Episode 204: Supporting Spirited Kids in Getting the Sleep They Need with Macall Gordon and Kim West
/In this week’s episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we’ll dive into a topic we rarely cover—sleep! If you’re parenting an intense, sensitive, or spirited child, you know how challenging bedtime can be. To guide us through, I am joined by two experts: Macall Gordon, a gentle sleep coach, and Kim West, "The Sleep Lady" and creator of the renowned Sleep Lady Shuffle. They are also the co-authors of the book Why Won’t You Sleep?! Together, we’ll share practical, compassionate strategies to help both parents and kids get the rest they need.
Here’s an overview of what we discussed:
Why parenting methods fail with intense kids' unique sleep struggles
Recognizing readiness for respectful, skill-based approaches to improving sleep
Developing parental curiosity and awareness with realistic expectations for spirited kids
Maintaining quiet time for children after naps that benefits both parents and kids
To learn more about Macall Gordon, visit her website mgordon@littlelivewires.com, Instagram @littlelivewires, and Facebook @littlelivewires. Also, you can learn more about Kim West on her website sleeplady.com, Instagram @thesleeplady and Facebook @thesleeplady.
Resources:
Sleep challenges can feel overwhelming, but with the right tools and compassionate support, you can make meaningful progress. Remember, every family is unique, and small, consistent changes can lead to big improvements.
I would love to hear from you! If you have any questions you’d like to have answered on the podcast or any takeaways or wins you’d like to share you can leave me a message here: https://www.speakpipe.com/laurafroyenphd
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody. This is Doctor Laura Froyen. And on this week's episode of the Balanced Parent podcast, we are going to be talking about something we hardly ever talk about on this podcast. Sleep and how to get more of it and how to get our kids to sleep, particularly kids who are more intense, sensitive, spirited, kind of whatever term we're using to call them. I know that that's a lot of you. I know a lot of you have those kids in your home and I want to help you get a little bit more sleep for yourself and for them. So to help me with this conversation, I have kind of the queens of gentle and peaceful sleep here Macall Gordon, gentle sleep coach. And Kim asked the sleep lady, you know, the maker of the famous sleep lady shuffle, who I recommend all the time. So I'm so tickled to have you two amazing ladies here on the show. Why don't you introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Macall: Oh, boy. Thanks. I'm so excited. I'm Macall Gordon and I'm a certified, gentle sleep coach certified by my co-author Kim West. I also do research on temperament and sleep and all the sleep training advice, and have written and presented those at conferences and I had two of these children back what feels like probably a million years ago now. And I come from the perspective that I just logged through it and it was not something I recommend, but at the time I knew I couldn't do, crying it out, I couldn't do it and I knew it wouldn't work. So we just kind of gutted it out. And I have feelings about that. I bet you do. Kim is gonna come from a whole different perspective. I wish I had known her back then. Let me just say that. And you probably would have if we had Google that as a blessing. And it's the only way you could have known about me. Yeah. So the only way you could have known about me being on a different coast was if you saw me on TV, or newspaper. But otherwise, yeah, even though I had a website.
Laura: Did you?
Macall: Yeah, I've had 24 years. Oh, yeah. Not 1994. We didn't have the World Wide Web. We're dinosaurs, Laura.
Laura: Oh, no, I mean, like, I remember all of this, you know, this was all happening when I was in high school, you know. So this is very, yes, it's so new. It's so interesting to think about this generation of kids who are growing up and they just have no idea how much things have changed. And then at the same time I think about my grandmother who was born in 1910 and how much things changed for her as she grew up too. So I think things are always changing. Right. Kim, will you tell us a little bit? I mean, will you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do and kind of how you came to be writing this book?
Kim: Yes. So I'm Kim West, the sleep lady or I'm known as the sleep lady. I had a three year old named me that many years ago and I was like, I kind of like that. Yeah, and I'm an author of several books on Sleep and, and this latest one that I am co-author or I have co-authored with Macall, which we'll get into in a second. I'm a mom of two. I would say one of them is one of these alert livewire children. It's funny because I didn't really think of myself as being alert. But now after doing this with Macall and all this research with her, I realize I'm more like the sensitive temperament child that my younger daughter is. And so, let's see what else? So, I have been a family therapist for 32 years. I first developed the sleep lady shuffle 30 years ago with my first child, when my older brother had his child and they came to visit and that baby didn't sleep for the first two years of his life. And they were a wreck, you know, like we're never having any more children. And my sister in law was like, I'm going to have to quit my job. I'm going to fall asleep at the wheel. I was like, what? This is a thing, this is a problem.
