the brain as humans to know nighttime sleep, daytime wake up and light gives us stimulation and creates all kinds of chemical releases in the brain that we don't have so much when it's dark. Those things will help your little one to sleep better at nighttime and to feel more stimulated during the daytime. But that said, we do still want the daytime sleep to be there as well. Other things you can do are to really think about rhythms and cues beyond just the light and dark. And you are one of those things, yourself and how you act and how you relate to your little one. So when it's time for sleep, being in your kind of sleepy mode, which is to be calm, maybe quite placid, softly spoken to a whisper, quite subdued, sort of like nothing to see here, just one person, one on one, not lots of fussing and calm. You can be a sleepy influence on your little one, as opposed to when it's wake time and you've got your full voice. And usually we talk quite rhymingly to our little ones and your face is probably animated with eye contact and all that energy that creates a stimulation and interaction with your little one. So that differentiates when it's time to be awake, to interact, to play, to be stimulated. And when it's time to cut the stimulation out and calm down, they will take a lot of that stimulation influence from you. So it's important that you can adapt to which mode you need to be in. Another thing that happens a lot with the younger babies with the naps is they often happen on the parents or on the go. And we hear from lots of parents who say,

https://youtu.be/9MO50EID5XE In this blog I am talking about all things baby naps, the routine behind them and why they're important, we'll be leaving no stone unturned! When it comes to napping, why is it so important and why do so many of us get tripped up by these and spend our lives feeling like we are just trying to get the little one to go to sleep? It feels exhausting just thinking about it, to be honest. First of all, let me just explain that all of us, but particularly babies, we can only be awake for a certain amount of time, in any one stretch, before we need to have a sleep again and top up the tank and replenish ourselves and be ready to go again. As adults, that's usually in one block, in one chunk of the day, or in some cultures, napping is still a big part of life throughout adulthood as well. But babies, and particularly the younger they are, the shorter the amount of time they can go between sleeps and in between their sleeps, they need a nap. They need a chance to catch up and refresh. Without having those naps what's going to happen is a little one will get over tired and over tiredness is honestly the root of all evil when it comes to sleep, because being overtired actually causes a bigger deterioration in sleep as a whole. So we want to avoid them getting overtired, but also being overtired can cause crash out sleeps, so it can go two ways when you're overtired. It can cause a crash out, zonk out and you think you're winning. You think, "Oh, that is easy. My baby went to sleep easily and had a really good one." Yeah, that's an occasional big crash out catch up. But more often than not, what you see is more crankiness, more difficulty settling, more restless sleep, more disturbed sleep and more premature waking up from the sleep, so we need the naps. How do you get into a good nap routine and how does it all work? It's always changing and that's the thing. It's an ever evolving thing as they grow, because as they grow, they can go longer stretches between the sleeps and the sleeps can change in their shape and length. They start smaller, they go up and they go down again, so a new baby, a young baby, will sleep little often, whereas an older one will have maybe one or two longer naps, until they start to drop it completely. I'm going to be covering all of those stages in the next few blogs, so make sure you come back and check those out as I take you through the different stages. You might find that you are at one stage now and you want to come back and watch one of the other episodes a little later when your little one gets to that age. For now though let's think about nap rhythmicity and why is this important. Right from the beginning, if you can tune in to when your little one needs to sleep and how long they can be awake, you're going to help them to create that rhythmicity with their sleeps and with their naps. Knowledge is power with this. Knowing how long your little one is going to be optimally awake, before they need a sleep, is such a key bit of information because they don't tell you and we can't rely on them to show us and tell us. We talk about cues and signals, but usually with sleep, when we see the signals that they're tired like eye rubbing, yawning, crankiness, it's actually too late and we've missed the window. The ideal sweet spot, there's a 30 minute sweet spot, a 30 minute window where, if you can get your little one to settle to sleep in that 30 minutes, they're more likely to settle with less difficulty and they're more likely to sleep for longer, or for the length of time that they truly need. If you miss that 30 minute sweet spot, you may try too soon and they're under tired. They're not ready to go to sleep yet. But if you miss it the other way and you're too late, they're overtired and it looks the same. They fight it. They resist the sleep because they've gone past that sweet spot. They've released loads of cortisol.

https://youtu.be/MEb0zMGZ09M In the final part of my little bedtime series, this blog is all about putting a baby down for sleep when you just can't even get them from your arms to down. I know that problem and I have got the solution! You often find that you are stuck with your baby in your arms or on you and you know they need to lay down. Your arms are aching, you need a bit of free time too. Perhaps you need to express some milk or you've got just a few jobs to do or maybe actually you just deserve to put your feet up and have a rest but you can't relax because babies asleep again on you or perhaps you've even tried the sling, the carrier and they have to sleep in there and yep, you get a bit more space with your arms but let's face it, it's not ideal and it's not sustainable. It's okay now and again but what I don't want to see is you being in this place where you feel like it's the only way. It's fine if it's a way but if it's the only way and you feel like you actually cannot put your baby down for sleep, that's who this is for. Here are my micro steps for getting a baby down to sleep. This is something that I would recommend people do if they have a heavy reliance. If baby has got a heavy reliance on being on you to fall to sleep and if you do put your baby down, that's it, they're awake, they're crying again and you're like, ugh, it's just not worth it. This is something that I would also recommend for some people prior to starting my fade out approach because, the micro steps are what you need to do first. Once we've got through these steps then we can start step one of the fade out. What do we do? First thing you do, change the hold. If your baby typically falls asleep being held in your arms, try the shoulder position. If it's a shoulder position, try a side position. Change the position in some way. We want it to be noticeable. We want baby to be, hang on this isn't right. If they don't really care, try something a little bit different. It's not a big enough stretch of their comfort zone. Try something that's enough for them to be, hang on a minute, I'm not sure if I like this. We want them to notice it. Why? Because as I say, it's stretching the comfort zone. It's showing them that, hey, look, I've changed something but you are still okay. I'm still right here. You're still with me. You're still touching me. I'm still here for you. So they're realizing that, oh, there's a small change but I'm still safe. This is okay, I've got this. So make it subtle but significant. That sounds like a complete contradiction doesn't it, subtle but significant, but there's a reason, subtle but significant enough that they are aware of it. Next?. Think about creating a small amount of distance, small bits of distance each time. Perhaps you change the hold. We've now stretched the comfort zone there. Now can we create a bit of distance. Can we hold them in a way that's slightly further away. If it's a chest thing, can we get away from there? Sometimes people will do the lap hold so you're sitting and you're holding baby, cradling them but in a forward feet to tummy and head in hands way across the lap so there's a bit more distance there. Can you find a way to hold in a way that creates a bit more distance? When changing the hold and creating distance, you could also change parents. If it's always mummy that does it try daddy, if it's always daddy that does it try mummy, that can also be an option to make a small change but whilst still giving that comfort and reassurance. Whilst you're doing that, whilst you're changing the hold and creating that little bit of extra distance we want to reinforce other forms of comfort. A great one is the shush. The shush sound, it's a white noise sound that's reassuring. So reinforcing shushes, even if you don't think your baby needs it, you're going to use it later. By reinforcing the comfort of shush or whatever sound you want to make, really whispers,

https://youtu.be/GR1o5o1pPhE This blog in the bedtime miniseries is all about how you settle a baby to sleep at bedtime. I will be revealing what settling to sleep actually means and what it looks like. Why it's important and how it's going to help you with the whole picture of sleep all around and how to actually do it. Settling a baby to sleep. When we settle to sleep, us, children, babies, we call that part of sleep, the sleep onset. Meaning exactly what it says, it's the onset of the sleep, it's the beginning of the sleep, and it's how sleep comes about. So a baby will go through sleep onset several times a day because they'll go through the sleep onset at bedtime, then they will go through sleep onset for their naps. That's what sleep onset is, and so to settle a baby to sleep, we need to help them to get good at their sleep onset. But why? Why do we need to do that? Why is it important? Why can't we just rock them or push them around in a pram until they go to sleep and that's fine? Well, if that's fine and it works for you and you are happy, then that is fine. But here's why it's important to help a little one with their sleep onset. When a little one knows how to go to sleep and they can put themselves through that sleep onset effectively without needing you to do it for them, they're more likely to take the longer, more substantial stretches of sleep that their body actually wants and is ready for. Then when that cycle of sleep comes to an end, they're more likely to drift off into the next cycle of sleep like a miniature sleep onset. They're likely to repeat it almost subconsciously and go into the next sleep cycle, meaning to you is an even longer stretch of sleep. But for them it's lots of small stretches pushed together. They'll get better at falling back to sleep as well when they wake between cycles or partially wake. And it will also help with naps because when they settle to sleep at the start of the nap, they're more likely to take the full length of naps that they need rather than waking up after 30 minutes and going, "Hang on, I'm stuck. I need to do that sleep onset thing again." It's really important for all round health of a baby's sleep, and it's one of the first things you can teach them in terms of self-regulation. Because as they fall to sleep and they go through their sleep onset, they're actually calming and soothing in ways that you don't even see. So how? How do you do it? It sounds blissful, but how? It's not that simple, is it? Well, it's all about practice and you can practice from very early on. But the more you practice, eventually, they're going to get good at it like anything. They can't just do it all of a sudden, one day, magically, it takes practice. For people who have this sense that, "Well, they're not going to have a hard time falling asleep forever. They'll get up eventually." Yeah, they will, but through practice, and whether that's practice that you are consciously helping them to do or whether they just get there eventually through their own practice, then it's still practice. But it could take years, and I mean years, if you don't consciously help and guide them. Here's the best message I can give to any new parent and any parent of a baby, but also if you have a toddler or a slightly older one, you can still take this on board and you can still do this. It's as that parent, as that caregiver, when it comes to the sleep onset, think about not doing the whole job for them, and that's it. Don't do it all for them. Help, assist, guide, support. Those things are all great, that's your role, but don't just do it for them. Think about that and further on in childhood, you're not going to just do the homework for them when they find it hard. You're not going to ride their bike for them because they haven't got that skill yet. You don't do things for them, you help them, you encourage them, you show them how, you support them as they learn.

