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In this episode of the Sweet Slumber podcast, host Meredith Brough, a sleep consultant and coaching expert, explores the critical role of temperament in sleep training. She challenges common myths and one-size-fits-all approaches, emphasizing the need for personalized strategies that consider each infant and child's unique needs.
Addressing both professionals and parents, Meredith aims to empower her audience with knowledge to help little ones achieve better sleep while supporting their needs and long-term well-being. She advocates for a compassionate, empathetic approach to sleep coaching that responds to the individuality of every child and family.
Topics
- Importance of understanding temperament in sleep training
- Debunking myths about sleep training methods
- Goal of teaching a baby-centered solution for exhausted parents
- Challenges faced by parents when traditional sleep training methods do not work
- The concept of "drowsy but awake"
- Misconceptions about responding to a crying baby and spoiling them
- The differences in babies when it comes to falling asleep and waking up
- Which rules or guidelines should change for certain temperament types and why
- Limitations of sleep shaping methods
- How to personalize an empathetic approach to support families in their sleep training journey
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Keywords
sleep consultant, sleep coaching, understanding temperament, sleep training methods, exhausted parents, children's well-being, birth world workers, isolated parents, traditional sleep training, drowsy but awake, reflux, sensitive temperaments, responding to a baby's needs, individual differences, empathetic approach, sleep training journey, spirited babies, spirited children, baby waking, baby falling asleep, newborns, fourth trimester, baby wearing, nap-trapped, transferring baby, independent sleep, fostering independence, supporting the well-being of babies, optimal child development, optimal growth for babies, optimal health for babies, secure attachment, emotional health for babies, responsive parenting, intuitive parenting, newborn care specialist, mothers intuition, self-settling, self-soothing, breastfeeding to sleep, crib hour, sleep associations, textbook babies, angel babies
The Baby-Centered Sleep Consultant Certification Program Launches on November 11th, 2024!
Check out the links below & add your name to our waiting list so you can join our next session.
Learn More About the Baby-Centered Sleep Consultant Certification Program HERE.
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Meredith Brough (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Sweet Slumber podcast. I'm your host, Meredith Brough. Whether you're a seasoned sleep consultant, a sleep coach, a birth world professional, or a mother aspiring to enter this fulfilling field of sleep expertise, you're in the right place. I'm here to teach you my baby centered solution so you can help exhausted, struggling parents reclaim their sleep and help children thrive along the way. I'll teach you how to find harmony in your life and avoid burnout. Build a thriving business and become a financially independent woman. My goal is to help you fall in love with sleep coaching and never look back. Let's embark on this journey together for dreams or sweet and the work is rewarding. Stay tuned for a show that will transform your business and the lives of those who touch. Today I am here talking to both my audiences. I'm going to talk to sleep consultants and parents. So for the next month, I'm going to be talking to people who would consider taking my program. That might be moms. It might be moms who are staying home, moms who are pivoting their career.
Meredith Brough (00:01:10) - It might be birth world workers who are already working in this industry and just want to learn more about what I have to offer them. So this is going to be kind of a reach all type of episode. This has been on my mind for some time. I want to talk about what's different with sleep training or sleep teaching when you take temperament into account. I was recently. Speaking with another sleep consultant who is fabulous. She is wonderful. She's doing such a good job in her marketing and her teaching and she's. Spot on. And so much of her advice. I was really admiring her talent, her knowledge and her ability to teach parents. But I kept noticing that there were some exceptions to the things she was teaching, and that is not her fault. She just hasn't seen that yet. And I see that a lot with people that they haven't seen these exceptions happen. And so they're making blanket statements that just don't apply to everyone. And you know what? I'm kind of sensitive to that.