And at the time, the only thing we had besides, you know, going to the library of the bookstore was one book and apparently this was worldwide. It was Doctor Ferber's book which is basically graduated extinction, you know, put the and then just put aside what age one does this ad? That wasn't any clear definition like there still isn't. And I just thought it didn't make any sense. Why would we leave our child to learn a new skill particularly at a very young age where they might even not be able to put their hands to midline or their hands to their mouth, to self soothe as an example. And then I didn't believe that leaving them cried out to figure it out was learning anything. I didn't feel that that worked with temper tantrums either to sort of walk away. I wasn't sure what my child was learning in terms of self soothing, in terms of self regulating. I think I kind of have kind of come to dislike the term self soothing. Now it's really, yeah, Maccall and I'd be happy to talk about that hot topic too. And so anyways I experimented, I got some bad advice from my older daughter and I just decided, you know what, I'm, I'm going to figure out something different where I can stay with her, offer physical and verbal reassurance, do less and less as she incorporates the skill skills. And I kind of shut out, you know, all the other advice which was plentiful. Maybe not as plentiful as it is now because of social media.
Laura: And it was so hard to filter through all those things.
Kim: I can only imagine because it was even just hard to, I, what I did was I stopped going to mom's groups which isn't really great for your mental health to isolate. But the judgment and the criticism I was so I just stopped talking really about it, you know, too, but I got her on a good routine and things were going really well and I was breastfeeding and I felt like I was creating a secure attachment and I of course, waited until I thought she was developmentally ready. And and then I had my second one and she came early. Silent Reflux. Totally Live Wire alert still is at 27 years old. It's just in a different form. When I got her healthy and old enough and sleeping, I thought I'm on to something. And then it turned out that, you know, 75 to 80% of my practice ended up being these alert or livewire children. And so I learned so much about them. But my book, my first book, Good Night Sleep Tight was really written for the, you know, the kind of the kid. Yeah. And I had sections in there about alert children. But you know, if you, if you have livewire, you're exhausted. First of all, you're not even reading my 300 whatever page book.
Laura: Because it's not just at bedtime that these kids are turned up. Right? Something I always tell my parents when we're talking about having a spirited kid because most of the families who come to me for support have at least one spirited complex kiddo because those are the parents who are like, okay, the regular stuff's not working. What do I do differently like for this kid? Right. And I always tell them like, you know, you can talk to your parents, to your friends who have parents who have kids. But if they don't have one of these kids, they will not understand. And you have to take everything that they say with a grain of salt because what works for other kids is not most likely never going to work for your child and that is the perspective of your book. So your book is called, why won't you sleep? A game changing approach for exhausted parents of nonstop, super alert, big feeling kids. And I gotta tell you, as I started reading it, I had this feeling of intense validation from my own experience with my two, you guys call them livewire. My two spirited kiddos who are phenomenal and wonderful and, and a lot. And a lot and a lot. And, and deep sadness that I did not have this because we just muddled through much like you Macall, like I, you know, so I was going through, I had my first child while I was in a phd program getting my phd in human development and family studies. And so I knew too much. There's a point sometimes as a parent where, you know, too much, you know that. Right. And, and there was this, you know, there's this tension between doing the full, the full extinction method, which has lots of research about, you know, on the back.
And I know that my child has a robust attachment system that's ready to go and resilient. And we had, you know, and then there was this other piece around cosleeping that I also heavily believed in, but cosleeping didn't work for my kid past maybe four or five months because she would start waking up in the middle of the night and be like, okay, we're awake. Now we're going to play because she's just so alert, so present, so aware, we couldn't do cosleeping. That didn't work. If the one time we tried to cry it out, she just threw up because she was so upset and that was awful. But she also needed to sleep her first year of life. She was awake every 30 to 45 minutes all night long, you know, and so once we did get her sleeping and so I found the sleep lady shuffle, we worked through that. I had to alter it because it still didn't work. We had to go much slower. My guess is that we found our way to what you guys teach in this book and when she was sleeping better, she was a completely different kid. You know, all of the hard parts of having these spirited kids are turned up when they're sleep deprived, when they're over tired, right? And once they're sleeping, oh my gosh, the delight just comes out so much more fun having them. Okay. So I feel like I've talked a lot with you guys, but I feel like I'm doing a job. I wish I had exactly what we're talking about. Yeah. So tell me because I feel like I intuitively know why the traditional approaches maybe don't work. Even the gentle approaches, maybe don't work for these intense kiddos, these live wires. But tell us kind of even more explicitly like what's going on for these kids and what makes sleeping so hard for them.