https://youtu.be/zTY5iPdjwl8 This is the second in my mini series about bedtimes, and we are going to be delving into what you do when you have a toddler who is getting up and down at bedtime and they just won't stay in their beds. You know what I mean? I'm sure when we've all been there. I'm going to be answering the key questions to help you overcome that exact battle. A toddler, particularly, getting up and down, getting out of bed repeatedly at bedtime when you know they're tired and you know they just need to go to sleep, it's so frustrating. All you want is to have that blissful little bedtime story, say goodnight and have a bit of an evening for yourself as well. Or maybe you have other children to tend to, but this one is dominating and taking up all of your evening. And then you end the day feeling stressed and fed up and resentful about the whole situation, rather than feeling fulfilled and satisfied, and having that lovely bedtime that you and your family deserve. What can we do about this? How can we stop a little one from getting up and down from their bed? We've told them. We've asked them. We've tried reward charts, and they still do it. Why? Why, Why? Why? Well, there is the question and this is the answer. The likely reason that your little one is getting up repeatedly and not staying put in bed is probably to do with the response that comes when they do it. What do I mean by that? What happens when your little one gets out of bed? Do you walk them back and tuck them in? Do you walk them back and tuck them in 10 times, then get cross and end up frustrated and telling them off. Or do you end up finding it funny and having a laugh? Do you show any forms of frustration or any forms of a game? Because likely your toddler either thinks it's a game or they're getting something out of an interaction. Now, when I say getting something out of it, it doesn't have to be positive. Little ones will enjoy any kind of interaction. They're not really so bothered about whether it's positive or negative. Whether you're praising them for it or telling them that's not what we want to see, they don't really care. They're getting that response from you so they'll keep doing it because they're getting the engagement. So what does your response look like? Now, some might say well, what then? Shall I just ignore them? That's not likely to work either because they'll just keep probing you and they'll just keep coming, and they're not really getting a direction from you. So how do you give a consistent and appropriate response to actually getting that little one to stay in bed? Well, the key word I said there is consistent. It needs to be consistent. The likelihood is, and we all do this, is that you send a big bunt of mixed messages. So the first time it's, "Come on now, back to bed." The second time it's, "Shh, shh. Lie down, get into bed." The third time you pick them up from the landing and carry them back and then tuck them in and say "Enough now. Go to bed." And you're sounding firmer. Maybe the third time they've asked for water so you've gone off and got them a cup of water. Maybe the fourth time mummy's had enough so daddy's come in and had a go. And it just is all mixed, mixed, mixed. Okay. And then little one might start testing other things like oh, what if I play with these toys? Or what if I move these things around? They like to strip beds, demand different pillows and all kinds of things to delay things and mix it up. And what they're doing is actually completely normal and part of intelligent brain development. They're testing if I do this, then what do you do? If I change my behaviour, will you change your behaviour? And they're testing to see well, when I do, what's this action going to get as a response? So your role as the parent is to give a consistent response, no matter what the action. If it's just a little get up, same response. If it's throwing teddies around the room, same response.

https://youtu.be/QCYdKWfdK3s Do you find yourself dreading bedtime every evening and feeling like, "Oh no, bedtime is coming again." It's a battle, it's exhausting, and you just want your little ones to go to sleep happily. In this blog I'm going to be talking about routine, particularly the bedtime routine. Why it's important, when you can start it, and what it should look like.. Routine. Bedtime routine. What should that look like for kids? And why is it important? The thing with a bedtime routine is it sets the scene that sleep time is coming and not just a nap, but that big, long sleep time. So even for us, as adults, teenagers, older children, we all really benefit from having that routine at bedtime. It also really helps to encourage the circadian rhythm, which is the body clock to stay into a nice, healthy rhythm. Meaning we tend to know instinctively when it's night time, when it's daytime. And studies have shown that even as adults, if we have a consistent bedtime every evening, we go to bed at the same time every evening, start the day at roughly at the same time every day, we are more likely to get better quality sleep, fall asleep more easily, and just feel fresher and brighter when we wake for the day. So it's important to instil this in our little ones right from the get go. Bedtime routine with children, it's like an instruction. It's like a trigger. It's a cue. So not only does it give them that rhythmicity, it's time to go to big sleep now, we have a big sleep, we start the day, we have meals, we have naps maybe. It's time for that big sleep again. It creates that rhythmicity and health in sleep. So it's really important and you can actually start a bedtime routine from as early as just a couple of weeks. So once you have your new baby home and you feel like you've got over the childbirth part and you're starting to think about these things. It's not really too early because a bedtime routine with a newborn is just going to be simply setting the scene with a few triggers and cues, a darkened room, perhaps that last milk feed, a lullaby, maybe a gentle rock or a placing down, the steps you do to put that little one down for sleep at bedtime is a bedtime routine. It doesn't matter how subtle it is, but those little triggers and cues from the environment can make a huge impact on a new baby and set them up really, really well for healthy good nourishing sleep. You can never start too soon. What actually can you put into a bedtime routine? Well, that is going to change and evolve as your little one grows. I'm sure what you do in your bedroom routine has changed over the years as well. So it will change. But with children, the key thing to remember with bedtime routine is to do the same steps in the same order at pretty much the same time for bedtimes. So for example, once you decide bedtime is coming, that's the start of the bedtime routine and it ends with them going to sleep. So everything we do needs to be leading towards sleep. We want to come away from the normal busyness of the daytime and the atmosphere of daytime, which might mean we go from being downstairs in kitchen, living room, busy areas to we say goodnight to any other family members and one person so that it's less stimulating, take the little one to the bathroom. You do your bathroom activity, whether that's a bath or a shower or just a little wash, whether it's baby massage, applying lotion or kick about with no nappy, again, whatever stage your little one is at, your routine steps may look slightly different, but bathroom activity will happen. They've all got to brush their teeth at some point. So we're going to have our bathroom activity and then from there into the room that they will sleep in. Now this bit is important. So many people will go and do the bathroom a bit and then go and watch some TV or take them to another room or then see another five family members and it's all stimulating again.

https://youtu.be/afjTYssbN5s How did the spring clock change go? How has it been with that one hour forward that the clocks just did to us? Have you managed to get over that yet? Are you feeling like you're on track with the new time and feeling refreshed by spring, or are you a walking zombie and feeling exhausted because that one hour, it feels like a huge jet lag to you? It affects everybody differently. Some manage that change way more smoothly than others, and both adults and children. How have your children been? Have they been sensitive to it or breezed it? This kind of thing, these clock changes are really, really impactful on the human body and brain in a way that lots of people don't even realize. You think it's just one hour, but it can have a massive, massive impact. In fact, a Swedish study that showed the risk of having a heart attack actually increases on the weekdays after the spring forward clock change. That's a massive, massive factor. Both the clock changes have been linked with increased road traffic accidents, accidents in the workplace, and injuries due to accidents in the work place, it does crazy things to our minds and brains. Just one measly hour. It can have that much of an effect. And so actually the subtle differences you might see could just be sheer tiredness, maybe a little bit more moody, clingy, grumpy, fractious kiddies, or maybe not quite such patient parents. It could be anything. But just know that you're not alone and actually that it's not just one measly hour. It's a big impact on the body. I hope that it is going well for you and that you are managing to get over the difference in the clock change. But here are some ideas for you if you're struggling or if you're like, "Oh my God, it's the worst thing. Ever since the clock changed, my child's sleep's gone completely off track." And I'm going to be hearing this for the next few weeks, if not a few months, because this is what always happens. The clocks change, and then parents call us and go, "Ah, it's all gone wrong." So to help you and to hope that it doesn't all go wrong, the biggest and most important thing that I can recommend that you do is get into routine or rhythm right now that is in line with the time now. Make sure that you are starting the day and your little one is awake and starting the day, at the same time, every day, rather than having lie ins some days and up early on other days, try to start the day at roughly the same time every day. Try to ensure that they are having adequate daytime sleep if they are still young enough, and that those sleeps happen at the same times of day, each day, where possible. I know that's not always as easy as it sounds. Make sure that you and your little ones are all going to bed at pretty close to the same time every evening. And that can be hard for us adults, especially, the weekend comes stay up a little bit later, but if you're struggling with this clock change, that kind of rhythm is going to really help you. Start the day at the same time every day and end the day at the same time every day, your body will thank you. It will know where it's coming from. It will be like, "Okay, good. This is nighttime. This is daytime." And it will get into that rhythm a whole lot quicker and easier. Something that will also help and add to that are things like meal times. So eating at regular times, similar times, each day will also help. Again, it's sending your body those cues and those messages of the rhythm of your day and then that sleep time comes. So it's going to prepare the body better. It also, without going too sciencey on you, it also will have an effect and impact on things like the melatonin production, which is your sleep hormones. It will help to trigger you for sleep, rather than you fighting against it and trying to get yourself to sleep when you don't want to or vice versa, wanting to sleep badly and just not being able to that's the worst. Routines,

https://youtu.be/G5YFLDw01f0 We have got the strategies for to help you and your little ones be able to handle the spring clock change where the clocks go forward an hour. We are going to recap my three preferred approaches that I believe can help any one of you to get your little one sleeping soundly through this clock change. Make sure you keep reading to get a plan in place to leap forward into Spring. The first approach to managing this clock change is the gradual approach. Now, this approach is where you are going to move bedtime earlier by 15 minutes each night, starting on Wednesday. The clocks change on the last Sunday of the month at night. So Wednesday night we go 15 minutes earlier than usual, Thursday night, another 15 minutes, so we're 30 minutes earlier than usual. On Friday night, we're going to move another 15 minutes, so we'll be 45 minutes earlier going to bed than usual. That way by Saturday night we are that last 15 minutes earlier. So we are a whole hour earlier than the usual bedtime. If bedtime is normally or sleep time is normally 7:00 PM, that means that we are going to move that in 15 minute increments until we are at 6:00 PM. This is the gradual approach. Now what this means is, by Saturday night, your little one goes to bed a whole hour earlier than normal, but they haven't really felt that great big drastic jump in change of bedtime. Meaning they can sleep for their usual number of hours through the night, but wake up at their usual wake up time because the clocks will have moved during the night on that Saturday night into Sunday. The gradual approach is definitely the best way to go if you have a younger baby or a young child who's very sensitive to small things. If they notice every little difference, if there's somebody who notices difference in feel, environment, sound, little time changes, then this is going to be the right approach for them. Big change doesn't work for them. If you have a slightly older one or a really easygoing baby, who's just really quite flexible, maybe they're not quite so rigid in their timings and can manage a bigger difference without it really noticing, then you might want to take one of the next two approaches. So the second one is to meet in the middle, it's a half an hour difference. So instead of going to bed at your usual time of let's say 7:00 P.M. We are going to go earlier by 30 minutes at 6:30 P.M. on the Saturday night. So you just change nothing up until Saturday night, 30 minutes, we're going to meet in the middle with the clock change, and that way the night sleep is going to be taking us roughly to the same wake up time in the morning with that change of time in the night. It's good for those who, the whole hour earlier to bed would be too much, but they don't really need those tiny little changes each night from Wednesday. The third option is the all in one go. One fell swoop, we just move bedtime earlier by one hour on Saturday night so that they sleep for their normal number of hours and wake up at the new time on Sunday. It's as simple as that, it's a whole hour earlier, but it's really quite tricky to do that with a child who is just not tired an hour earlier. So this is going to work great for somebody who's over tired, who's really ready for sleep and could quite easily go to bed an hour earlier. I bet a lot of you could do that. But if you have a little one who's maybe still having a nap during the day, or they're just not going to be tired enough to go to bed a whole hour earlier, especially little ones that are taking lots of naps still, they're probably not going to be ready to move bedtime by a whole hour earlier, and therefore you're going to want more of a gradual approach. It's very different to the autumn clock change when we move the bedtime later, because it's a lot easier to keep yourself awake longer, or to keep a little on awake longer than it is to make somebody tired sooner. That's the big difference.

https://youtu.be/Ug2MT5iNHok When the clocks go forward and we spring forward an hour, how do we get the best from our little ones sleep and how do we avoid them completely coming off track and not being able to sleep very well, this is Part 3 of the Clock Change miniseries and I am giving you my third approach and option, which is the All In One Go approach. I'm going to explain to you how this is different in the spring to how it works in the autumn, and why you may or may not want to go with this option. Let me explain how the All In One Go works. It's actually quite simple, in that, you just move the bedtime earlier by one hour, all in one go, and you do that on the Saturday night. So the clocks are going to change during the night between Saturday and Sunday. When you go to bed on Saturday, they're going to change by the time you've woken up on Sunday. And the All In One Go approach is to move bedtime earlier on that Saturday night. So if your little one is usually going to bed and falling asleep for 7:00 PM, on Saturday night, we're going to make it 6:00 PM, a whole hour different. That way, when they go to sleep, they will sleep their normal number of hours through the night, and then wake up at their normal wake up time, because the clock will have jumped forward an hour during sleep. That sounds pretty straightforward, right? That's pretty simple, we just move bedtime earlier by an hour. But here's some reasons why you may or may not want to go for this. This approach means that you need to be able to go to sleep one hour earlier than you normally would, a whole hour earlier. Now, normally I would say, if your little one is very sensitive to change and to times, if they're a younger baby and they're taking lots of naps in the day, then every minute really counts, and they're going to notice this is a big jump, it's a big expectation. Whereas, the easier-going ones and often the older children can normally cope with a bigger change, like a whole hour change in one go. But that's a lot easier to do in the autumn than it is in the spring. Why? Because in the autumn, we move our bedtime later by an hour. And it is much easier for the human body to stay awake for an extra hour than it is to go to sleep an hour sooner, because you have to be tired enough. We can be tired and keep ourselves awake an extra hour, more easily than we can make ourselves sleepy enough to go to sleep an hour earlier. And that's one of the biggest differences in the spring compared to the autumn clock change. So have a think about how your little one might be. Do you think they are tired enough to go to bed an hour earlier? In some cases, this could be the perfect opportunity if you know that your little one is exhausted, has been maybe really struggling and needs some extra sleep. And actually, going to bed an hour earlier might be the absolute best possible thing, and here's a great opportunity for it. But on the flip side, if you think, "No way, my little one will not be tired." Perhaps they're still having a nap in the day and it just won't work, or maybe you need to alter something there to make it work. But if you just think that falling asleep an hour earlier is not going to happen, then in that case, you want to have a look back at the last two blogs where I covered different approaches to make this a bit more gradual and make the transition a little less sudden, and help take the time with it. There is no right or wrong answer here, just options and suggestions to try to smooth that change into the new clock time, it' about what is best for your child. I'd love to know which approach you're going for with this coming clock change, why not pop us a message over on our social media to let us know and how it goes. Take care, sleep well and if you want to know even more about sleep before then why not download my Sweet Dreams videos full of tips and tricks for getting your little ones to sleep soundly.

https://youtu.be/lVgfPnFz1WY This weeks' Blog is all about siblings and when they're room sharing and the effect that that can have on your little one's sleep including the all important; how you can make this work harmoniously and have siblings that share a room and sleep as well. The first thing I'm going to get you to ask yourself is why, why are your siblings going to room share first of all? Is it because it sounds lovely? It might just be that idea of, I want them to share a room. I would love for them to be together. And if we can make that work, brilliant. But you've got to ask yourself whether it's a nice fantasy idea or whether it's necessary. In some cases, it's going to be necessary. It's going to be a case of there are not enough bedrooms and the siblings have to share. And that's fine. But if you're battling with trying to get two siblings to sleep soundly and share a room, just ask yourself, is it worth it right now? And would it be better to actually work on improving their individual sleep in separate rooms until they're sleeping a little bit better and then bring them together to room share. II think it's really important to ask yourself a question and just think that through first before we delve into actually conquering sibling room sharing. In the longer term siblings will become quite resilient to each other especially when it comes to noises and sounds, things that might wake them up. Try to bear in mind that what might disturb them in the early days or initially when room sharing, they will get used to it and once they're in a deep sleep, they're not going to be disturbed by much at all. It's only really during light sleep that things, outside noises and things like that can actually wake us and rouse us from sleep. So they will become more used to each other. That will generally happen with time,but there may be a period of going through the pain barrier to get there, at which point until they are used to the noises of their siblings and the room they will wake up a little bit. This is another great time if it's an option to have them in the same room or separate that you can ask yourself, is it worth that? Is it worth paying the price? Is it worth going through that to get to the outcome? Because ultimately, at some point, if you want them to room share, you're probably going to have to go through that. Is it costing them precious sleep? Are you pushing them to do this at the cost of having an exhausted child, exhausted family and/or being miserable? Again, if it's essential and your children as siblings have to share a room and there's no other way around it, then let's make that work. So what can you do? Well, one of the most important things you can do, and this doesn't really matter, whether we're talking about a young baby or an older child, is to set up some really clear rules and boundaries. When I say that with babies, of course, they don't necessarily understand the rules or boundaries that you are implementing, but by setting the scene for those, and by having a consistent response to things, they will soon learn. For example, when lights are out and it's dark, shh, there's no talking. There's no voice. It's just whispers. You can begin to teach them that from baby stage by doing it, by making sure that when lights are out, nobody talks out loud, everything is just a whisper. It becomes nighttime mode and calm, and you can signal this simply by having the lights off. As they then get older from around 20 months, having a sleep wake clock in the room can really, really help. Sleep Wake clocks show when it's daytime and when it's nighttime. And when it's nighttime, we all can comply with nighttime mode. And when it's daytime, and time to be awake, it's a good idea to use exaggerated animation in our body language, our voices and our expressions just to really differentiate the two and show a big, clear, significant difference between daytime and nighttim...

https://youtu.be/XA3ONxvt-ZY In this week's blog we continue our series on night wakings, looking specifically at long periods where your baby is awake for hours at night, what causes it and how can we prevent it. What do we mean when we talk about long, wakeful periods in the night? Some little ones will go to sleep, they'll sleep really well for a number of hours, and then they wake up. But they don't just wake up for a bit, they wake up for perhaps three hours, and it has us as parents scratching our heads. Wondering, why? What's going on? Why are they awake? What do they need for that length of time? And quite often, they're not actually upset, they're not seeking anything in particular, and there's no obvious reason for the waking. They don't seem hungry. They don't seem like they're looking for their parents or looking for any help. Sometimes, this can be that they just wake up and they're quite content. They're quite content and happy. They're just lying there, sometimes babbling or cooing if they're a baby, or maybe even sort of chatting or singing if they're a bit older. They're just awake, for no real reason. And sometimes if they're awake for long enough, possibly heading into hours awake, they might start to get a bit fussy, because they can get fed up. They want to be back asleep. They don't really know why they're awake. Sound familiar? Have you experienced this with your little one? If so, let's see if we can overcome this once and for all. Why does it happen? There are a number of possible reasons for this, and there are even some medical reasons, which I'm not going to go into here today, because that's not my job. If you think or suspect there could be a medical reason, or you've exhausted all the possible behavioral reasons that I'm going to talk about, then definitely go and seek some help from the relevant medical service that can explore that a bit further for you. But when it's not medical, if it is behavioral, what could be causing it? What might be going on? One of the possible reasons, weirdly enough, can be over-tiredness. So it would be really easy to look at a little one who's just wide awake and doesn't seem sleepy and think they're not tired. They're just not tired. Maybe they've had too much sleep during the day. Let's cut that nap out, or, oh, maybe we should put them to bed later. That's almost like the obvious and easy answer. But be careful with that idea, because quite often, this wakefulness in the night is the complete opposite. It's because they are overtired. So why would they be awake if they're overtired? Surely, if they're overtired, they should be zonked out, but that often is not the case. They wake up because of the amount of stimulation they may be having. If they're having extra stimulation because they're awake too much, perhaps they're not getting enough daytime sleep or nap time, or they're awake too late and not going to bed till too late, for whatever reason it may be it means they are consuming more daylight, activity, engagement, possibly screen time, all kinds of stimulants that could be causing this. So they get tired, they fall asleep, but then, they suddenly are like, "Oh, I'm awake again now." Which then means they don't feel sleepy. This has probably happened to you. You've probably experienced this yourself, it happens to all of us at times. You're bound to have had one of those nights where you wake up and then for no apparent reason you can't get back to sleep. As adults we know full well that it's not because we are under-tired. We know we're tired. Generally it happens because you're over stimulated and that can also come from dietary reasons, things like too much sugar or caffeine. Caffeine and sugar in particular, while they may allow us to fall asleep remain there in your system, when we wake up they can kick back in and still have the same effect as when you were awake, providing stimulants.