Meredith Brough (00:02:15) - I'm like, oh, wait, you're leaving a mom out, a mom that that might be hearing that right now is thinking it doesn't work for me. And the reason I'm sensitive to that is that it's not just 1 or 2 moms in the entire world that might feel that way. There's a lot of moms, a lot of parents who can't relate to some of this general sleep training advice. And not only do they feel isolated, they feel hopeless, they feel misunderstood. They feel like maybe it's their fault that their child isn't responding well or things aren't working for them. They definitely blame themselves and I want to take that away. I want to take that feeling away because parents out there are doing the best they can and raising their child. Some of them don't know any better when it comes to the sleep habits and how to build them, but most of them are just following their hearts and their instincts, and they are doing the best they can and sleep just doesn't work out for them. And there's so much blame out there.
Meredith Brough (00:03:17) - There's so many people who are saying it's your fault if you you don't work on sleep early, your child's gonna sleep often will be your fault. That's not true. There's a lot of people who are intuitive and instinctive in the way that they raise their children, and the way that they handle sleep. I could sleep great. There's a lot of people that are in the same boat who still don't eventually sleep great. And there's people doing all the wrong things. According to the sleep training world whose kids are sleeping. Great. Okay, so that's probably the number one way I can help parents feel better and, like, let you off the hook when it comes to the blame that you're experiencing. But I just really want sleep consultants. Besides parents, I want sleep consultants to know how to support families better by understanding temperament. So this is kind of a myth buster type of episode today. I think the number one thing that stands out to me is drowsy but awake. There's a lot of babies out there who, when you rock or you feed or you hold or you walk or you bounce or whatever, you get your child very drowsy that they're in this state of relaxation and.
Meredith Brough (00:04:30) - You can just transfer them easily. Just put them in the bed. Lay them down and they're, like, partially awake. They might even blink. They'll look around and just drift off into sleep. That sounds like a dream. Do you know how many moms out there are like, oh, that'd be awesome. For those of you who don't know any different, there are babies out there who cry when they're tired, even when you start earlier, when you respond as soon as you can to. They're tired cuz you you try to go get them to sleep fast. They will cry just because they're tired and they don't calm down easily. They get worked up easily sometimes. Then they won't go to sleep because they're so worked up. And this is a daily battle that these parents are seeing. The same type of baby could be falling asleep, and then open their eyes and look around and be awake again, and fall asleep and open their eyes and look around. And it's like, so hard to get them to that point of letting go and sleeping.
Meredith Brough (00:05:30) - And then when parents try to transfer their baby, their wake up. And if you haven't experienced that, you have no idea how frustrating that is. And if it happens to you regularly, all day, every day, I know you get it. This is why moms wear their babies or hold their babies while they nap, because it is so much better to make the effort of getting your child tired. And have them sleep and stay asleep for a length of time. Otherwise it's such a headache. I actually just had a client who went through this recently, and we found out pretty easily that her daughter had reflux, so every time she laid her down, she, the little girl would wake up and it would it could be a five minute nap, it could be a ten minute nap. But that is so much work with the newborn because you're doing it over and over, like every hour, right? And then the little girl would get disregulated and be very fussy, partly from her tummy, partly from not getting enough rest.
Meredith Brough (00:06:25) - And mom was stressed out of her mind. It was so hard. So I just want you to know, those of you who are skeptics, that this is a real thing. Sometimes it's reflux, sometimes it's just the sensitive a baby is. They're just extremely light sleepers. They fight their sleep. They are so much more comfortable being held and so they'll actually sleep. Now, there might be other people out there who are listening and saying, yeah, yeah, that's true, but you can change it. Well, that's true, but it's just not always that easy. I can give my clients so many ideas and tools, they can try them all and. Like it's still not progress. And I've been doing this guys full time for six and a half years, 21 years total, since I started helping families with sleep part time back in the day. I've seen so much. Please take it from me that it's not easy. It's not the parents fault, doing the best they can. Sometimes you just have to listen and and be there for them while they talk about these struggles and not have an answer.