Macall: Such a good question. Well, I always say, you know, you have to think about what it takes to fall asleep? Like let's break it down. You have to a no, you know, you're tired, you have to get the message from your body that you're tired. You have to be willing to turn your attention away from whatever your life is and turn towards sleep. And then you have to really be able to give into that feeling of sleep. Any adult who's ever had insomnia knows how hard those three steps are. Right. You know that there's a lot or if you, if you've got a deadline at work and your brain is racing how hard it is to shut things off. So, more alert, more intense kids who just have more going on and less of a covering over all of it. I don't think they get the message from their body that they're tired. Either it doesn't happen or they're just not paying attention to it. So they're not even getting the signal that they're tired if it was time. If their body finally is like, I'm tired, they have to, they're not willing to stop what they're doing because of life. Yeah. Well, they were so engaged.
They don't want to go to sleep and then when it's time to go to sleep, the ability to shut out all the stimuli is really hugely difficult for them. Right. Because they're so open. I always say their circuits are open and they're just taking stuff in. But then it's also hard to shut that off. So every piece of falling asleep is difficult. The typical strategies will say, oh, if you just leave the room and let them cry a little bit in like 15 minutes, they'll figure it out. They'll just go, okay, I'm going to sleep. Well, that never happens with these kids. It doesn't, every parent who's tried, it knows that doesn't happen. And so parents when they have taken these books and the books really soft pedal, how hard it could be. It's not 15 or 20 minutes, it's hours of crying and throwing up and, you know, over many nights and, and then those books have no plan b, the books do not say, hey, if your baby is crying for more than an hour, two nights in a row, maybe you should stop. There's just, it's like, nope, just keep going, just keep going, which is, I think horrible. I think it's horrible. Yeah. Anything to add Kim in.
Kim: I mean, I just say here, here I tell all, you know, I just, I tell all my coaches who I train and other coaches and other training programs like, please, if things are not even improving a little bit in three days and for sure, by five please stop. First of all, like, let's make sure that we've gotten a green light from your pediatrician and that there's not something else going on. You know, this is, you know, vastly important. And to me, I feel like if, if and sometimes families are adamant that they want to do graduated extinction fervor control, crying like whatever you wanna call it, basically leave the room and go back and check on them in, in, in time increments. And there's all different rules on what that entails. And if they want to do that, I would say, okay, I mean, obviously most of the parents who came to me came because they wanted another option. Yeah, they wanted a different option. But I do remember some families who, many families who did Full Extinction even worked with Doctor Wise Buff and one of them and, and it didn't work and they tried it for three weeks with the toddler. Right? No, no, no improvement. Full Extinction. And then, she went back to Wise Buff because she was in his practice and said it's not working. And he, and what do we do now? And he just said sometimes it just doesn't work and uh wow, that's it, you know. And so somehow they found their way to me. And so I feel like, look, you have, we have nothing to lose by starting off. Gentle. Absolutely nothing to lose. Just, just like when a family is unsure. Or one wants to do graduate extinction and one wants to do the shuffle. I'll say, well, how about this, how about we start with the shuffle? And if you feel like your baby responds really well, then let's just move faster, you know.
Or at the same time, if you start uh with doing something like fervor graduate extinction and your baby's crying more than you feel comfortable with and it's going to cause you to go in and potentially train them to cry, like pick them up and rock him to sleep after 20 minutes, then I'd rather you go in and sit next to the crib, right? So I just feel like parents need options that they feel like considers their child's temperament, their own temperament, their parenting, philosophies and values and what they can follow through with consistently. If you feel like either your child is starving to death or is in pain, forget it, you're not going to follow through, you know. And you know, some kids just, I always like to say, don't know how to rewrap themselves. You know, these kids go from 0 to 100 like 60 maybe 30 seconds and leaving them to get yourself together means nothing to them, right? Because, you know, as Macalls were always reminding me from going back into the research and going back and understanding development that oh, I just lost my train of thought that, oh, that, not that we don't learn from a dysregulated state even as adults. Right. You know? So when you're, like, hysterical, it's not probably when you're able to hear some really good advice your friend may be giving you. We don't teach swimming when we're drowning. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's a good one. Usually Macall says, why is it in sleep training? You know, we don't offer any support but in so many other areas of parenting, like learning to ride a bicycle, we wouldn't just like, you know, here you go. Good luck. Good luck.