https://youtu.be/r8ex-XlojNQ This week I want to look at one of the reasons that could be behind your little one's night wakings, and that is sleep onset. I will explain what that is, what it means and how this could absolutely be the game-changing nugget of wisdom that resolves your little one's sleep in a really, really big way. So make sure you read until the end so you fully understand what sleep onset is all about. First of all, what does it mean? What does sleep onset even mean? It means falling to sleep. It's the way that sleep comes about. So what could that include? When we fall to sleep, our body goes through a certain sensation of closing down. We close our eyes, our breathing becomes slower, and there are all kinds of things that happen to us physiologically and biologically, but there are also external things that happen as well. So once we understand how we're falling asleep at the sleep onset, it actually plays a really significant role in how we sustain our sleep throughout the night. Now, of course, we do wake up. It's really important to know that nobody just sleeps the whole night without waking. But the wakings are so minimal, sometimes you don't even know you've had one. They can be so partial, so subconscious, semiconscious, you just have this slight arousal and on back off into sleep. They are cycles of sleep. So you go down into deep sleep, you cycle up, you come through, lighter sleep, and then this is the point where you might just wake up. But, oh, no, we're down into another sleep cycle. We go down, we'll go into deep sleep, and we cycle through sleep like this all night long. But it's when we are in that lighter sleep that we do actually slightly wake and go back off. We have to, our bodies need to do that to regulate and to keep us alive. And so babies and children are the same, but when they're tiny, when they're really little and they don't actually know how to get to sleep and they haven't really grasped the sleep onset yet, when they have those cycles that they're coming into that light sleep and they're just about to tip over into the next cycle. They find themselves awake and they find themselves and they don't know how to get back to sleep, because they didn't know how they got there in the first place. And they cry and they look for your help because they need to get back to sleep. So this is why the sleep onset is key because once they're doing it, once their body is in that rhythm and it knows the body just does it and they fall to sleep, then the body and the mind will be trained. They will be efficient and effective at going back to sleep when we have those stirrings and wakings or partial wakings in the night. So hopefully you feel reassured that, "Oh, okay, waking up is normal," and it is completely. But it's the getting back to sleep that matters, and when your little one is doing that, they're not going to cry out or look for you or look for help because they're able to do it themselves. So you won't know that they've had two, three, five wakings in the night because they've resettled themself when they've had those stirrings. And that is when it feels so lovely and like they are sleeping through the night, which is what we all aim for, don't we, for as soon as possible. So the thing we need to look at is the sleep onset associations. Now, some people will talk about these as sleep crutches or sleep props, and they're not all bad. To be honest, you can have healthy, positive sleep onset associations, as well as unhelpful destructive sleep onset associations, and it's really important that we know the difference between the two. So a sleep onset association is something that puts your little one to sleep. It's something, an association that helps them to go to sleep. But some things will help, whereas other things will do the job for them. For instance, if you rock your baby and you rock, rock, rock, rock, rock all the way to sleep,

https://youtu.be/m0PSzAcmK7I This week's blog is a deep dive into the topic of responding to those night wakings. How can you best respond to them? Because the truth is, different wakings need a different response, and sometimes your response can be perfect and help your little one to get back to sleep quickly, and other times your response might actually make the problem worse. The first thing to look at is the type of waking. Why has your little one woken up in the first place? Because if we know what the type of waking is and what the waking is about, that can help us to determine the best way to respond. Or for example, is your little one awake because they're hungry? Are they awake because they're in pain? Are they awake because they're uncomfortable, or are they awake because they need some reassurance? Or are they awake because they just kind of woke? That can happen too. And sometimes they need some help with getting back to sleep. So how do you know? How do any of us know? They don't come with a manual and especially when they're too young to talk or tell us, or really express their feelings, they just cry. Sometimes all the cries can feel the same, especially in the middle of the night, "Oh, it's this, no, it's this, no, it's this." In the moment it's trying to work out if we know why they're awake. As the journey through parenthood goes on you start to get familiar with cries, like pain cries for example. Pain cries are usually quite high pitched and prevalent. And you usually do just know if they're in pain and you can tell because it's different. It's not the kind of cry, the communication style cry that you see every day when they're hungry or need a nappy changing, or are just fractious. You do tend to spot those piercing pain cries, and hunger cries. Personally, I think they're really hard to identify. Some people say they know, they just know if it's hunger or not, but I know lots of us don't know, and we're left going, "Are they hungry? Are they not? I don't know." So one of the best ways to determine hunger is by knowing roughly how much they need and have, and if they were breastfed, or bottle-fed, formula-fed, are they onboarding enough? And at what frequency does that usually take shape? Because then you will start to know, it's definitely not hunger. That can be one way that you know it's not. And again, as you're getting familiar with those different sounds, expressions, and actions, you will start to see things they do when they're hungry and things they do when they're just irritable. So understanding that is key. Also related to that, sometimes you do get discomfort, particularly digestive discomfort. They may be full, sure, they may have fed brilliantly, and you've ruled out hunger, but they're really uncomfortable because it hurts there in their tummy. It's a different kind of pain to the piercing pain cry, but really agitated, awkward discomfort. Sometimes with that, you see other signs like drawing the knees up and you can tell that they have that pain or discomfort in their tummy. Or they're not comfortable in their sleep space. It could be that they're too hot, too cold, that it's a terribly hard mattress, particularly in the travel cots, we get those uncomfortable mattresses. Could just be that they can't get comfortable in that way as well. Or it might just quite simply be that they need a little bit of help getting back to sleep. So try to identify why, but if you can't identify why, or if you're like, "Well, I think I've whittled it down to it's going to be this or this." If you've got a rough idea but you're not certain, then it's great to know how to respond and to have that kind of backup plan as well of, "Ah, if it's this, then I'll do this." And of course, if it's pain, you want to alleviate the pain. And if it's hunger, you want to feed that hungry baby. Aside from that, how can you respond? The key things to think about with responding are that...

https://youtu.be/YN1O5Yue6Xc There are so many different reasons for night wakings, but today we're going to explore one particular thing that could be causing night wakings for your little one, and that is parasomnias. What on earth are they? In this week's blog post I am going to explain exactly what they are, why they happen, how you can respond to them and how you can prevent them. Let's delve into parasomnias. It's a funny old word, isn't it? Actually, it comes from para, meaning alongside of, and the Latin noun of somnus, which means sleep. It's something that happens alongside sleep, basically. What is it? What are they? What are parasomnias? You will have heard of them in their individual little forms, things like sleep talking, sleep walking. You may have heard of night terrors or sleep terrors, those are all part of the parasomnia family. What they really are, what it really is, what it really means is a movement or behavior in sleep. That's the easiest way to explain it. Things like sleep walking actually are pretty hereditary. It runs in families. If you were a sleep walker, maybe your child will be. Don't be surprised if you see that, it does run along in families. That hopefully gives you an idea as to what parasomnias are and the group they belong to. Sleep walking, is walking in sleep. It's getting up out of bed and physically walking around, and talking is talking or making noises in your sleep. But the one that I think needs a little more explanation is sleep terrors or night terrors, because a lot of parents think their child is having them. Maybe they are, maybe they're not, so it's good to understand what they actually even are. They are not bad dreams or nightmares or severe bad dreams or terror, that kind of thing. That's a dream and it's something that you wake up from and you can recall it. You can remember it if you try hard enough. The brain can recall it. Whereas, a sleep terror or night terror, whilst it can come across as being similar in the moment, maybe you can see them thrashing around or speaking and appearing upset. It looks like someone's in a really bad dream. However it's actually not the same thing. It's not the same place. They're actually in a state of somewhere between awake and asleep. They're in a very deep sleep, but there's an awake and an awareness element to it as well. I'm not going to go into the science right now. But what you'll see in terms of the difference is a bad dream or a nightmare is, "Oh my gosh. It's awful. It's awful. I'm awake." As opposed to a little one who looks like they are awake. They already look awake. With a night terror or a sleep terror, or actually the milder version that we tend to see in the younger ones is typically called a confusion arousal. It can still be a little bit upsetting or distressing in terms of their behavior, but it's not quite as terrifying in terms of how they behave, but it is still very odd. They can be as mild as sitting up and looking around and looking for something and being confused and then going back to sleep, hopefully. The thing with those, confusional arousals, sleep terrors, night terrors, that kind of thing, is they will look or can look as though they are awake. Parents often describe it as they look like they're possessed. Soetimes in this state if you approach them, they might look like they're looking right through you and you're feeling like, "They don't recognize me," or that they aren't responding to you. When you try to comfort them or anything like that you don't get a response and that's how these episodes can be. How do you respond to them? That's the thing. The key thing is not to try to jolt or shake or wake a person from a parasomnia. It would be really confusing for them. It could be upsetting, or you could actually just become a part of all of the confusion that they're in. You just become a figure that's in that weird world they're in right now with their mind,