Meredith Brough (00:07:30) - And that is really hard for us, for me. But one of the clues, one of the tips that I give parents is just to try and lay their child down for one nap. That is so helpful because you can you can start there. And sometimes it's a matter of timing, you know, get that reflex in check. Or maybe the child turns three months old in that fourth trimester ends and you have better luck. Things just work out better, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's a temperament thing. So I started this out by talking about Drowsy Bed Awake, and I just went all over the place tonight. There are ways to teach babies drowsy but awake, and it's actually the approach that I take with spirited kids. And the reason I brought them up, not only because that's the approach I take with them, is it's also the most impossible approach. These are babies who, if you try to lay them down drowsy, will wake up completely and cry their heads off. Or wake up completely and want to play, and they won't go back to sleep.
Meredith Brough (00:08:33) - Not easily. And so these are babies that mom's coercing to sleep. We're feeding. We're bouncing and feeding. We're rocking and feeding. We're in a dark room and there's no other distraction. And it takes so much work. And so if they have this happen on a regular basis, where they try to lay the baby down drowsy and it never works, would you try it? Especially with all that effort? Okay, so my approach, which I'm not going to give away completely because otherwise I'd be telling all of my secrets and not have anything to say for my clients. But it's to take my time helping the child. Enjoy their crib, understand? They go in their crib when they're tired and ease them into something new and different. And with patience, persistence, perseverance, taking your time. Maybe it's two or 3 or 4 weeks. Eventually they'll go into their bed drowsy but awake, and it's just a really good fit for very active babies, because these are the babies who want to be held and they want to snuggle, and you have to coerce them to sleep because they have fear of missing out and they don't have time to sleep.
Meredith Brough (00:09:42) - They don't want to sleep. So anyways, I like it because parents get to hold their babies, they get to snuggle. And this is something that these little ones just love. Another thing that stood out to me in some of the posts that I saw recently, was this advice that you don't want to rush to your baby too quickly, and luckily, I didn't see anything like that spoils the baby that teaches the baby the wrong thing. Don't buy into anything like that guys, and don't say it. Don't spread it because going to a baby and taking care of them when they cry is exactly what they need. The goal is not to get them to shut down and to stop crying for you. The goal is to make your baby thrive, to help your baby be healthy and feel so secure and trusting that they know their needs are going to be met, and that helps the baby's brain develop well. It's forming neurons that are just so healthy, you know, neural pathways to to the ability to comfort oneself, to feeling good, to feeling happy, to being more resilient.
Meredith Brough (00:10:42) - So again, this is a beautiful message that you want to send a child when you go to them when they cry, crying is their way of communicating. You don't ignore that. It's easygoing children, textbook kids. If they fuss a little, they're not really very worked up. They don't get very upset, and maybe they're just fussing in their sleep and they're okay because again, this is just a chill baby. He's not really worked up. I'm not really bothered by much. They'll go back to sleep pretty easily. So that advice of not rushing to a baby, giving them a little time and seeing if they'll settle back down is perfect for those types of babies. So I almost need, you know, two different lessons here. If you're talking about these babies, this is what you do, and that works fine. If you're talking about these babies, don't even bother because a baby that's more sensitive, it's going to get more worked up. They're going to get more worked up quickly. They're going to become intense.
Meredith Brough (00:11:37) - They're going to get upset. Maybe they wake themselves up all the way because they're so intense. There's other types of babies that when you leave them in their cribs, when they wake up, they start playing. They're crazy. They're wide awake. They're like, woo hoo! It's party time! And guess who stays awake for hours then? So the rule of waiting to go to a child is not always so clear cut or easy. It is something that I teach. Once a child can settle and fall asleep on their own and, you know, settle back to sleep, then I do think that they should be left for a few minutes for a couple of minutes. But we use the video camera, we listen to the type of cry. We make sure that the baby's just resettling and doesn't really have a needs. So that's a scary rule to just, you know, tell people, give them time, don't go to them immediately. For during these hours. We don't go and we we don't check on babies because we want to send them a message that this is time to sleep, that is too rigid, it's not safe.
