You know it’s just a fact of life that sometimes marriages just don’t work out. And so I often get asked a question of how can I do the sleep sense program if I am separated from my partner? And the tricky piece about this usually is that the partner’s not really on board with doing any kind of sleep teaching. So it’s easy to sort of throw up your hands and go well if he’s not gonna do it or if she’s not gonna do it, then why bother?

Well here’s some good news for you if you’ve got a child not sleeping well, and you would like to teach them to sleep well, it is absolutely possible. Now it depends on your arrangements, some people do week on week off, half the week, the other half of the week, whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter, as long as you have a couple of days to establish some consistency.

So I would, if at all possible start on the first day that the child’s with you, and start the Sleep Sense program.

Now, you know, it can’t hurt to at least mention to your partner that this is the program you’re using perhaps print out a copy for that person and just say hey, if you’re interested, you know, you might wanna have a look at this. Sometimes just putting it out there, you never know. I mean ultimately it’s gonna make their life easier too so perhaps they’ll come around. But just letting them know that hey, this is something you’re gonna do, you’re not putting any pressure on them to do it you’re just gonna do it.

Now the good news is that most children are very good at keeping what happens here separate from what happens there. In fact, this also applies for daycare. I’ve had a lot of success with people teaching their children to sleep well at home and daycares they do something different and often it’s just their policy, they won’t budge around it but the child does develop the ability to keep what happens at home separate from what happens at daycare so even if your partner is gonna continue to rock or continue to sleep with the child, they should be able to understand that that’s daddy’s way or that’s mommy’s way, and mommy or daddy have a different way. And at mommy’s I sleep independently and on my own and perhaps at daddy’s I don’t, right?

Now there’s gonna be a little bit of testing of the waters absolutely at first, because the child doesn’t know well, if it’s this way at his house, how come it’s not this way at our house, or at your house? And there’ll be a little bit of push back, and you might find that there’s a little bit of push back the first night back indefinitely, right? That’s just the nature of children, some push a little harder than others. But if you hold firm and stay consistent and keep everything the same as you possibly can when that child’s with you, they will understand that this is not something, this is not a game I can play with this parent, I really do have to use my own sleep skills.

And you’re absolutely capable of doing that. Is it ideal? No. Would we love it if baby slept well everywhere she went? We would, absolutely. But there’s no point in you suffering, night after night, just because your partner won’t get on board with this, so go ahead and start the Sleep Sense program and at least at your house, children will be sleeping well.

Thanks so much for watching, sleep well.