Sleep! It’s a topic that’s on pretty much every parent’s mind. We’ve already looked at this from a cultural perspective, where we learned our Western approach to sleep is by no means universal, and that this can result in quite a few of the problems we face in getting our children to sleep.
In this episode we dive deep into the practicalities of sleep with Dr. Chris Winter, who has practiced sleep medicine and neurology since 2004. His first book, The Sleep Solution, Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How To Fix It (affiliate link) was focused on adults’ sleep challenges, and I’ve been putting the ideas in it into practice and have been getting better sleep as a result.
His new book is The Rested Child: Why Your Tired, Wired, or Irritable Child May Have a Sleep Disorder--And How to Help (affiliate link), and is based on Dr. Winters’ almost two decades of experience of evaluating children in the sleep clinic that he founded.
We’ll look at ways that you can get more sleep (or maybe even more rest that feels almost as restful as sleep), whether you can shift your (or your child’s!) sleep patterns, how to banish bedtime struggles for good, and so much more!
This episode is for all parents, but especially for those who are expecting or have a child under the age of one, and who are desperately trying to get more sleep (or worried about being in that phase of life in the near future!). We’ll help you get started on the right foot so you can know you’re doing the best for your child - and for yourself as well.
Dr. Chris Winter's Books:
The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It (Affiliate links).
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Jen Lumanlan 00:02
Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide called 13 reasons why your child won't listen to you, and what to do about each one, just head over to yourparentingmojo.com/subscribe. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners and the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.
Jen Lumanlan 01:00
Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to talk about a topic that I know interests parents everywhere and that is sleep. We've already covered this on the show from the perspective of looking at cross-cultural ideas about sleep. But today we're here with an expert who's going to give us some practical ideas about how to get more sleep. Now I know that sleep is an important topic to parents with children of all ages, but it's especially important to expecting parents and those with newborns. And if that describes you right now, I also wanted to let you know that the Right From The Start course is reopening for enrollment on Sunday, October 24th. I run this course with the amazing Hannah and Kelty of the upbringing podcast. And I truly love doing it with them. Because our skill sets complement each other so well. I bring all the research-based information you've come to expect from this show as well as 100 hours of coaching, training, and a good deal of experience in coaching parents over the years. And they bring a lot of training and topics relevant to new parents. But the reason that I wanted to work with them specifically on the course is that they're trained in resources for infant educators or RIE methods, but they aren't RIE associates, which means they help parents to take what they find useful out of RIE rather than seeing it as a prescriptive set of tools. And of course, as twins themselves and being the parents of four children between them, they've just about seen it all from the perspective of siblings, so they can offer a lot of guidance to parents who aren't new at the parenting thing, but who also know that they can't do things the same as they did them with their previous child, or they don't want to do them like that. So the course has 10 modules and runs over nine weeks, all of the content is available in video and audio, and there are transcripts as well so you can learn in the way that you learn best. We have a supportive community of parents who are on this journey with you that isn't on Facebook. And we also meet for group coaching calls regularly as well. The parents who have taken the course tell us that they got the knowledge they knew they needed, but what they didn't even know they needed was the community of parents who really do get to know each other and us as well on the coaching calls, who offer support and guidance related to whatever struggles we're facing during this period in our lives from trying to figure out who you are as a person with a newborn to your shifting relationship with your partner, and your own parents as well to navigating difficult sibling behavior. We cover it all. So if you're expecting a child or you have one under one year old, the right from the start course was designed for you and I'm as I'm sure you can tell, it doesn't mean that we're going to tell you the one right way to raise a child but rather to help you find the right way for you. So once again, enrollment is open starting Sunday, October 24th. And we start as a group on Monday, November 8th, you can learn more and sign up at yourparentingmojo.com/rightfrom thestart. So our guest today Dr. Chris Winter is a board-certified neurologist and a double board-certified sleep specialist who is in private practice in Charlottesville, Virginia. He consults with athletes on improving their sleep and his first book The Sleep Solution: Why your sleep is broken and how to fix it, was geared towards adults’ challenges with sleep. His new book just published in August is called the Rested Child: Why your tired wired and irritable child may have a sleep disorder and what to do about it. So today we're going to talk about sleep for children, sleep for parents’ and sleep for everybody. Welcome, Chris. It's so great to have you here.
Dr. Winter 04:20
Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.
Jen Lumanlan 04:24
So I would like to start by addressing the elephant in the room because I know that parents who are listening to this I want to know your stance on these topics because they want to know if this person's approach is aligned with things that I believe about sleeping, about raising my children, and about my values and beliefs. So bed-sharing. I will say that I found your approach in the book to be a little bit flippant and I will quote what you said, “We used to sleep piled on top of one another in a cave, I suppose. But we also used to banish people with leprosy and smoke cigarettes in operating rooms. We evolve.” And that to me sort of implies the only backwards people in backwards countries, you haven't yet seen the light in the sort of Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic approach to sleep, they're just, you know, our approach is clearly superior, and they're missing out on some important development. When actually I know the research has shown that people who live in those countries, you asked them about their children's sleep problems, and they're like, “What sleep problems?” So tell me more about your stance on bed sharing and where that came from, and what you believe about it.
Dr. Winter 05:30
Sure. So, I think it's important to define evolve, because you're putting a judgment on it, when in fact, evolve just means take something that's simple and make it more complicated. And we do that very well in this country. I used to be able to fix my own car, I cannot do that anymore, because the cars have evolved to the point now where it doesn't allow that to happen. So I do think that sleep was very simple in the past, and it's become very complicated. People did sleep in one room at some point in the past, and now you have a nice house in Gwinnett County, you know, Atlanta, and every one of your seven kids have their own bedroom and their own situation. So I'm not here to pass judgment on anything, my stance on co-sleeping is, you do what's right for your family and your children, I don't really have an opinion on it one way or the other. Outside of two things. One, I do think that it is important to be careful with little children when you sleep with them just out of a danger perspective and I don't think that's particularly radical, although I do think it took a while for the American Academy of Pediatrics to really come out with a position on it just because of this kind of, you know, feelings about it. It’s deeply personal to people the way they sleep, so I personally believe that it's probably not a great idea to sleep in a bed with a child under the age of one. Just because, you know, I think that we have seen bad outcomes. I've
