Hi, Dana here. You know, one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that more and more parents are raising their hand to say they need some help with their older child, and their older child is not sleeping well.

And typically what that means is that their older child, and we’re talking into the 5, 6, 7, 8, all the way up to 11 years old we’ve worked with over the years. And usually what they mean by that is that their old child doesn’t feel confident nor do they have very good quality independent sleep skills. So what we find is that most older children are parent dependent when it comes to sleep. So that means usually a parent lays down with them or sits but more often lays down with them until they fall asleep.

And then once they’re asleep, the parent leaves the bedroom and hopes for the best that the child will sleep all the way through the night. But 9 times out of 10, that child will not sleep all the way through the night, and here’s why. Because we all have naturally occurring wake-ups that happen through the night, anywhere from two to five wake-ups is very normal and expected from all humans, no matter your age.

And so if your child is used to you laying beside them when they fall asleep, when they have a naturally occurring wake up in the night and realize, “Hey, where did you go? Where the heck did you go?” They’re going to be upset, because they believe the only way that they can sleep is with you by their side. So now they’re either gonna start hollering for you across the house or they’re gonna come find you. And that’s when you are awakened with a startle in the middle of the night to a little person staring down at you.

It can be a little nerve-wracking. And then usually the request is come back to my bed and lay down with me or let me get into your bed and I’ll sleep with you. And I think we can agree that it’s very difficult to sleep, actually, the truth is it’s difficult to sleep with anybody. We would all sleep better in our own bed, but we’ve gotten used to our spouse. But it’s even harder to sleep with a little person in between.

There’s a lot of movement that goes on in a young person when they’re sleeping, so it’s not optimal for anybody. So then usually you go back to their bed, lay down, wait for them to fall asleep. Hopefully, you don’t fall asleep too. And then you go back to your own bed. And this is tiring and problematic for everyone involved. It’s hard on the parent, because your sleep is fragmented. It’s hard on the child because of the same reasons.

We know that fragmented sleep is not good quality sleep. We’re always striving for pretty much a continuous straight through experience, minus the little tiny wake-ups that occur naturally. But we don’t want full wake-ups that we remember where we had to get up and actually do something. Those are not the wake-ups that we’re we’re hoping for in the night. So the goal with any new child that we work with in the Sleep Sense community with our consultants working with older children is to teach them how to become comfortable and confident with falling asleep on their own.

And if you work with a consultant or if you pick up a copy of the Sleep Sense program, you will find a step-by-step guide in there about how to make that happen, how to teach your little person to fall asleep independently, to handle any wake-ups that occur in the night with confidence. There’s nothing scary about this. This is a natural experience that all human beings go through every night, night after night for the rest of your life.

So it is good to get comfortable and confident with this, because it’s an experience you’re gonna have every single day. So teaching them that ability to handle the situation on their own without a lot of intervention or support from you is the goal. And it’s never too late. I wanna assure you that if you’ve got an older child who’s really parent dependent, this is fixable. You can do this, it’s gonna take a little work. Couple of weeks to teach them the skills necessary for doing this is gonna mean you need to be consistent and careful with boundaries and set some new expectations and have some dedication to seeing this through.

But it is teachable, it is doable, and it is important, because sleep and good quality sleep is the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, we need good quality sleep for the rest of our lives. So the sooner you teach it to your child, the better quality sleep they’re gonna have. They’re gonna do better and be healthier and so will you. And so it’s a win-win for everyone in the family.

Thanks for watching. Sleep Well!