Macall: Yeah, it's absolutely true. And this is the thing I love about this approach is it is consistent with the way we teach kids every other skill, we help them until they get better at it. And then we start letting them take the lead. So this idea of leaving the room again, we, Kim and I both will say emphatically, there is nothing wrong with that approach. However, what's wrong with it is that it's been positioned as the only approach and the only option that's evidence based, which is not true. And the idea should work for everyone and it should work for everyone at any age, at any amount of crying. That's my biggest problem with it. And the idea that, you know, again, we talked about the whole self soothing thing that a, that a child, a baby can be hysterically crying and fall asleep and that they learn to self soothe. No, they just fell asleep. Self soothing means you can do something for yourself to make yourself feel better. The smaller the baby, the fewer skills they have.
Laura: So we cannot say they self soothe because they were hysterical and then they fell asleep. The whole language around sleep training is a little bananas. Well, it's very behavioral, right? So it's all behavioral and most of the people who are listening to this podcast are actively rejecting behavioral approaches to parenting in general and turning towards more respectful and humanistic approaches to really seeing their kids as full humans, right? From the second that they're born. And I love that you're advocating that sleep be taught just like any other skill. And, and that doesn't mean necessarily it's just we're going to do it for them until they can do it easily on their own. Like when learning any important skill, there's struggle, there might be discomfort, especially if a child is used to something and then we're doing something different. There might be protesting a little like this is new. I don't like this. Can we go back to the way it was before, you know, all of those things are possibilities. And so I love the acknowledgement of that as well. I have, I feel like we could go one of two ways. So I, I think that there's, I can not, I think I just want to know about readiness.
So obviously, we can't teach her whole approach here in this, this moment in time in this little, this podcast episode. And we wouldn't want to because I think that there's an actual, like, there's a huge benefit to reading this book if you are going through this with your kids right now and you're thinking about changing sleep. But I'm kind of curious about readiness, both parental readiness and child readiness. So can we talk a little bit about like, what are some of the cues that you would be reading in your family, in, within yourself and within your child to know that, hey, they might be ready to start learning some of these skills or I might be ready to start consistently supporting them in these skills. Yeah, because I let you have this little section in your book where you talk about like, don't do this until you're ready, you know, don't start something until you get it so important. Well, and, and the idea is that parents should decide what's a problem, right?
Macall: So there's no that whole, you have to start, you know, you have to start by research, there's no research on that. So, you know, if things are manageable, cool, great, keep going. But please don't wait until you are so out of gas, you cannot even think straight because that's a bad place to start. So be mindful. And also know that there are certain patterns that will not shift on their own. So when my kids were little, I was following cues, following cues, following cues. I say right off a cliff because I didn't know at what point it was okay to say, you know what mama's a zombie, we need to change something. And so I encourage parents to do that to say, you know what? I cannot keep nursing this child back to sleep at a year and a half old, I can't do it anymore. That is all that's readiness, that's being ready.
Laura: I just want to hold this up to the light for everybody listening right now because this is true, not just in sleep but in anything. What you're saying right now is that mothers and fathers are full human beings participating in a relationship and that our needs matter, that readiness on our part matters. So when it comes to things like weaning from nursing or being ready, you know, if you've been in a shared family bed and they're, you know, they're four and you're ready to find out them to sleep in their own bed that your needs and your readiness has a role in there. And that we don't have to just offer ourselves on the altar of motherhood as martyrs in service of what we perceive as the thing our kids need, you know, that our needs.
Macall: I mean, I learned that I learned it the hard way though, which was that I wasn't doing sleep training. My son was waking up every 45 minutes at 15 months and I knew there were days where I'm like, I am not a good mom today. Is this better than doing a little sleep training? And if I had had an alternative, like the shuffle, I 1000% would have taken it, but I just felt like rock in a hard place. And I didn't have the wherewithal to think creatively. Like Kim did. I wish I had, but I didn't. And so I just kind of kept, you know, moving and I didn't, I didn't factor myself in or that I would have been a nicer person on many days if I had had a little more sleep. So, Kim, you should talk about readiness. Age wise.
