Hi. I’m Dana. Welcome to this week’s video. I got an email this morning, from a fairly distraught mother, who had worked really hard to get the Sleep Sense program working for her one-year-old, and was having a very hard time convincing her husband to follow suit. She found that, if she were out, or sometimes in the night, he was going in and rocking, and kind of making all kinds of changes to what she had worked really hard to establish.

That’s actually a fairly common email that I get. A lot of parents simply disagree. Really, everybody gets a say in how a child is raised, but there often is a lot of conflict around the best strategy to use. I’ve had people that I’ve worked with privately, who I can tell have had many a discussion about the best way to approach this, what they should do, what they shouldn’t do. It can really start to cause some problems.

I want to give you a couple of tips, here, today, to help smooth the waters around making some change. The first thing to do would be to absolutely sit down, clear your schedule for half an hour, and have a serious heart-to-heart about what’s going on in the home. I always say, when a baby’s not sleeping well, it’s a family problem. Everybody in the house is affected. Everyone in the house should have a say, and everyone in the house should help solve the problem.

Sometimes it just takes a little bit of deeper exploration into how you’re feeling, or how your partner is feeling. Maybe he really doesn’t want baby in bed with you anymore, and he’s anxious to reclaim his spot. That’s valid, that’s an absolutely valid feeling to have. So when you dig a little deeper into what’s really going on for you and your partner, it’s easier to see that you need a solution. Right?

You can’t keep going on doing the same thing, and expect change. You need to make some steps, and take some action, to help solve this problem. OK.

If your partner really isn’t on board, and he or she has agreed to let you handle this, then you may have to handle it independently. I’ve had clients where we’ve had to send Mom out, or we’ve had to send Dad out for coffee, and one parent focuses in on this problem, to work on it without any interference. Obviously, they’re in agreement, they just know they can’t do it, so remove them. That’s fine. I’ve had clients where we have Grandma come in for a couple of days, and send the other parent right out of the house, so that we can make the changes that need to be made, to get to success.

Sometimes it takes a third party. That’s when you might want to look at hiring one of our certified Sleep Sense consultants locally, to come in-house and help you create a plan and support you through the process. Often, it just takes that neutral third party, to say what it is that needs to be done, in order for everyone to hear it.

I’ve had clients who said, “I’ve been telling you that for months, and you didn’t listen to me.” But when it’s a professional coming in, and having a very neutral position in this house, to give you the advice that needs to be given, in a way that the emotion is taken out of it, can really be helpful, and can help you work on this together. I’m telling you, it’s the best part of my job, when I hear parents say, “We did it. We’re at success. We worked together on this. Dad can do this. Mom can do this. Grandma can do this. Everybody’s on board.” You really start to see how it brings a family together.

I want you to sit down, tonight, if you’re having any disagreements, and really talk this through, and get to success. All right?

Thanks for watching. Sleep well.