Hi! I’m Dana Obleman, creator of The Sleep Sense Program. If you’d rather read than watch, I’ve transcribed the text of this video below.

This week’s question comes from Nicolette. She writes:

“My baby is eight months old and cannot sleep without outside resources—rocking, patting, and nursing. I know this needs to change, but the problem is, I’m a really social person. My husband and I go out at least one night a week, and we like to take the baby with us. However, I’m afraid that my social life will interfere with teaching Kate to sleep. Is there any advice you can give? How do I teach her to sleep even when we’re not home?”

One of the things I think is important to remember is that your child’s sleep needs are just as important as anything else in their life. You wouldn’t let her skip a meal because you wanted to go out. You wouldn’t let her not get exercise because you wanted to go out. So, you really do need to kind of keep that in mind around your life as well.

I can relate because I’m a very social person as well. I like to go out with my friends, I like to go out with my husband, I like to go out with my family, but I really don’t try to combine all of those into one. If it’s family time, we go out at appropriate hours to do things with our family, and then we make sure we’re at home for bedtime. If we want to go out for the evening, we get a babysitter. Or, when we had fewer children, and they were smaller, we would take our Pack ‘n Play along. If we were at a friend’s house for dinner, we would just put our baby down for the night in a bedroom somewhere, and he was very good at putting himself to sleep wherever we went. And the more we practiced, the better he got. He was very portable in the sense that we could take him for an evening, but we had to honor his need for sleep, and that meant when it’s bedtime, off he went.

If there is any downside to having a great-sleeping child it’s that you will find they do sleep best when they’re at home, or at least where the environment is similar to home. The good news is that if you have a child who sleeps great, it’s no trouble to get a babysitter. Grandma could babysit, your sister could babysit, you could hire a babysitter, and anyone is going to be able to do this with the same kind of success that you’ll have. It’s very freeing to have a child who goes to sleep well, and you can feel peace when you go out, knowing that everything is fine at home. You can still have a social life. It just requires a little more preplanning. The spontaneity of my social life is definitely gone, but as I’m planning ahead, I can definitely meet all of my needs, as far as having a social life.

So, I would suggest that you clear your schedule for a couple of weeks. Make training Kate to sleep well your No. 1 priority. Be home for naps and bedtime, and get started on this. You admit that she’s got a lot of props—rocking, patting, and nursing. All of those connections are going to have to be broken, and she’s going to have to start finding new ways to get herself to sleep that are more internal. Ideally, what you want everybody to have is internalized sleeping strategies. “I have the power to do this all by myself. I don’t need to rely on anything external to help me.” That’s your goal with her.

There’s a variety of ways you can tackle it. You might want to do the stay-in-the-room method. If you’re going to do patting, though, be careful that you’re not patting her to sleep. That’s still a prop, and she’ll still want you to come in and pat her whenever she has a wake-up. Make your patting really intermittent. Offer it, withdraw, offer it, withdraw, so she’s not using it as a way to lull herself to sleep.

I hope that helps you and that you continue to have a great social life. Sleep well!