Kim: Yeah. I will say just to add on to that, that parents have to be in a difficult enough place that they want to change themselves, you know, and what's difficult for me and difficult for you are totally different things, you know, or can be. And I mean, I've had some families were like, oh, their child's, you know, getting up at 4 a.m. for like three weeks and they're going to lose it. And, and then I have other families where literally they haven't slept in three years and I don't even know how they made it to my office without falling asleep in the car. You know, I mean, like, whoa. But they, you know, because I think that, you know, we get busy in our lives. We're overwhelmed. We don't know where to start. We hope as Macall said, it will go away on its own. We'll try something else, we'll, you know, just pretend it's not happening. So I think that a big factor of readiness is, you know, are you as a family ready to make this your number one priority? And, and as you have older children, meaning, you know, in a bed, let's say 2.5 to, to 6, you really have to make this a priority for longer and you have to be willing to make changes and be consistent in the day time and the night, you know, and so I think that's an important part of readiness. And then I would say, you know, our book, we're, we're really talking about, you know, six months and older. The circadian rhythm is really not developed before then. I mean, it especially with these little live wires, they, they just need more, you know, more help, more assistance to down regulate and, and be able to go to sleep. So I'm totally anti sleep training, newborns always have been, always will be. And then one could argue about when the newborn's period and, but it's pretty much like when a child's four months of age. And then I think that doesn't mean like, oh, it's exactly four months. So now we can sleep train. We really have to, like, look at our child. Right. You know, some, I find oftentimes these alert kids will reach physical milestones early, not always, but often they will. And so again, you can't go by that. Neither.
Some people like, oh, once they roll or oh, once they're 15 pounds or, oh, all these sort of like magical rules that it's like, ok, well, let's look at your child who you have been given. And do they seem ready? You know, so I always think four and five months, I'd like to get them through the milestone, which is one of the few milestones that actually has a change in the sleep cycles that occurs around four months of age. If we can kind of get them through that and by the way, some children do kind of breeze through that. So I know there's a lot out there of like there's like a sleep progression every two weeks. So it can make you go crazy honestly and it really shouldn't be that way. So if we could assess when they're through that and then, you know, four and five months, we're assessing what our baby likes, what's their temperament? Like, what are they actually ready for? And I would always start at night if a parent and I do have in mind the sleep ladies, newborn, sleep guide, gentle newborn, sleep guide, also a coaching readiness list. Because I really don't want people following, you know, kind of blanket advice when they hit whatever, like I said, this many pounds, this many weeks when you go and you do it.
Laura: So what I love about what you're seeing too is that this is, this is a skill that all parents have to develop for their kids, regardless of what we are talking about. The ability to look at my child. Where are they? Very curious, very nonjudgmental, aware of where they are in development, what's going on for them. What makes things harder versus easier for them? Like this is a skill as a parent that you will use for the rest of your time parenting your child. I mean, I continue to use that skill of being able to just like, huh, what's going like? My kids are 12 and 9.5. I continue to use that on a daily basis like, oh, I just got a really short terse response. What's going on, you know, what was their day like? It's just a lot of curiosity and learning how to filter advice that's coming in through the lens of what you know, to be true of yourself, your family's values and your child. It's a really important skill, really intense sometimes to learn it, you know, over sleep.
Kim: But you know, and that's why I think that's why I think it's so helpful for us as parents, particularly when we're new parents to learn what realistic expectations are, you know, what typically happens at this age, right? Just to give some.
Laura: Yeah. So what are some realistic expectations for these live wire kiddos? Let's say if we're attempting this at maybe one or so.
Macall: What expectations for sleep?
Laura: Yeah, for success. Like how is this like, what is success gonna look like? Like how long is this gonna take? Like what can parents be expecting if they are attempting to put some of these more gentle practices into place and hopefully and and moving towards more independent sleep for their kiddos?
Macall: Well, the one tough love thing I can say is there is no step so small that your smart kiddo is not gonna notice. So I really often get, I often, I often get parents who have this. I can tell it's like a little magical wish that they, that there's just some strategy they can do that. Their child won't even notice and they'll start sleeping through the night and it's like, yeah, that's not gonna happen. Kids, not with these kids like they will clock any change you make. It's like, wait, you moved that teddy bear. Why did you do that? Right. So no, I always say that, you know, if you set them up for success, meaning we've ruled out physiological causes, they've gotten a decent day of naps. So they're not an over tired cranky pants monster. Know that the first couple of nights are gonna look crazy, they're gonna look like it doesn't work. You're gonna really question yourself, but you've gotta keep going. And like Kim said, you should see something shift in just a few days. Once you start seeing things shift, that's your green light to really keep going in the most consistent way you can possibly muster because these kids require parents to be so much more on their game than other kids. Other kids, there are things, you could be a little wiggly wobbly. They might not notice. These kids will absolutely notice and will absolutely hold you to it. So you just, you have to be ready and you have to stick to whatever plan you've made like a big dog. Like you really have to massively go for it. And then things can move.