Meredith Brough (00:12:36) - We want to make sure they're safe. We want to make sure their needs are met and we want to be available. We want to be available to these little people who cannot comfort themselves, who have no way to take care of themselves, whose only tool of communicating is through their gestures and their cries. Okay, so the big picture needs to be let's help this baby thrive. Let's help this baby have all the things that they need to be super healthy of the brightest future emotionally, mentally, physically, socially, all the things. Okay. So if that's your objective. I can help you if that's your objective as a sleep coach and you want to really support children, and you really want to equip parents with knowledge and insight. I'm going to help you. So let's talk again about another myth. Some babies have the same exact problem I just mentioned in the middle of a nap. And people just believe in like crib our, you know, leave the child alone in their crib for so long.
Meredith Brough (00:13:35) - But again, this is not going to work for a lot of kids. A lot of kids are. They're just going to chronically wake after half an hour or 40 minutes for 20 minutes. And every single time you just leave them to play on their own. This is a wake time that they're not with you. They're not getting that connection time. They're not getting the activity, the exercise that they need to build sleep pressure. They're not getting fed soon enough. Maybe they need to eat. And then I think the biggest thing is just that that message of leaving them in their crib isn't really teaching them anything. They're just by themselves. And sometimes there's a lot of crying. And we're sending that message of, I'm not there for you. You can't depend on me. Sorry, it's crib time. I'm not going to you deal with it. That's not a good message for a baby. You can't do tough love with babies. But keep in mind an easygoing child. That doesn't get very worked up.
Meredith Brough (00:14:30) - Isn't that dependent on mom and Dad to pick them up? To calm them down is pretty relaxed and chill. Will probably wake up and just lay there and play for a while. And maybe because they're so relaxed and their nervous system is so regulated, they just affect to sleep because they're still sleepy, and maybe because the room is, you know, the perfect setting for that other kids. They're like, woohoo! It's time to play. I'm wide awake. Or they're crying because they're like, I'm awake. Where are you? I love connection, I want to be with you. It's time to be with my mom. It's time to be with my parent. So let's keep that in mind. These are differences because of temperament and who these children are, and we need to meet their needs so they thrive. All right., this idea of a baby laying in their bed and just drifting off to sleep. I was a firm believer, guys. I was a firm believer in this because when you do sleep shaping with the newborn, it seems like things are so much easier, right? You take these tiny little measures to get a baby sleeping so well, and for parents out there, there might be listening intrigue going, really that possible? Is that true? I have an episode on this.
Meredith Brough (00:15:40) - I think it's number eight. Look for the one about newborn or infant sleep, okay? There's all sorts of great tips there. There's so many newborn care specialists, nannies, even sleep consultants who are just adamant that sleep shaping works for all babies. Well, my first wake up call on this topic was when I was helping my husband's cousin, and I was so excited to help her. I love helping family because it's just meaningful and they're always so grateful. And, you know, you form a relationship that continues because you just keep seeing these people in your life. So I really love it. So I was helping my. Cousin. Second cousin. I don't know what you call it. Cousin in law. And,, she was following all the plan, all the things that I gave her to do. And after a couple of weeks, she was like, you know what? This is not working. I know you swear by it. I know it always works. But when my baby is tired, he cries and cries and cries and will not calm down.
Meredith Brough (00:16:37) - And I can't just let him lay in the crib and have him fall asleep. I can't just pat him in the crib and have him fall asleep. He will not sleep. He will just cry and cry. There's no getting past this. And I kept trying to help her and I kept trying to give her solutions. I kept giving her new ideas. And I think after 3 or 4 weeks she was like, forget it. This was new to me. I didn't know how to help her. And so I think she just kind of we just parted our ways and she went, did you know what worked for her? And and probably months later he was sleeping well and she didn't have to do much. That was cool. I was happy for her, but I felt terrible that I didn't have solutions. I felt like I failed her, I. I didn't understand, and this was like the beginning of my journey where I was trying to learn about temperament. So the more I learned, the more I saw that some of these kids, when they're tired, no matter if it's early or late in this game with their sleep cues, they just cry.
