Dr. Lynelle Schneeberg: Become Your Child’s Sleep Coach
Proven bedtime solutions for parents of preschool and elementary school children —— from a Yale doctor
While there are plenty of resources available to establish healthy sleeping patterns for babies and toddlers, there’s very little guidance for parents who want to help their preschool and elementary school children (ages 3 – 10) sleep well.
All parents want to teach their children to be great sleepers but sometimes they feel unsure about how to achieve this goal without anxiety and tears. They may even have considered seeking help from a professional sleep coach but they may be concerned that:
•this type of help might be too expensive
•the methods suggested by the sleep coach might involve lots of “crying-it-out.”
However, parents can be very effective sleep coaches for their children once they understand the reasons that sleep difficulties start in the first place, and learn exactly what to do about these. Countless numbers of parents, with all of the right intentions, make two common mistakes at bedtime, ones that are almost guaranteed to make their children poor sleepers. These two mistakes are:
•staying with their children until they are completely asleep at bedtime
•granting too many requests after lights out (hoping that their children will finally fall asleep if all of these requests are granted).
Parents make these mistakes out of frustration and, frankly, even out of desperation, but these mistakes result in children who stay awake longer at bedtime and, perhaps even worse, children who are often awake for long periods during the night.
Parents can use Dr. Schneeberg’s simple 5-Step Guide to address these two mistakes and teach their children to fall asleep quickly, easily, and independently (and without any crying-it-out!). They can feel confident about trying this approach because it is based on solid behavioral research and extensive clinical experience.
Dr. Schneeberg is a pediatric sleep psychologist, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine and the director of the behavioral sleep program at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. As a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, she is one of only about 200 board-certified sleep psychologists in the country. She is also a mom of three, so she knows both professionally and personally how important it is to help kids become great sleepers.
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