How To Sleep Train Consistently When Your Husband Has A Different Schedule

Dana Obleman: Hi, I’m Dana, Welcome to this week’s video chat. Today, our question comes from Sue. She’s wondering, “How does she stay on track when her husband works at the town all week, comes home on weekends and she feels like every Monday she has to stark back on track with her sleep training?” That question came in quite a few times. I love that you’ve asked.

I think the first thing you really need to do is sit down with your husband and have a conversation. Sometimes fathers, and I hate to put blame on anyone here, but fathers aren’t usually the ones that are getting up to tend to babies when they have wake ups in the night. He might not fully understand the impact that this is having on you, right? A lot of moms feel like this is just a burden they have to bear and they shouldn’t complain about it. It’s just the way it is.

This is what motherhood is. You signed up for it and so on. I’m here to tell you that this is not true. Sleep deprivation is no way shape or form or part of a motherhood experience. It doesn’t have to be that way at all. Sit down with them and have a clear conversation about how hard it is for you come Monday to kind of start all over again and get the kids on a schedule. That it really impacts their sleep, they’re not getting the same quality of sleep that they need.

Meaning their behavior is going to be off a bit and everybody could have a more enjoyable weekend if the schedule was honored. I think that’s half the battle right there. It’s having a honest conversation about what’s going on, without laying blame or any kind of accusations. Being clear about how it makes things more challenging for children and for dad.

One of the other things I find happen a lot is that children have some resistance to any kind of change in a bedtime routine. I hear two sides of the coin. I hear when dad’s home, the child won’t let dad anywhere near them when it comes to bedtime. I’ve had the opposite where when dad’s home, they want nothing to do with mom. That gets a bit tricky. One of the tricks that I’ve learned over the years is to create a chart. Obviously, you want to make it age appropriate.

It could be as simple as just taking a printable calendar, drawing a little mom face and a little dad face and so on. The child can see visually “Whose turn is it tonight?” You can even have them go to the calendar and say, “OK. Now it’s mommy tonight.” “Now it’s daddy tonight.” You put little crosses through the nights that have gone by so that the child clearly understands whose turn it is. That’s a great way to kind of take the blame off of you or the bad parent and just make it more fair.

Again, if your child resists this for the first couple of times, you’re going to have to push through anyway. If he is upset that it’s dad’s turn, that’s really not the end of the world. He will begin to see that there is no budging around this. If it’s dad’s turn, it’s dad’s turn. So it makes more sense to enjoy it and cooperate than it does to be upset through the whole thing and have lots of negative energy around that.

OK. Those are my tips for dealing with this. I have had occasionally a client say, “You know what? I just had to demand that he was hands off in the bedtime process and handle this myself.” We’re ultimately, you are parents and you make decisions for how your household needs to run as smoothly as possible. Thanks a lot. Sleep well.

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Transcription by CastingWords