Meredith Brough (00:17:34) - I think they don't like how it feels. I think they're uncomfortable. They're sensitive. They're in tune with their bodies, they're agitated. They're like, what's wrong with me? Make this feeling go away. And they cry and cry. A lot of moms figure out that when I first see those sleep, cuz I breastfeed my baby, they go to sleep. And it's a peaceful experience. And you know, I'd rather hold my baby in my arms and go through that and. People from the outside might judge, you know, the later, the older the baby is. What a bad habit that is and what a problem that is. But guys, if you understood what it was like to have a baby like that and the natural instinct to want to protect and help your baby feel happy and calm, then you wouldn't judge because. These moms are instinctive. They're doing what works, and it's beautiful. At some point it might not become sustainable. Or maybe the baby's waking up too much at night, depending on mom.
Meredith Brough (00:18:31) - Too much. Maybe she's having to co-sleep because of how poorly the baby sleeps and how much the baby demands. And maybe mom's not actually sleeping because of anxiety. These are different situations that we address as sleep consultants and sleep coaches, and that's great. But there's just should never be any shame blame, you know? It's just so different when you have a baby like this. Who needs more, need something different. And you can approach things in such a simple way. So I want to go back to this topic of sensitive little ones needing touch. The needing to be held to relax and go to sleep. There's nothing foreign or weird about that. You think about what it must feel like to be nestled in your parent's arms where like, that's your favorite place to be and you feel so safe and it's so peaceful and beautiful. There's nothing but beauty when you think about it that way. For a sensitive child who feels yucky when they're tired, they feel upset and they don't even want to. I don't know what to do with all their feelings.
Meredith Brough (00:19:32) - It's so comforting to be held. And then next level is, oh, I'm being held. This is so wonderful, I feel awesome, I'm relaxing. I am at peace. Oh, I'm drifting off because I'm tired and now I can sleep. That could happen. Breastfeeding. It could happen. Just being held. It could happen being rocked. Right. So there's just this beautiful, wonderful feeling that they get when they're held. And that's also normal. Because when there's connection and when there's contact between people, there are feel good hormones released. It makes so much sense that this is a wonderful, soothing experience for these babies. So again, not a bad thing. I don't think that all babies feeding to sleep is this bad thing, this bad sleep crunch. We need to remember it's natural and it's beautiful. It's just not always sustainable. And in my,, teaching, my instruction in the way that I work with people, I do believe in some independent sleep. And I call them skills.
Meredith Brough (00:20:33) - There are people in the baby lead world who would say, you can't teach a baby how to fall asleep. That's a natural thing, which is what happens when we're feeding to sleep and when we're being held to sleep. And you know, when a baby drifts off to sleep, that is very natural. I believe that it's possible to teach children how to fall asleep on their own without help, without anyone in the room, no matter what their temperament is. But I have eight methods that actually help me accomplish this. They're all loving. They're all nurturing. They're actually meant to be tear free. So as much as that's possible, I don't believe in pushing when babies, you know, in development period. Teething,, not feeling well, not themselves. And so a parent might try a method and see some tears in those times and it's time to back off., and maybe the methods are on that sort of thing. But the so the methods are designed to be tier free, and that's mostly just to support the child and not push them, not stress them out.
Meredith Brough (00:21:28) - And many temperaments respond really well to that or they would not learn to sleep well. Okay. So what I was getting at is that I believe that we can empower babies to self settle. If they can fall asleep in their crib, not always by themselves. Sometimes we need to go to that measure of being by themselves., for naps and bedtime. Then we're going to see self settling at night when the child feels well, when the child doesn't have any needs. And so for a lot of babies, that could be a lot of the time where they're disconnecting sleep cycles over and over on their own and there's lengthening out their sleep. And I've seen this in I don't even know how many babies, more than a thousand. It's very exciting. It's very wonderful. It is not the cure all. So that's my side note here is the babies can know how to fall asleep on their own, and they can self settle and they can still wake often. So it is not a fix for every child.
