Sleep Struggles are Separation Struggles

Sleep. Sleep is one of those rare commodities that parents always need more of. And sleep is one of the topics you've asked me to talk about on the pod. So if you are going through sleep challenges, whether it's protest at night, a really long, really complicated bedtime routine, 2am wake ups where you have to walk your kid back to their room over and over, you are not alone. And I really want you to know that with daylight savings time coming up, sleep has really been on my mind because even though we're falling back, parents and kids really don't get that benefit. In fact, I think daylight savings time completely changes when you're a parent before you're a parent, falling back means you get an extra hour of sleep. When you have kids, falling back for daylight savings time means you have an extra hour with your kid. And we all love our kids, but those are very, very different situations. More sleep or more kid time at the CR of dawn. And so if you've already been going through disrupted sleep routines and schedules and tired, cranky kids, maybe you feel like you're a tired, cranky parent these days, I really want to give you some ideas about sleep before it gets further disrupted with daylight savings time. And so that's exactly what we're going to do today. I'm Dr. Becky and this is good inside. We'll be back right after this. Okay, so here to me is one of the things that's just at the core of sleep struggles at night. Parents and kids want very different things. Kids want more time with you, more snuggles, more connection, more talking, more books. Kids want more with you. And I really can't represent all parents. I guess I can just speak for myself as a parent who loves my kid at the end of the night. I want less time with my kid, maybe no time with my kid. Maybe the time is over with my kid. And I get my time to do a whole range of things I think about all the time and hardly ever get to do things that are, you know, basic but feel rare, like responding to my email on a computer instead of my phone, maybe watching a TV show with my husband, and maybe getting through half of it without falling asleep. Maybe I just want to sit and drink tea without anybody on my lap, without anyone saying mom. And we have really different priorities than our kids. And I know that probably seems basic, but I really want you to take a moment to consider that because in any area of life, in a given moment, if you want the polar opposite of what someone else wants, you get into a Power struggle. You feel stuck, you feel reactive because you feel like, don't you understand that I need something important right now? And when our kid is calling us back or saying, I really need to go to the bathroom. Oh, I really need an extra snack. Wait, don't we have to make a dentist appointment? Like they will say anything, right? To get more time with us. One of the reasons we get so triggered is because I think we're desperate for that non child, non caregiving time that is just increasingly infrequent. And the more we understand that disconnect, the more we actually have compassion for ourselves around. Wow. Yeah. That's probably why I have such a hard time being patient at night. We can actually show up as a sturdier leader. We also don't go into the guilt spirals. And understanding this gap between what a kid wants and what a parent wants actually really helps us fix sleep, because we can show up in a grounded way. We can respond instead of kind of reacting and being tricked. Guard. So that's the first thing. The second thing I want to share with you about sleep is I went through some of the hardest months of my own parenting journey when my daughter was about three years old. And I think there were three months in a row where none of us slept through the night. I mean, my sons did, but me, my husband, my daughter. If I really think back, I think it was a good 90 days before we actually got a good night's sleep. And some of you might hear that and say, wow, that's a lot longer than my stage. And some of you might hear that and say, wow, 90 days. I'm on day one 20. Or I'm on day, you know, 592. And I believe you. And during this stage, I was so stuck. I mean, I want to be honest with you. I think I was so angry at my daughter. I think I was so fed up. I think I really, maybe unconsciously, maybe consciously felt like she was like a bad kid giving me a hard time. And I think one of the reasons I was stuck in this hard sleep stage for as long as I was was actually because of that mindset. When we're in a stage with our kid where we just. And I'm gonna say it. We just don't like them very much. And we love them, but we don't like them. And we're mad and we feel like they're almost doing something to us. We're in an adversarial position. And if you're like me when you're in an adversarial position with someone and you see them as the enemy. You act like they're the enemy. And we can't make progress. At least you know what, we can't make positive progress. Let me tell you from experience, we can make a lot of negative progress and just dig ourselves deeper in that hole. I know because I lived it. And I still remember the day that I was talking to one of my good friends, my friend Robin, so insightful, so able to break me out of, you know, a mindset that's keeping me stuck. And she reminded me that I just had a third baby, which I guess I knew, but I hadn't connected to my daughter's sleep struggles. And she reminded me of something that she told me. I've always told her about sleep, but in this state, I think I forgot that sleep struggles are not really sleep struggles. Sleep struggles are separation struggles. I want to say that again because it's easy to gloss over certain things we talk about here, but some things are more important than others. One thing that's important is that parents and kids want different things at night. Another thing that's important is that sleep struggles are simply a form of separation struggles. And I remember talking to my friend Robin and thinking about my 3 year old's preschool at the time and how we prepped her. So much for separation, right? I kind of knew to do that. We made a separation routine. We made the unfamiliar more familiar. I knew to expect protest and I knew how to respond. But then when I was thinking about sleep, well, my daughter separated from me at age three at preschool for about three hours. And during those three hours, she was with a couple teachers, some safe adults. She was with a bunch of other kids, and she was in a bright room with a ton of toys. And then I thought about sleep. She was separating from me for about 12 hours, a whole lot more than three. But there were no adults in her room. She was alone. There were no kids in her room. She was alone. It wasn't bright and full of toys. It was dark, the lights were off. And I hope you have a version of the aha moment that I had where I realized, oh my goodness, separating from me at night, especially after the birth of a new sibling with throws everything, you know, in a different direction. That's a harder separation than her preschool separation, which I actually paid a lot of attention to and really thought about how to equip her with the skills to separate safely. And I think probably related to this first insight that I just really needed alone time. I Didn't even realize it, that I forgot to kind of connect the dots. She was having trouble going to sleep. She was screaming, she needed a new water bottle, she needed a 20th book. She was coming out of her room at 2am because she was kind of saying to me, I'm