https://youtu.be/YGCOjZuaR1A Being overtired is so often the cause of sleep challenges for babies and young children. You'd think being tired would lead to sleep, but being too tired actually makes sleep worse. In this week's blog we'll be exploring why being overtired is causing your little one to wake at night and how to figure out if your child is in fact overtired. I know it's counterintuitive, but when we get overtired, our sleep is worse. Why? Have you ever got so tired and for whatever reason you had to power through. And at some point, you just felt like you'd gone past it. And even though you hadn't been to sleep, you didn't feel tired anymore. Like a second wind. That's exactly what it is, a second wind. The brain tells the body it needs to keep going, so it releases hormones which are like getting an adrenaline boost. In other words, being overtired can leave you feeling quite awake and unable to get to sleep. From birth, babies gradually manage longer and longer awake between sleeps. We call these wakeful windows, but most of us parents don't know what the ideal wakeful windows are for our children. Plus, it's a constantly changing target. Many babies and young children end up being awake for too long between sleeps and a sleep deficit builds up. This leads to children filled with hormones at bedtime that are making it harder for them to settle to sleep. Or if they do crash out, the night sleep is disturbed or unsettled. And almost for sure, you get the 05:00 AM wake-up calls. If you know what I'm talking about, and you've experienced life with an early riser, like I have. So how do we solve this? How do we get your little one to take all the sleep they need, so they don't get overtired on a continual basis? Step one is, knowing those sleep and wakeful windows. This knowledge is true power. It will help you to know when to attempt to put your baby down for a nap and how long to aim for with the sleep. It's great to have a backup plan too because they often won't sleep when or as much as we'd like. So you may need to bring the next nap a little bit earlier or get them to bed a bit earlier to top them up. Step two is, topping up the sleep tank. If you know your little one is already overtired, try some early nights or an extra power nap. If you can replenish the empty sleep tank, you'll find your little one is better positioned to take better naps and sleep more soundly at night, which will further recover the overtiredness. If you're experiencing sleep deteriorating for your little one after starting nursery or daycare, it may be because he's just not getting the sleep he needs while there. I get a lot of messages from parents saying their child is overtired since starting in a childcare setting. It's similar to when children start school. The change and the emotional energy to be "brave," is all extra tiring. In this case, do talk to the childcare provider to see if they can accommodate the sleep needs for your little one. And also make sure they're getting to bed nice and early after those busy days. If your pickup time is right on top of nap time, consider tweaking your schedule for the short term, so he can get the sleep he needs at nursery, or once at home. Topping up with longer naps at the weekend or on home days will also really help. If your baby is overtired due to naps being very short and not replenishing, you can try working on extending the nap with some soothing back to sleep, rather than just getting your baby up the moment she wakes. Or you could head out for a motion nap in the pram or the car, just to help finish off that broken sleep. For some, especially parents of two-year-olds who don't want a nap, but really do need to, it can be such a battle and we just don't want to fight every day. And we give up on the napping way before the child is ready to drop it. At first, things might seem okay with crash-out sleep at night,

https://youtu.be/cK6DVFzP3Zw 3 YEAR OLD SLEEP REGRESSION. A QUESTION FROM A PARENT Hi. Our question is, Joe, who will be three shortly? Sometimes he is over tired during the day. Should we reintroduce his daytime nap, which we haven't had since the beginning of the year or do we bring his bedtime forward? Because it's very hard to keep him up past seven o'clock. So yeah, age three can be really tricky because some are ready to stop napping, whereas others still need some sleep in the daytime until they're closer to four, even four and a half. So if this little one hasn't been napping for a long time in the day, there probably is some built up over tiredness. But we are now approaching three and there's a good chance that that nap would be on the way out anyway. So reintroducing it at this stage is probably not the best move. By all means allow catch up sleeps. If he nods off in the day, let him sleep. I wouldn't disturb him. If you are out and about, he nods off on the go, he needs it. So I would let him have that sleep, but I wouldn't enforce a nap now if he's not used to doing one. I absolutely would say, yes, go ahead with the early to bed. Early nights are going to be key right now because the length of the day is probably a bit too much for him. So if we are not going to get sleep in the middle of the day, then we need to chip a bit off the end of the day and make bedtime earlier. A lot of parents would be fearful of doing an early bedtime because they're going to worry that going to bed earlier is going to mean waking up earlier the next morning, but it doesn't work that way. In fact, actually if this little one's continuing to go to bed too late and is overtired, the night sleep will be worse. So getting to bed earlier is good. Definitely, asleep by 7:00 PM, latest, and if he's ready to go to sleep even earlier, that will be fine too. Book a discovery call and find out how we can help you with your little ones sleep.

https://youtu.be/E5Y5qymtlsM The eight-month sleep regression. If you know me or have followed me for some time, you'll know that I really don't like the word regression. Why? Because it's not really a regression, just because sleep becomes difficult or hindered, doesn't mean they're actually regressing. Your child's never regressing, they're moving forward, so they're actually progressing. Because of their progress and because of the progressions, I'm going to talk about in a minute, it can cause disruption to sleep. Especially if you're not ahead of the game, and aware of what they need, and what they need you to help them with, then sleep can be hindered during this progressive leap that they're taking. So, I really don't like the word regression, it's so negative and not really true. Let's have a look at what's going on at this age and why we see an impact sometimes on sleep at this age, which gives everyone this phrase about the eight month sleep regression. First of all, I really want to urge you to not preempt, expect, and look for it. Because actually, you can get so hung up on it that you start to think, oh yeah, that's what it is, that's what's going on. And then you label it, and it's almost like an excuse. Don't expect it, don't preempt it, don't assume it will hit you. Just take what's happening, work through it, and don't read more into it than there really is. So, what is happening? Okay. First of all, the daytime sleep is going to be shifting around this time. So, if little one, from sort of six months, has been having three good naps a day and you've got into a good nap routine and things are looking good. And then you get this eight-month thing going on, and you're like, napping is becoming a nightmare. Or maybe you never did get it off to a great start, maybe it's always been a nightmare. It's important to know that eight-month things are starting to shift a bit, their sleep needs in the day are starting to shift a bit. Like I said, if we are not on top of that, and if we are not meeting those needs and accommodating that sleep when it's needed, you can end up with a repercussion which is disturbed nights, so called regression. So, being aware of that daytime sleep, how much does your child need? When do they need it? And are you meeting that need for them? They will not automatically just tell you when they need it and nod off to sleep brilliantly as you know by now, so have a look at that. Now, what's happening at eight months is that at night, sorry daytime sleep is going to gradually move towards a dropdown to two naps over the next couple of months. So, at eight months you start to see a shift, whatever you do, don't do an immediate drop. Don't go, oh, okay, we were doing three naps, we'll now do two, that's it. It's not that cut and dry, it's a transition, it takes time. It will usually be over that eight-to-10-month period that this starts to happen, and you might take two steps forward and three steps back, it might be a bit stop and start for a while. So, take each day as it comes, some days your child might need three naps, some days two, some days two and an early bed or there's all sorts going on there, and that's another episode. But have a look at that, also bear in mind that they're wakeful windows. So that's the period of time that they can manage to be awake in one stretch, that's also growing. You may already be overestimating it, many parents do overestimate how long their little one can be awake in one stretch before they need to sleep. Why do we overestimate it? Because the little ones give us the impression that they're fine, and they don't start yawning and eye rubbing and fussing until they're already over tired or on the brink of being overtired. So don't wait for those signs, don't wait for that before you put your child down. Just because a child appears to be fine or a baby appears to be fine and not in need of a sleep yet, doesn't mean it's true.

https://youtu.be/5Pn_i4INQXs The four-month sleep regression. Is it real? Well, this is tricky because yes, there are some things that go on in four and five months old, and it can often be seen or feel like there's a regression. But I want to give you some thought points today. Things to think about that will help you maneuver your way through this phase with more ease, because having a good understanding of it will definitely help you with this. The first one is, I really like to think of these things as a progression, not a regression. So maybe you can re-look at this as the four-month progression. What's really happening is your child is progressing. Your baby is developing physically and mentally at a rapid, rapid rate. And in that fourth and fifth month, there's a huge amount of developmental growth. So really it's all about progress. They're not going backwards. And it might feel like sleep goes backwards, which is why people call this a sleep regression. But, actually there's nothing going wrong with their sleep. They just have different needs at this kind of age. Why? Because sleep's taking shape, things are changing. The second thing I want you to think about on this exact topic right now is the old tricks. The old tricks stop working. So for instance, if ... And this might not happen at four months, this might not happen until later, but for lots of babies, it does happen at this stage. If you have been rocking your baby to sleep, but suddenly it's not working so well, or you're trying but then they're waking up, or feeding to sleep, or pacing them to sleep, whatever it may be, a trick, a thing, a little technique that you were using that worked to get your baby to sleep, or to get them back to sleep in the night when they wake, perhaps is not as effective now. And you think, "Oh, it's a sleep regression. But actually, it isn't. It's just that your baby is wise to it. And it was kind of just masking and doing the job for them until they were ready to learn. And now your baby's going, "Yeah, this isn't going to cut it anymore." And it's a sign that they're ready to learn a bit more. They're ready, to develop some better sleep skills and start doing a little bit more of that sleep stuff. And not have you do it all for them. So, the old tricks might stop working. That was my second point there. The third thing is naps become a bit more organized around this stage. They start to fall into better rhythms. So up until now, naps have probably been quite haphazard, snapped and grab, short and often, and not really very predictable. And that's very normal for the first few months, but you're coming into a stage now where they may be taking better shape. They're a bit more structured. Your baby is managing to be awake for a chunk of time and then needs to sleep, and then awake for a chunk of time and needs to sleep. And it's much more rhythmic and patterned and structured. You could be there already, or maybe you are not there, but the fact that your baby's sleep might be looking like it's regressing at nighttime is possibly because they are looking for that structure. Your baby's ready for a bit more rhythmicity and structure to those naps and wants you to help accommodate that so that they are getting enough. And then they're able to sleep better at nighttime. So, it could be to do with that. And then the fourth point that I want you to think about is the bedtime routine. It really is key. Bedtime routine is key at this stage because again, if you haven't had one ... If you have one in place, amazing. And keep that going. But if you haven't got one in place, it's absolutely important. So it's imperative that you do this now, having those same steps in the same order every evening, that lead up to bedtime and then enable your little one to know, first of all, this is bedtime. Bedtime's coming. It cues them. It sets the scene for them.