Yeah, I usually give, by the way, I always love to say this about these, these alert babies, like, and children, they know what they want when they want it and they're willing to hold out until they get it right. Like, and they'll tell you, you know, and they'll tell you and then when you know, and when they're preverbal, they'll tell you by crying. Of course, and when they're, and then they're verbal, they have words for you and crying.
Well, and the thing that I adore and about the sleepless lady shuffle too is that you, it's, it's so about co-regulation. So you're not just watching your baby scream because all the other methods say whatever you do do not pick that baby up. Because if you pick the baby up, they'll learn that if they cry, they get picked up. It's like, yeah, and the problem with that is so you can pick them up the minute you think they really need help calming down and people go, well, how will I know when to do that? How long should I wait? It's like, no, you don't wait. You experiment. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Because you'll know it was too soon. Right. You know that if your little alarm goes off and says they need help, you pick them up, you calm them down but you put them back and keep going, you don't stop and you don't go do something else, you keep going. But the idea is we want to keep the pot off the boil so that they are still in the zone of being able to learn the new skill so that they can't. Right. Right. And it works for kids who are bar first, right. Like who will throw up really easily. People really will say, well, what if they throw up? And it's like, I, I think Kim, you say this a lot, like it, it really doesn't happen as much or for more than maybe once, if at all.
Kim: And then I wanna, I 100% agree and I've seen that over and over and over again in my practice. I was thinking about, I'm not sure if we 100% answered your question or about, like, how long does it take? It's a very difficult question and I will tell you what, what I tell the general public, right? And then you have to, and then it's kind of a wild card with a live wire, right? Because, you know, if you think about it, temperaments also or maybe this is not fair to say, I think it is Macall on a continuum, right? In terms of or what cluster of traits you have, you know, and and that will affect how long something takes, but in general as an average and I always think of the live wires as being the outliers. So, but if a parent asks, where's the fat bell curve? You know, it's pretty much 7 to 10 nights that you will start to see improvement in the night, meaning they will go to sleep faster, they will wake less often and their wakings will be shorter and then what you'll be stuck with for a temporary amount of time is some early rising like parents are seeing right now. After, after the time. Yeah. And then you'll see in 2 to 3 weeks, naps start to fall into place first, the morning nap and then the afternoon nap. So the last two parts to kind of come together are early rising and the afternoon nap because they're connected. Right. And so that's what I'm told, where I'm really, like, hanging tough. We're going to keep doing it, it's gonna get better. And I would say those two pieces, if the average kiddo that takes 2 to 3 weeks, these live wires, it will take longer and some parents will say I'm only gonna focus on night and I'm going to do whatever works for naps.
Because otherwise I'm gonna lose my mind and I support that, you know, we got to pick our battles and then when we pick it, we got really, yeah, because snaps with these kids are the hardest. They're the hardest. And I've seen, you know, a lot of times and I totally agree with that timeline. I tell people the biggest work happens in the first four or five days and then you'll really, mostly everything will be handled well in a couple of weeks. So I am completely on board with that. But some people have so much trouble with naps that I'm like, look if we can get nighttime good. You can just like not worry as much about naps because they're just, these kids give up their naps way sooner. They nap less and then they fully give up their naps way earlier than any child should. But sometimes the work it would take to get them to get better naps is just not, not gonna happen. So, you know, not worth it. Yeah. Not worth it. And if there's a second child in the house, really forget it. Like, yeah, not gonna happen. So, at least people can get the night time. I would just be careful though. If you have a listener who has a live wire and their 18 month old has stopped napping, then we please know that we are not saying that you shouldn't include some attempt during the day, every single day because I'm telling you 3 to 4 days of no naps. But there will be a personality change for the worse for the parent.
Macall: You know, it's all about age. I had, I keep talking about this one client with a 10 month old. And both naps and nighttime were horrific and the mom worked really hard. Got nighttime. A beautiful nighttime is beautiful. I fell asleep, fast, and slept through the night. She worked on that because the baby was only taking one nap and they should be on two at that age. And mom worked on naps for two solid weeks, and didn't budge at all. And we were like, ok, she's taking one nap because she's doing so well at night and we just let it go but, but she was still napping.
Kim: It just wasn't in the time frame that we would expect both of those cases. Like let's say that.
Laura: Oh sorry. Oh no, no, it's fine. I was just gonna say both of my even in cases like that, sorry, you go Kim. Okay.