having a hard time being apart from you. I don't feel safe right now. I can't allow my body to fall asleep if I'm in a state of threat. Please help me. And when I started to see that sleep struggles were really separation struggles, I also realized, wait, my daughter's not giving me a hard time. She's having a hard time. She's having a really hard time. She's scared. And three year olds or eight year olds, however old a kid is, when they're having sleep struggles, they don't say to us, hey, I know it seems like I'm giving you a hard time, but really I'm scared and I'm having trouble separating from you. They don't say that. I mean, I don't know. But when I'm at my worst and I'm in a state of threat, I tend even now as an adult not to be able to articulate the deeper reason. I just kind of act it out. And so I guess I can understand that my 3 year old was doing the same thing. But then everything changed. Do I mean everything changed the next night she slept independently? No, definitely not. But what we underestimate is that when we understand the actual reason for our kids challenging behaviors, we immediately feel better because we think we need behavior change in order to feel better. We don't. We feel awful because we don't understand our kid. We feel awful because we're confused. We feel awful because we're trying a million things and of course none of them are working because we can't actually fix a problem if we don't understand the problem. And when you have an understanding that both makes sense in your head, and I mean this like, actually also makes sense in your heart, you have such relief. You have clarity. And then, yes, then I had to do all the things, okay, well how do I build safety and separation? How do I make my kid feel safe so they can actually sleep in their room Now? I actually had a direction, but I was on a road that made sense. I was on a road that had hope. And I was on a road where I actually felt like a really sturdy leader. Because sturdiness really requires clarity. Okay. I want to transition to a question I received about sleep. And it's compelling. Related to my story about my daughter. And so here's the question that came in, Dr. Becky. Is it just me or is my kids sleep worse for a number of days after trips or after long weekends? I've been traveling a lot for work and I swear, whenever I get back, my son's sleep goes off the rails. Okay, you are not making this up. And again, this is what is so beautiful and powerful about understanding kids behavior instead of just reacting to the behavior. Okay, let's walk through this. Sleep is about separation. So if sleep struggles are actually a form of separation struggles, then when we go to a new location, when we have long weekends, when our routine is disrupted, or when I have work trips, which by the way, you go on and go on those work trips, no guilt needed. And when I do have work trips and I'm away from my kid for a couple nights and then come back, would it make sense that my kid would struggle a little bit more to separate from me at night? Yes, this is a thing that makes so much sense. And again, now that we see this as a separation struggle, not as my kid being difficult or trying to drive me crazy, I can think, well, what would help my kid understand the transitions I make between being away for work and being home? What will help my kid feel close to me when I'm not there? What will help my kid know that mommy always comes back? Right now, all of a sudden, not only is sleep going to improve, but here's the amazing part about getting to the core, understand, understanding. When I build those skills to help my kid, quote, sleep better, I'm also just building their coping skills in general, their confidence skills in general, their resilience in general, the last thing I want to say is as much as we focus on our kids sleep, which trust me, I've been in those phases, it's also really important to focus on our sleep when our kid is going through a difficult sleep stage. When I go back to those three months when I hardly slept, I was in such an unhelpful mindset that it was making me further stuck. But also I think I had a hard time just prioritizing what I needed to do to adjust to this difficult phase I was in with my daughter. If I could go back, I would have whispered, becky, you're gonna get through this, you know, and maybe go to bed 20 minutes earlier. I know that's really hard, but let's acknowledge the reality that you're probably gonna be woken up at 2am and if you get 20 minutes extra of sleep, 10 minutes extra of sleep a couple nights. It's not gonna make it all better, but it might be the difference between difficult next day and kind of an impossible next day. Maybe that's not the answer. Maybe during a hard sleep stage with your kid, you really have to vent to a friend or you really have to take that walk in the morning even though you're kind of tired. When we're going through a difficult sleep stage with our kid, really prioritizing some manageable, and that word is key, manageable form of self care is important because again, this links back to the original thing we talked about here. Sleep struggles are extra hard because they get in our way of getting what we need at night. Time to recharge, time to just take care of ourselves. And so if that isn't happening at night, we have to figure out how to carve it in to our schedule at other times. So I want to end by doing something very deliberate. You know, it's one of the things. When people come into the Good inside app, they often write what they're struggling with. And on the Good inside team, we do something called holding hope. Right. It's really core to, I think, what we need when we're having a hard time. One of the hardest things about sleep struggles, especially if we've been in it for a while, is we lose hope. We just kind of think we're never gonna sleep until our kid is out of the house. I don't know, maybe 10, you know, 15 years from now. And I wanna let you know directly that I am holding hope for you. I know that when you work on your kid's independent sleep from a place of actually understanding the core issue, I know that when you have this insight. Wait, sleep struggles or separation struggles? My kid is having a hard time. They're not giving me a hard time. It doesn't fix everything, but it is definitely the necessary first step toward lasting change with sleep. I've seen it over and over. And so I want you to hear that from me. I am holding hope for you. I am holding hope that at some point soon you will have a good night's sleep and your kid will have a good night's sleep. And here's the awesome part. And that both of you will feel really good about it. There's no crying it out that should be necessary with kids who have sleep problems. You can do this from a place of building skills for both of you. And then you're going to have a good night's sleep and your kid is going to find you in the morning and say I did it. I'm so proud of myself that is possible and I really want you to hear that from me. Thank you for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com podcast or you could write me@podcastoodinside.com parenting is the hardest and most important job of in the world and you deserve resources and support so you feel empowered and confident for this very important job you hold. I'm so excited to share Good Inside Membership. It's the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's game changing and built for a busy parent who wants to make the most out of the few minutes they have. One last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.