https://youtu.be/E5Y5qymtlsM Babies and sleep regressions, the four-month sleep regression, the eight-month sleep regression, the 18-month sleep regression. How many are there? Are you wondering what to look out for with a sleep regression or how to get through one? What if I told you there was no such thing as a regression with sleep? I'll explain it all here read on and stand by to conquer sleep regressions once and for all. So, you'll hear the term “sleep regressions” batted around the parenting world. What it basically means is that a little one's sleep has got worse than it was. Things seem to have slipped backwards and thus the term regression. However, the sleep not being as good as it was, is the effect of the problem not the cause. The cause is your little one has reached a developmental milestone. They leaped forward in some way. Maybe in brain development or physically, even emotionally or socially. In some way, they have grown and developed, and I'd actually say progressed. As your little one makes this kind of progress with their development inevitably, their sleep needs change too. Of course, we don't need to nap like a newborn our whole lives, do we? And as your baby grows, his or her stamina increases. They're able to be awake for longer but still need to get the right amount of sleep at the right intervals. It's constantly changing as they grow. The reason this progress causes a worsening effect with sleep sometimes, is because we rarely know what to do to accommodate our growing baby. No one tells us how much we need to increase their wakeful window by each month, or how long they ought to be sleeping for, and how many times per day and even if they did. There are so many nuances to consider with each individual baby including their little character traits which can deceive us. They don't always tell us what they need in terms of sleep and we need to be in the know if we're going to help them to get the sleep they need. Don't worry. You're not supposed to know everything. You can't be an expert at everything. Otherwise, let's face it, we wouldn't have doctors and midwives or teachers or dentists. If we knew the answers and were the expert at everything for our children, then we wouldn't need any of these professionals. Sleep is a highly specialized subject. It's complex. The solution for one is totally different to the solution for another. Much like dental care. So don't beat yourself up if you feel stuck or feel like nothing you try seems to work. You're not alone. In fact, you are in the majority. Most parents don't know how to help their children to sleep better. So how do you navigate these, so called regressions? Firstly, spot the progression. This is why they're linked to such milestone ages like four-months, eight-months and 18-months. You'll probably find a regression for any age if you search. But all it means is your little one is progressing in some way, and they need you to help shift their sleep pattern in line with where they are now. All you need to do to get through a sleep progression is to check in on how much sleep your little one ought to be getting and at what sort of intervals. And if you struggle to get them to fit that rhythm or they're already a bit overtired, then you need to start by working on some topping up to replenish the sleep tank until they're good on the ideal sleep pattern for their developmental stage. Sometimes a few small adjustments are all it takes. Other times, it can be more challenging to spot exactly what needs to be adjusted. And that's why having a pair of outside expert eyes on things can make the world of difference. We'd love to hear from you about the tricky patches you've gone through or find yourself stuck in right now. Can you see how it's a developmental leap forwards that's causing the sleep to slip backwards? So, try my tips and if you're still stuck, help your little one to sleep better,

https://youtu.be/X_graL8vCkE Hey there, friends and fellow parents. Welcome back to my blog. It's the number one place to be for all things baby and child sleep. I'm going to be talking about the topic of crying and sleep training. And make sure you stick around to the end because I'll be revealing the biggest myth on this topic of crying and sleep training. Let's dive in and talk about this - CRYING. Babies cry, humans cry. We all cry at times. And that's okay. We're allowed to cry. But what does it mean and how does it relate to sleep training? We hear from lots of parents who really want to help their baby or young child to sleep better, but their number one fear is - I can't handle any crying. I get it. Oh my goodness, I'm the world's worst. If one of my children cried when they were babies, I remember in the car, if they were crying I would feel so stressed. My stress levels would go up here. I'd be like, I've got to make it stop. I've got to make it stop. Actually that's how we're wired. Especially as mothers, mother nature wired us this way to respond to the needs of our young. It's quite natural for us to feel a little bit flustered and like we've got to fix it when our babies cry. However, if we know what it actually means, and if we know what the crying is actually about, it's far less stressful and you can be more calm. After all, crying is a form of communication. It's a form of communicating a need of some sort and to get a response. That's why babies cry. Otherwise, they just wouldn't do it. Like in the sad story of the orphanage analogy where the babies cry and nobody comes, so eventually they learn not to cry anymore because there's no one coming. That's a really sad concept and actually, that's the definition of cry it out. No one comes, eventually you learn not to cry anymore. This is not what sleep training is because sleep training, or coaching, is actually a form of parenting. It's a parenting approach to helping a child sleep better. That's all it is. Now, when you teach your child anything, you don't just expect them to do it or ignore them until they figure it out. You don't ignore them until they figure out how to use the potty. You don't ignore them until they figure out how to read or ride a bike. You help them and you show them the way, because that's what parenting is. It's guidance, it's support, it's demonstrating, it's supporting them as they learn something. It's no different to sleep. So cry it out is ignorance. It's ignoring. It's non-responsive. Everything that we teach and any sleep coach or consultant that I would ever support will teach you a responsive approach. Now, I don't care how it gets dressed up. Some people will dress it up as sleep training and others will say that sleep training is bad but you need to do this holistic thing. It's all the same. If you are consciously and actively choosing how to help your little one go to sleep. Call it what you like. But if it's responsive, as in, if you are not ignoring your little one, but you've found the right way to respond to them for them, the unique individual, because it's different for every baby and child. What works for one won't work for another. If you've found the way to respond to your little one in a way that's conducive to helping them to sleep better, to take longer stretches and to develop at the rate that's just right for them at their age and their developmental stage as well, then you are effectively coaching them or training them. You are helping them with their sleep. You're responding. You're not ignoring them. And if they cry, that's fine. What do they mean? What do they need? How do we address that in the right way? So when people say, but will my baby cry? Will my baby cry, because I just can't handle any crying. Does your baby cry now? I hope so, because that's completely normal. It's natural. I hope they are communicating with you and crying. That's really good.

https://youtu.be/AOPsSHiqyso So, the clocks are going back again. In this blog, I'm going to share with you three ways that you can navigate this clock change to minimize the disruption to your little one's sleep. I'm also going to explain to you how you can decide which of these three ways is going to best suit your unique child. Let's get started. The first option for navigating the autumn clocks going back is to take the gradual shift. Now, a gradual shift means exactly what it says. We're going to shift gradually towards the time change. We're going to do this in 15-minute increments from the Wednesday when the clocks change on that Sunday. When you wake up on Sunday morning, we're on the new time. So, if the clocks are going to go back during the night on Saturday night, we need to start on Wednesday, and what we're going to do is we're going to just nudge the bedtime that little bit later from Wednesday night. Let's use a 7:00 PM bedtime as an example. If your child normally closes their eyes and drifts off to sleep at 7:00 PM, then on Wednesday, we're going to just nudge that to 7:15 asleep time. Then on Thursday, we're going to make it 7:30. On Friday, it will be 7:45. On Saturday night, they're will be going to sleep at 8:00 PM, but that 8:00 PM is going to be the new 7:00 PM when the clocks change. When they go to sleep at 8:00 PM on Saturday night, the clocks will go back one hour in the nighttime. So, they should wake at their usual time in the morning. When you go into Sunday, you start the day as normal. You have your usual routine and you use your meal times and then you go back to your normal 7:00 PM bedtime because that will feel the same as it did on Saturday night. That's option one, your gradual shift. Now, the second option I'm going to give you is to meet in the middle. In this example, if that time is normally 7:00 PM, we're going to just meet halfway and we'll go for a 7:30 PM bedtime on clock change night, which is the Saturday night. So, you just carry on as normal, 7:00 PM bedtime, and then on Saturday night, you just meet in the middle and do a 7:30 bedtime. And the third option I'm going to give you is the one fell swoop. In one fell swoop, you just change the time. So you carry on as normal, 7:00 PM bedtime, and then on Saturday night you push it all the way to 8:00 and you actually just move it the whole way to 8:00 PM bedtime on Sunday night. That should be the same length of nighttime sleep for waking up at the usual wake up time in the morning as the clocks will have gone back an hour in the nighttime. So those are three different strategies and three different ways that you can approach the clock's going back. How do you know which way to go for your child? So, these are the questions to ask yourself. If your little one is younger, so if we're talking about a younger baby who is still taking regular naps through the day, they're likely to be more sensitive to the times because every sleep counts. They're not used to going huge, long stretches. And so the sensitivity is going to be there. That would be a good reason to take the gradual shift and the 15-minute increments. Any babies that are still napping at least three naps a day, some even two naps a day, you'll probably want to take that gradual approach. If your little one is maybe not so much on the younger side, but they're really sensitive, they're very sensitive to change. Perhaps the super alert types who religiously wake up at the exact same time every morning no matter what time you put them to bed. Again, there's a real sensitivity to time. I would again take that gradual shift with them. But if you have a little one that is easier going, they're really flexible. You tend to be able to bend and shift with routines without that having a major impact on them, or if they're a bit older, then you might just get away with going for one fell swoop. And you'll know this because you'll know that you...

https://youtu.be/wKd0s-EyqEI When should you start sleep training? What a great question. And it's one people ask a lot because they worry that it might be too soon, or it might be too late and when is the best time? First of all, it's never too early and it's never too late. Starting on the early side, it can never be too early. You can prepare to learn and understand about little one's sleep and about newborn baby sleep before you even have the baby. You don't need to implement anything, but just by learning and understanding it, you can get really prepared for the routine and the rhythm and the atmosphere and the environment. And actually then when your baby arrives, you can get them off to a really great start with their sleep. So that's how early you can begin. Now, if they're in the newborn stage, baby has arrived and you want to start working on sleep, it's going to just be very little subtle practices at that stage. Routine, creating rhythmicity for them, helping them to distinguish night from day and just some subtle rhythms. That's all you're looking at, rhythms, cues and little practices. You're not expecting a newborn baby to sleep through the night by any means, they're going to wake and they're going to wake regularly because they're going to need to for feeding purposes as a newborn. But those little practices and those cues you can set up, those triggers and environmental factors will all help to shape your new baby's sleep as they grow and develop. So you can get started with basic shaping techniques right from the beginning. Once they move on beyond 18 weeks and they start to regulate more day and night, and they are into a bit more of a rhythm, a bit more routine, and you are starting to spot... We've got naps and wakeful times, and it's becoming a bit more rhythmic. That's a really good time to look at working on the sleep a bit more, or as some would say, to start sleep training. And so the optimum time I would recommend sleep training would be somewhere between four and six months. Why? Because they're ready and they're able, but they're also still really, really malleable. So any sleep onset associations, that's things that help them get to sleep can be shifted, moved, evolved, changed without it being too much of a big deal. If it's been there a long time, it can be very ingrained and harder to shift. But at four to six months, we can start to look at which of these associations are positive and helpful ones, which are maybe not so helpful and not so conducive to good sleep. And we can then just fine tune those really, really well. So between four and six months is absolutely great. That's when I would say it is the optimal time. What if they're older though? Well, first of all, once they go beyond six months, those onset associations, any habits and routines, they start to embed a bit more and little ones will start to become more aware. So they're aware if it's not there, they're aware if it is there. They're more inclined to get frustrated if the thing they're expecting doesn't happen. They just get more set in their ways, slowly as time goes on. Then you get to stubborn toddlers who know exactly what they want, and they are willing to hold out as long as it takes, which can be a challenging stage too. That's not to say it's too difficult. That's not to say it's too late. It just requires a different strategy and we need to look at what is going on with the little one's sleep. Are they really overtired? Are they not getting enough sleep in the day? Is bedtime a regular time? Or does it move around all the time? And what are the patterns looking like? Are they ideal? Are they optimal for the best sleep for this little one at that age? And do they have any unhelpful associations with falling asleep that aren't actually helping them to prolong their sleep or have stretches? Are they waking frequently and so on. So we have to look at what's going on and then determine the best...