Meredith Brough (00:22:27) - It's something that's worth a try. I think that's so important to understand. There's also something called sleep, temperament, or the nature of a baby's ability to to, you know, be independent or to put themself asleep. But there are babies who are very natural at that. And then there's babies who are like, are you kidding me? I do not care about independence. I have no desire, and there's no way you can make me do that. And so I believe in nurturing and and fostering independence and that it can take time. And so some babies, even little babies who've had sleep shaping as newborns will still wake up until it's, I guess, on the radar to be more independent. So for a young baby, that's a signaler that's what they're called. My goal would be, hey, let's get them to sleep for four hours consistently. Wouldn't that be awesome? And then maybe a few months later, we're like, hey, let's get them to sleep for six hours and that'd be awesome.
Meredith Brough (00:23:24) - And so your standards have to change depending on what type of baby you have. And I think sleep consultants need to understand that too. Can't go around promising sleeping through the night in a healthy way, in a way that's good for baby, good for parents. We've got the connection there. We've got the instincts and intuition turned on, and we're meeting their needs, and we're helping them thrive for the rest of their life by being responsive and going to them and offering comfort and presence and connection, that is the focal point. That's the goal. Okay. This is such a huge adjustment in the way that we think, but it's so important. So I've already talked a little bit about the feeding association and how. You know this is a good thing. It can be such a blessing. But I mentioned earlier that some of these tendencies, these,, ways, these. Tools that we use to get babies to sleep that are difficult and not so easy. Around sleep, they can become problematic. And that's where I would be trying to.
Meredith Brough (00:24:36) - You know, to be able to fall asleep on their own so that they're not needing to sleep every time. Because yes, it's true that a baby will wake up and want to be fed to sleep again. That's again so natural. So for families who this isn't sustainable, maybe. Maybe he's waking up every 45 minutes and mom is just beside herself. She can't do it anymore. This is a good opportunity to try some of the independent sleep methods that I have. And, you know, sometimes, very rarely, a child is so demanding and addicted. That's a bad word for this because I don't want anything to sound negative. Obsessed. Still a little negative, but a little better. Kind of obsessed with the boob. Obsessed with the nursing. In those cases, I think that there can be times when we want to really disassociate feeding to sleep, but that is very rare in my work. It's not a go to. So I just want you to understand that, that. With spirited and sensitive babies.
Meredith Brough (00:25:34) - You don't always have to worry about disassociating feeding to sleep. On the other hand, I think that consistency in having very firm boundaries with very easygoing and textbook babies can be helpful. And it can be. Just a way of keeping a baby on track with their really great sleep habits. That's why I said earlier that it almost seems like you need two different sets of rules, maybe even two separate brains, to be able to keep all of this straight. Because if you have a baby that's so easy, you really can follow certain rules, guidelines, and maybe even be a little bit more strict and uptight about some things, like avoiding crutches. And it pays off for these babies. Sleep great. We follow these rules and they stay great sleepers for these other babies that are just so dependent, so in need of nurture and love and connection and support and the courage to go to sleep and the the contact and all of the support at night. Those rules just need to go out the window in so many cases because they're impossible, they're not healthy and they're problematic.
Meredith Brough (00:26:43) - So I hope that this has made sense to you guys. There's definitely lots of other areas that are important to learn about. And that's why I have the sleep certification school, which I said earlier, you're going to be hearing about it for the next month because I'm launching my program again in the beginning of May, and I'm super excited to be doing that. It's the first time in a year I'm hoping to have a nice big group of students. We're going to have the weekly meetings or sessions where we talk about what the my students are reading and what they're learning, and those are such amazing conversations. I really love it. So be on the lookout for information and announcements and that sort of thing about my sleep certification school. And keep learning about the differences about from differences in what I teach compared to other programs and other approaches. See if maybe there's something there that you'd like to learn more, that this would be the right style for you. If you want to be a sleep consultant, or if you are one and you're looking for more solutions and tools in your toolbelt, I sure hope that I'm the right fit for you.
Meredith Brough (00:27:55) - But just stay tuned and keep learning. And until next time, I'll see you soon! Thanks for listening to the Sweet Slumber podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's show. Before you go, please leave a review and hit subscribe and have a great day!