Kim: We just wanted to add on to what said because because I always, you know, we know how sometimes a parent will hear that and then be like, oh, so even in that kind of case, I might have stood like, let's say that 10 month old took a nap from 1 to 3 and making that up and then had like 11 to 12 hours at night. I would still say to that parent, you know what, I'd still like you to go for a stroll or walk or a car ride in the morning. Even if the baby glazes over and there's no movement, it's a little restoration, right. It's just a little catnap or something. Yeah. Or just zoning out can be, be better and, and, you know, even if you had like a 2.5-year-old who you want to give up on naps, you know, and of course they make sure you still, you have an earlier bedtime now. And we're not depriving them on both ends. I'd still work on quiet time, you know, even if it's just to still the body in a quiet activity, uh, same thing or walking in a stroller and they're zoning out. It's still better than letting the brain active the whole day.
Laura: 100%. Both of my kids dropped their nap around 2, 2.5. Consistently. Sometimes they would take it, but sometimes they wouldn't. But we never stopped having quiet times. So the routine was after lunch, we go upstairs, we do an abbreviated form of the bedtime routine and then we rest in our rooms on weekends. Mom and dad rested in their rooms too. So the house was very boring and twisted, you know. And I mean, they kept rest time. I think that they finally, like, really, like, put together a revolt when they were seven and five. I think that they, they kind of came, came to us with an ultimatum about it and then we had to have some negotiations around. Like, what are my names at restaurants? I mean, so they still, like, even, like during the summer. So they're 12 and nine, they know in the hour after lunch they're not allowed to speak to me because I need an hour off, no. Yes, I needed my client. So, I'm, I'm a huge fan of keeping quiet time as long as possible just for your own sanity and for theirs too, like learning to rest, learning to be with your own, like with yourself. Like, those are good skills for us to have too, you know, and I was going to ask you guys. So I feel like we are kind of assuming that people know what the sleep lady shuffle is. And I'm kind of curious if maybe we can very briefly, very quickly give a quick little, this is kind of what we're talking about so that people know what they're looking for.
Kim: Yeah. Okay. So if you think about what we were talking about before the graduated extinction, which is, you know, and we'll just use the example of the baby in the crib. You put the baby in the crib awake and aware that they're being in the crib, hopefully after a soothing routine and then you leave the room and then there's all kinds of rules about how often you can go in and what you can do when you go in and not do when you go in, depending on whose book you're reading or um what consultant you're talking to. And so that my approach is more what we call and I call parental fading. So it's not confused with fading, which is a different approach. And parental fading means you put your baby into the crib after a soothing routine and you stay and you sit down next to the crib and you offer physical and verbal reassurance. So padding, shushing, picking up to calm when they get hysterical but not picking them up and holding them to sleep. And you do less and less over the first three nights and then you start to move away. So you're basically, kind of passing the baton, I'll do less and less to help you as you learn to incorporate the skill independently. So that's pretty much it in a nutshell. So I'm, and it's, there is eye contact unless of course your, your baby or toddler is having eye contact with you to entertain you. Then I might close, say close your eyes and but I know that there are some people incorrectly saying that the sleep lady shuffle is to sit by the crib. Don't have eye contact, don't talk, don't touch, please don't, don't do that or don't call that the sleep lady shuffle. Because I feel like that's more detrimental. And I'd rather you leave the room and do that's like the still face procedure.
Laura: It's really distressing.
Kim: That's how you get some really anxious kids about what happened to my parents.
Laura: And I was just so when we were doing this with my oldest, she used pacifiers and they're so clever. These kids are so clever. So she would throw them out of her crib because she would know that we would give them back to her. And it was a way to just kind of like, oh, okay. So she's, you know, we're focusing on sleep, let's get some more interaction, you know, some more like play, like play, it turned into a game. And so we like, you have sometimes with those types of things, with these really smart, intelligent kiddos, you do have to get creative. So, like we at night she had lots of Binkies, but at night time she would have one Binky that was attached to a stuffy that she would. So she threw the Binky out, she could reel it back in herself. And so, and then like as the so I mean, as part of the learn like passing the baton it went, we went from handing it back to. Oh yeah, pull it back through. You've got it. Okay? Put it in your mouth. I love that. And just again, like teaching them those skills. But yes that's the thing is people, yeah, just that people think that there's a million different methods, right? They're all that they're all different and really 99% of them are fervor. I mean, really like I can't even tell you how often it is.