https://youtu.be/9wbBPYGbwgY Did you know that sleep coaching is actually for parents not little ones? I'm going to explain to you how sleep coaching is actually all about educating and empowering parents and giving them strategies so that they can help to guide and support their little ones to be the best sleeper that they can be. So let's delve in! First of all, I just want to say that it's not the child that's doing anything wrong. No baby or child is doing any wrong with their sleep. They're just doing the best that they know HOW. And it isn't something they're born just knowing how to do. It takes practice like anything. So when people have a sleep coach or they work on some sleep training what they're actually doing is adopting a parenting strategy and a parenting style to get the best from that little one's sleep. In exactly the same way when you take a conscious approach to showing your little one how to use the potty or teaching them how to ride a bike. You're always showing them how to do something. You're guiding them. You're giving them the tools and the encouragement, and the support to help them until they're really good at it and they can manage to do it by themselves. And sleep coaching is no different. You don't really sleep coach a child. A sleep consultant will coach the parents. So when it comes to parenting - knowledge really is power. And as parents, we're not supposed to be the experts at everything. We don't carry out every activity of expertise for our children. They don't come with a manual. It's just not the job we're supposed to take on. But we're supposed to support and guide them. We're supposed to parent them. So the knowledge and understanding about little one sleep and how it works and how it changes with every developmental leap and every stage and age is really powerful. Understanding how you can use that information - the psychology, the biology, the physiology, and being able to use strategies to get the very best from your child's sleep is so empowering. Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that every parent needs to go and study to become an absolute scientific genius when it comes to understanding sleep. That's the whole point of having a sleep coach or a sleep consultant. They've done that work and they understand it and they'll share with you just the highlights. The bits you need to know, the bits that you need to understand, and the strategy that's going to be right for your individual child. Because what works really well for one is totally the wrong option for another. So having that knowledge is great but it also means that you'll see lasting results from your child's sleep. Because if somebody were to come in and stay for three nights and they put your little one to bed, and they get them settled in a really nice way, you might think "Woohoo! Somebody just came and sleep trained my child." No. They respond differently to different people. So that was just a band-aid being put over the problem. Because when they go away you'll be stuck in the same old situation. Understanding what routines, what patterns, and what responses you need to implement in order to connect in the right way with your little one is very important and it will help you to parent them in the right way for their unique personality traits. That's when you get a perfect routine that sticks and that you get those lasting results because you understand your own little one. They always change. They go through so many different masterings and developments. You have to understand them enough that you can stay on track as they grow and as they evolve. So sleep coaching isn't for children it's for parents. It's a form of parenting to get the best from little one's sleep and of course your sleep too. I hope you found this really helpful. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more tips.

https://youtu.be/T5GdLhDhWPQ Most mums believe that they don't have what it takes to start their own business because they aren't good enough... or that their potential clients wouldn't see them as the authority figure. And I get it, when I started my business, I used to have the same fears and beliefs myself. But let me ask you a question... Which is the most powerful place to operate from? Being consumed in fear and insecurities that keep you trapped in a life where you know you can do more? Or proving to yourself that you're far more capable than you currently think by creating your own business? Obviously the latter, right? JK Rowling wouldn't have become the author of the best selling book series in history if she had listened to those same exact doubts in herself that you currently face. JK was a single mum, depressed and penniless. She'd faced the bereavement of her mother and been through a divorce before escaping her reality by writing her books. She would write in cafes while her baby napped and when her first attempts at getting published were met with multiple rejections, she didn't give up. But what do you think would've happened if she'd let her fear dictate her actions? If she'd chosen to believe that she wasn't good enough? Well, she would still be penniless, struggling, depressed and wondering what might have been. So do you want to become empowered, live a meaningful life and be a role model for your children, like JK Rowling? Or would you rather live a complacent life where you're full of doubt, fear and regrets? The choice is yours... Now, if you chose the path of an empowered business boss, then I invite you to check out my training ‘An Introduction To Childhood Sleep Consulting' where I show you exactly how YOU can become a successful sleep consultant and business owner. JK Rowling overcame some big challenges in life and this grew her strength to become the billionairess-mum she is today. You've faced more adversity in the past few years than you probably realise, you've overcome huge challenges and NOW is the best time in history to get your own business established - you have everything it takes!

https://youtu.be/UchwdmktEzM Is bedtime with your toddler a battle every night? Is it time that you just dread because you know you're up against the will of a two-year-old? Don't worry I've got you covered! I'm going to take you through three simple steps that you can take that will help you to overcome bedtime battles and make it actually a peaceful and harmonious experience for you and your family every single evening. So step one to mastering toddler bedtimes is to have a consistent routine. Now I know you might be thinking, "Well, obviously we need a consistent routine..." but there's more to it than that. It sounds simple on the surface but think about this... Is the routine that you're doing with your toddler every single evening happening at the same time for a start, or does it kind of move around? Is it a bit random, depending on how they're behaving? Is it happening at the same time, and are you going through the same steps in the same order? Are you taking them through the exact same process? That might be bathroom, we have a wash, we do our little teeth. Then we go to the bedroom, we have a story, we sing a song and we say, good night, for instance. Do you have set steps that you go through or is it all a bit haphazard? Because even though people often think they have a routine when you've really drilled down into the nitty-gritty of the routine, it's all a little bit haphazard and it's different with mum then it is with dad, or it is with granny. It's so variable that your toddler just doesn't really know where they stand. So stop that from tonight. Look at your routine and ask yourself, "What can we do to make this uber consistent?" It needs to be the same steps in the same order every single evening at the same time, so your toddler knows exactly where they stand. Now that brings me nicely onto point number two. So that they know exactly where they stand, there have to be no extras. They just have what's in that routine. "Oh, but I'm hungry. Can I have a biscuit?" No. "Oh, but just one more story." No. Just stick to your guns with the boundaries. You're not being mean. You're actually lovingly showing them healthy boundaries that will help them to count on you, rely on you and trust you. If they think that you'll change your mind, like the wind, they can't really count on you. And actually, it instils a much greater sense of security in your little one if they can trust you to stick to what you say, even if it isn't quite what they want to hear. So again, with those steps in your routine, don't deviate from them. Don't bend the rules just because, it's got to be the same. The second you show a chink in your armour, the second that you get a slight little deviation that lets them go, "Oh yeah, I got it, they let me have that." That's it. They will try it again and again and again, and they will push and push and get more and more from you. And if they get more from one parent than they do from the other, guess what? They're going to crave that the one that they can manipulate more is the one they want and the one they demand because they know that they can play that around. And again, it delays the time, it makes them overtired and cranky and eventually leads to these battles of will. Toddlers are determined, strong-minded little characters. And actually, it's amazing that they're like this and it's great that they do test the boundaries. It's not a bad thing. They're not misbehaving. It's really intelligent of them to see the testing. "Hmm. If I did this, what will you do?" And if you do have a solid routine and they start to test you, it's because neurologically they're trying to figure out, "So if I change what I'm doing and you're going to change what you're doing, let's find out." And what they need to see is as a result, they need to hear that 'No'; you need to let them understand that you're not going to change what you're doing. And they'll learn from that.

https://youtu.be/VcyY-axgwBk Do you ever get a gut feeling that you should do or not do something? Like an instant pang that feels so strong - and then you worry about being too quick to judge so you start to analyse and overthink it until you're so confused and cannot decide? I know how you feel. I do this too; I'm sure we all do at times but neuroscience and research has proven that women have a so-called superpower with our intuition and so many of us are NOT using this to our full advantage. So today I'm going to explain it to you so you can unleash your superpower and make the best and most impactful decisions for your life and your family. Women's intuition is REAL - science tells us so. It's all about our heightened ability to read people's emotions and expressions, our non-verbal communication skills. But how is this gender-related? Well, studies have revealed that women have a higher level of blood flow in certain areas of the brain and men have enhanced activity in other areas of the brain. While men have been found to show more blood flow in the visual and coordination centres, women may have better peripheral vision. Women showed more activity in the prefrontal cortex (where we do our thinking) as well as in the limbic area which controls emotions, mood anxiety, and depression. We also have more blood flow in the hippocampus which is where our memories are stored and in our insular cortex which suggests we are more inclined to worry too much about what others are thinking. But on the plus side, the heightened activity in that part of the brain also makes us good at interacting with others and reading others which could be why we have these intuitive skills. Now, of course, it's not black and white and you will have men and women who defy these averages but it's also thought that social and evolutionary factors have played a part in the wiring of the male and female brains. You CAN change this through working on your skills and there is no reason a male cannot develop the increased brain activity in those areas that will make him as intuitive as a female for whom it has come more naturally. And, I'm not suggesting we're a superior gender either, men have many advantageous wirings of the brain that we women have to work harder on; this is just about how we, as women and as mums can make decisions and whether or not we should trust our gut instincts. So, should we? I think the scientific evidence is pretty strong and 95% of our decisions are made from our emotions, our feelings. Those decisions come to us fast, in the first 5 seconds. It's only when the other areas of our brains catch up that we start to think, overthink, and analyse and become ditherers! In a lot of cases, if we do make a poor decision, we will learn from it and become better equipped as a result. Bad decisions are how we learn and grow and only fear gets in the way to stop you and keep you safe, right where you are, no progression, no growth just safe in your comfort zone. But I think we know how to survive well enough these days that we can overpower Mrs fear when she crops up and stands in our path to greatness! I was asked recently, from a business perspective, whether or not we should trust our gut when making leadership decisions and on the whole, I say yes, we should. Not just in business but in parenting too. Unless you're signing a legal contract (or getting a tattoo), generally speaking, you have an intuition that is strong so if you listen to it the moment it tells you something, before the overthinking starts, you will most likely find yourself on the ideal path even if it's a little bit scary. Life's for living so go out there and live it, mama - for you, for your children. You were born to be brilliant! I'm going to share a link to something really cool to help you unlock your full potential, so check it out, it's totally free, my gift to you - CLICK HERE

