Sleep Wrecked Kids and Families: Can We Take Control?

In this week’s blog, we explore sleep-wrecked kids and to anybody that has had a child, you will know that it alters your life in many, many ways. But in those in those early weeks, in those early months, perhaps even in those early years, the overwhelming thing that changes is your ability to sleep because your child isn’t sleeping through the night from the time it is born.

In fact, it wakes up every usually every three or four hours, sometimes more and it often surprises me how well, how bad this sleeping pattern can go on for years and years and years and affect people’s health, both mentally and physically. I had one patient who had not had a four-year-old child and had not slept for more than two hours in that four-year period.  That has a dramatic effect on not only the child’s well-being but the individual parent’s well-being and the effect that has on the family dynamic and the relationship is quite profound.

This is the theme I’ve explored before, and we had a great episode with Karen Faulkner from Nurture Parenting, a Toddler and Sleep Behavioral Consultant. In this episode with speech pathologist Sharon Moore, Sharon Moore, who has written a great book called Sleep Wrecked Kids.

Sharon gives us some great insights into the problems and some of the strategies that are involved, and it’s another great resource, but it kind of highlights the very subject of sleep from a very early age. I know in my own family, and now,  I’ve got adults, and my daughters are 34 and 30 each with their own children.

Importance of sleep

I remember when my older daughter was born, the pediatrician said to us as new parents, the thing you have to teach your child in the first year of life is sleep. We thought that was a rather bizarre thing to be telling us and in retrospect, it was probably the best advice that any doctor has ever given us.

You know me as an individual and us as a couple because the importance of sleep is a theme that is is a really big focus of the Unstress podcast and my book and all my wellness programs. That advice to teach your child to sleep has incredible reproduction repercussions for the child’s well-being and you as a parent, well being, and your whole family and relationship dynamics.

This is a really important topic and there are just so many issues that go into it like how? Why? Why wouldn’t a child sleep well? What constitutes sleeping well in the first place? Why breathing is just so important, why mouth breathing versus nasal breathing has implications.

This is a topic that we explore, and we’ll keep coming back to. In this episode on Sleep Wrecked Kids and focus and emphasis on getting into a good sleep routine and providing you with some resources and connections that you can draw on. I mean, at the time that I was parenting, we had a book or two, which we could reference. But now the information there is incredible. The resources are incredible. But getting the right information is the key, as is the case with so much of this overwhelming information.

Conclusion

What we’re trying to say on this blog and in my work is to build advice on experience. The advice that you’re getting is built on experience and backed by science. That’s a theme that is also important in the information that you hear on my podcast. So this week’s episode, Sleep Wrecked Kids with Sharon Moore, was just fantastic building on that program that I did with Karen Faulkner on nurture parenting and a theme that we will be exploring coming back to sleeping and breathing and looking at it from different angles.

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions.