Sleep is not a luxury, it is a vital component to our health and wellbeing. Too many of us, and our children, are overtired, making functioning in our day to day lives so much more challenging. Sleep impacts a child's physical growth and development, emotion regulation, cognitive development and learning capacity, and overall physical and mental health. With too little sleep children are more likely to be hyperactive, have emotional extremes, meltdowns, behavioral difficulties, and can even get sick more easily and take longer to recover. As adults, lack of sleep influences our patience for day to day tasks, our communication with others, our own emotional regulation, and we are also more likely to fall victim to illnesses. During the postpartum months a lack of sleep increases the likelihood of postpartum depression and anxiety to occur. The good news is that being a parent and lack of sleep are not synonymous! We can be a parent and have our sleep too.

There are several approaches out there to helping a child learn to fall and stay asleep. These range from no-cry methods all the way to cry-it-out methods. As a certified pediatric sleep consultant, I meet the family where they are comfortable and encourage methods that are gentle, yet effective, without you having to leave baby's side. This method, known as association fading, is gentle enough to be utilized with newborns and flexible enough to address toddler sleep concerns as well. It is effective in achieving independent sleep in just 10 days, with many families seeing improvements within the first 3 days. This is not traditional sleep training as you may know it. Schedule a free, no-strings-attached call to learn more and see if it is a good fit for you. Let's get you, your little one, and your whole family back to sleeping well again!