https://youtu.be/0CEXGxWOljk Is your little one waking at 5:00 AM every day? Maybe you feel that you've tried everything to overcome this, and you've resigned yourself to the idea that maybe your child is an early riser. Well, I can assure you they're not. 5:00 AM is too early. You can definitely get your little one to at least 6:00 AM or beyond. So, I'm going to help you uncover why you're getting these 5:00 AM wake-ups and what you can do to fix it. This is as easy as 1-2-3. Number one, if your little one is consistently waking at 5:00 AM, they're overtired. I know that sounds crazy, right? Surely if they're overtired, they're tired, they're sleepy. They're going to sleep for longer. Why are they waking? I know. Weird, but totally true. Little ones who are overtired are more likely to have difficulty falling asleep or they'll crash out. They might have really wakeful nights or be quite disturbed in their sleep at night. And you also see these kinds of things like parasomnias, sleepwalking, sleep talking, even things like night terrors when they're overtired. Their sleep is disturbed. And the other one you get is these 5:00 AM wakings. 5:00 AM wake up calls are always going to be because of some form of overtiredness. So what can you do? Number two is you've got to spot it. Where is this overtiredness coming from? Is it that bedtime is too late or inconsistent and moves around a lot. So by the time they actually fall to sleep at bedtime, they're overtired already. So is it bedtime? Have a look at bedtime. If you can consistently get your little one to sleep somewhere between probably 6:30 PM and 7:30 PM, somewhere in the hour, then you're far more likely to be in a good place for a good night's sleep. The other one is naps. Naps can be a really big reason why little ones get overtired. So is your little one getting enough in the way of naps for their age right now? So are they getting enough overall nap time in the day, and are they getting those in ideal quantities? Should they be having three naps, two naps, one nap? How is it spread out? Because the nap amount is also a key factor. It's no good if they have enough sleep, but it's all condensed into one, when developmentally, they really ought to be spreading that over two. Why? Because then the awake time between sleeps could be too big for them. And if their awake time between sleeps is too big, even if they're getting enough sleep, that awake time is enough to create an overtiredness that could be causing these 5:00 AM wakings. So the nap length and the nap amount are really key as well as those windows of wait time in between sleeps. So have a look at all of those things and the bedtime and see if you can spot it. And if you don't know the ideals, look at our resources because we share this kind of thing and give you a good framework for what it ought to look like roughly at your child's age and developmental stage. Once you know that, you've got something to work towards, then by solving that you might overcome the overtiredness. And that brings me on to step three, which is to fix it. How do you fix it? So it might be that you decide to do an earlier bedtime. In this case, you need to decide what time the bedtime routine needs to start; so that's going to get your little one to sleep sooner than perhaps they are currently. That's how you can fix a bedtime running too late. Maybe you constantly have big battles at bedtime and it takes ages to settle all this. Well then, we need to look at the sleep onset and that's another story. But we also can address that just by getting it that bit earlier before they're overtired and perhaps fighting it. And the naps is another way you can fix it. So it really is as easy as 1-2-3. Look at the overtiredness. Identify it first. Once you spot it, spot where exactly it's coming from. You can then move on to number three and fix it. Do all of that and bear in mind that it will take a l...

https://youtu.be/k88K_5pr6xk Most mums want to feel empowered and do a great job not just as a parent but for themselves too... but as they have children dominating their focus, their visions remain lost in the back of their minds. This results in a feeling of lacking, fulfilment isn't there, and that woman beyond the ‘mum' seems to be fading away or screaming to be seen and heard for what she is truly made of. You end up convincing yourself that you just can't have both, you can't be a great mum AND achieve the ultimate fulfilment with your dreams or professional goals as well... But that's NOT true! I hate seeing mums feel stuck like this. In fact, that's why I created the Sleep Nanny Academy, so mums can put all that inner wisdom, compassion and skill into a business that they can work entirely around their children and feel empowered generating their own income doing something that makes a huge difference to others! But after working with literally hundreds of other mums, like you, I know one of the reasons holding them back from stepping into the complete role they were meant for as a business mum and becoming the role model they're meant to be, is that they fear investing in themselves... or that they don't know how to convince their husband. And look, I get it, I really do! Investing in yourself can be scary because deep down you question if you've got what it takes to succeed. But I can tell you without a shred of doubt that you DO have what it takes because all mums do! In fact, let me tell you about one of our past students. Abby was desperate to learn how to help families overcome sleep challenges. She'd been there and felt the pains and strains and was determined to show other parents that they don't need to suffer. She was on maternity leave so didn't have much in the way of income and no savings to invest in herself to get the training and start her dream business. So she talked to her husband, the main breadwinner, hoping he would believe in her and help her get started. But, no. He wouldn't approve of her investment. Why not? Well, he clearly couldn't have believed in her ability to make an impact and earn that investment back over and over again. We've had other applicants for Sleep Nanny Academy come up against the same barrier and let their dreams and ambitions just slip aside. But did Abby leave it there? Nope! She came back to us and said, my husband doesn't approve but I know I can do this and I'm going to prove it to him. She took out a credit card and signed up right then and there! One of the reasons why I share this story with you is because Abby was actually fuelled by even more determination to prove herself to her husband that she went on to earn back that investment, pay off her credit card before accumulating ANY interest AND she continues to earn an income while making a big impact every single month! Now, you might be thinking that this was a fluke but we have countless other students that have done this as well, just like Vicky. She was so keen to enrol in Sleep Nanny Academy but her fear of investing was all about how exactly she would make her money back month after month. She and her husband were the analytical types - they wanted to crunch every number and try to see, on paper, exactly how it would work so that they could feel safely assured that it's a sensible investment. But that's not how it works when YOU ARE your business. We can show you plenty of examples of graduates who have gone on to do incredibly well and generate life-changing financial success in their businesses but you can't forecast that by crunching numbers. The only way you can make that happen is by believing in yourself and committing to doing it! Luckily for Vicky, her husband's belief in her was stronger than his fear and he stopped with the number crunching and over-analysing and he encouraged her to go for her dreams. She did! What you need to realise is that Abby and Vicky are ...

https://youtu.be/jcIL4atJGC0 Are you expecting a baby or have a newborn and wondering what you can expect from their sleep in these early weeks? Well, don't worry. I've got you covered. I'm going to share with you exactly what newborn sleep looks like, what you can expect, and how you can best shape things for a future good sleeper. The first tip I want to share with you is a little golden nugget that we were given by mother nature, and that is those first 48 hours after your baby is born, they tend to sleep a lot. The baby's probably tired from their venture into the world and of course, a mother is going to be tired after what we go through to bring them into the world. So those first 48 hours are your chance to rest and recover. So if you're having your first baby, I would hold off on the family visitors and just say, "Just give me a couple of days, and then you can come and see the new baby." Because you really need to recover. So, take the advice and block that time out for yourself for that recovery. You're going to be in a much better state to be an amazing mommy to that newborn who's going to be demanding on you in those early weeks and you need to have your strength to do that. Okay, but what sort of sleep can we expect from a newborn baby? Well, newborns are typically unable to be awake for more than about 45 minutes to an hour at a time. So, if your baby is awake for longer than that, they're probably going to start to get fractious and they'll be fussing, perhaps crying. And sometimes especially as a new parent, we might not know why. And we often have that go-to solution, which is, "Oh, the baby's crying, it must be hungry." But sometimes they will just be tired. It's natural to respond to a crying baby with things like rocking them and feeding them and pacing the room with them. But sometimes you can do all these things and they're still crying and they're still fussing and it's just that they want to be asleep. They don't know how to put themselves to sleep. They have no idea how to get into that place. So they rely on us to pretty much do it for them in these early weeks. But knowing that 45 minutes to an hour is about the maximum wait time they can handle can really help you watch the clock. And if your little one isn't fussing and seems quite happy, still get them down for that nap because when they do start crying and fussing, it's possibly too late. And if they've gone past tired and into an overtired state, they may be wired and it's much harder to settle an overtired baby than it is to settle a content, but tired, baby. The next tip for you is to consider the daytime and nighttime environments. By helping to demonstrate those, you can set triggers and cues up for your baby and really help them to get their circadian rhythm, which is their body clock into a really good pattern and recognising night and day. Make sure the room is nice and dark when it's nighttime and when it's daytime and time to be awake, make sure they're in a light environment. Different seasons will require you to work harder at this. You'll need to block out all the daylight creeping in during the summer months and you'll need to turn on lights in the wintertime when it's still dark in the morning. It's not just the light in the room that sends day and night signals to your baby, it's also you as a parent, your ‘parent mode', as I call it. You can have a daytime and nighttime mode as well. When it's daytime, you're engaged, you're animated and your face is expressive and you've got a full voice that comes out. You're talking to them, you're interacting with them. And that's very much a daytime mode. When it's nighttime, we want to take YOU into nighttime mode. And this is where you're very bland and boring. The voice goes, and it's nothing more than a whisper or a shushing sound. So, there's no engaging, eye contact, or animated facial expressions. It's just all bland.