Macall: The one time I did this it fell out and it cut off my sound. Okay? You know how many times I look at a book and I'm like, oh, this looks like a good sleep book. Oh, that, wow, it's just really lovely and empathic and oh there it is, right? Like there's the crying it out part. So all methods, all sleep methods, gentle to whatever the most extreme kind are all the same goal, which is to transfer the work of sleep from you to your child. You can do that drastically by leaving the room and not coming back in. You can do it incredibly slowly like the no cry sleep solution, sleep ladies, you know, in the middle, I would say on the and definitely on the gentler side. But it's all the same idea. And so that's why I think where you can give parents this overview and say, look, you can take the sleep lady shuffle, you can break it down into small pieces if you want. Like if you, I've had people who've been bouncing their kid frantically on the ball, you know, maybe they need to take a couple of days and slow the bouncing down and then just hold the baby, then they start in the crib or, or whatever, but you really can break it down into pieces that make sense to you and your kid, which I love, it's not like a recipe, you know, for, for steps to take.
Laura: I really love that kind of permission that you're doing because I think so many, especially when we're in the 1st 18 months of parenting, we just want to get it right. Right. And the parents who are seeking out more gentle and peaceful solutions for any discipline like they really want to get it right. They really understand the importance of the job that they're doing. They really want to make sure that they have a strong bond and attachment with their babies and they just want to get it right. And it feels so relieving, so soothing to have an expert come in and say this is the method for you to do it exactly like this. And I mean, what you're saying though is that, that's, there isn't one right method that's going to be right for everyone, not even this one, right? So, and I think what your book actually teaches is how to read your kid, how to learn to be flexible for your kid, individual child that you have, you present a lot of different information or if your kid has this going on, this is what you might need to do if your kid has this going on and that in and of itself is such an invaluable skill to have learning how to read your kid and become confident in the like, you know what the expert says to do it this way. But I actually know my kid better than the expert. And I know that they need these three steps before we do that one, right? And that's really, it's really lovely to have the experts say like, oh my gosh, please do it differently if you think it's better for your kid to do it differently. Right?
Macall: Oh, yeah. And it's important to note too that cosleeping doesn't work for everybody either. Like that definitely does not work for my daughter. It did not work for my son. Like, you know, people will say, oh, you just need to come and it's like that is not a solution for everybody. Really sensitive kids. These really sensitive live wires are light sleepers and there's a lot of noise and movement that happens.
Kim: In a big bed smells and textures and you know, some kids just don't want to be touched either, right?
Macall: So that can be a really tough moment for some parents where they're like, oh I thought this was gonna be so great. And, and when you say, how are you sleeping? And how are your kids sleeping? Because I've had moms also say, yeah, we're co-sleeping. My baby sleeps great, but I can't sleep because I'm so nervous or I'm so preoccupied or whatever. So, you know, cosleeping works, I say until it doesn't, then again, then we have, it doesn't work for everybody. When they try and want to do it, it doesn't work for some of these kids. So we really have to figure out the same with room sharing. We have to figure out where everybody sleeps the best. And if you're not sleeping or your baby's not sleeping and there's something that we can change with the context. It may be worth trying because we, we really shouldn't just keep like, no, no, no, we have to go sleep or we have to share a room, whatever. There are options where people can sleep better.
Laura: Yeah, I really appreciate that Macall. Thank you so much. Macall and Kim, I, I've loved this conversation. It was such a delight to get to talk to you guys. I wish that you had written this book 13 years ago so I could have read it while I was pregnant with my first. But better late than never, I'm so excited that current families going through sleep troubles will have it available to them. Is this something too that can work for kiddos who are older, for whom like, you know, the mom is still laying next to them before they go to bed and they are interested in not having to do that. Sorry, I just got distracted by a new question.
Macall: I mean, this book goes up, goes up to six and sleep tight six years of age and if a child doesn't have like an anxiety issue or other, you know, and other, you know, issue going on, then you could, it doesn't mean like once there's seven you can't do it. Yeah. You just have to make sure you've ruled out other things.
Laura: I love that too. Thank you. Thank you so much. You guys. So I want to just make sure everybody knows where they can find your book and find your work and connect with you. Can you give me some socials or your websites?
Macall: Oh. Well, the book is obviously you can preorder it. It's out. Well, it's on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever you find books. My information is on Little live wires.com. That's the handle for, Instagram as well. Little live wires.
Kim: And the book comes out by the way, November 19th. So you can preorder it now. And get that and then my website is Sleep lady.com. The same for my social life is either the sleep lady or sleep lady. Yeah, and you can see all the links there. Amazon bar books and you know, every big book out the US.
Laura: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much and thank you so much for bringing temperament and like spiritedness to this conversation around sleep. It's so needed. I really am very excited that this resource is there for parents now for having us.
Kim: Thank you for this conversation.
Macall: It's great.
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