🧩 The Problem
This one hits me super hard. Sleep has been hardest part of parenting for me. I believed once my baby “slept through the night,” we’d unlock a new, glossy chapter. Cute.
Eight years later I’m still getting tapped awake by nightmares (or terrors and I honestly don’t know the difference), a sip of water, or a 40-lb ninja who sneaks into my bed and mule-kicks like a CrossFitter.
I love sleep. Sleep is my religion. My self-care. And supposedly the foundation of everything for our brain, body, and nervous system. And yet… here we are.
😩 Whine Time
Before we talk about solving problems, I like to hold space for the whining I feel like we never get to do as parents. Enjoy a small sampling from our house and yours to remind you it’s ok to whine like your toddler:
“When they don’t need a nap but daycare is still MAKING them take a nap, so they’re refreshed & ready for another 8 hours of wake time.” this one makes my blood boil - tap me in, I’ll go feral on them.
“My daughter recently started talking in her sleep, and her dreams are confounding. She’ll wake up yelling “daddy the hotdogs went to space!” God I hope dreams are real.
“Our 4 year old being super curious about death right at bedtime....it's a challenge for sure!” Stalling tactic or crucial conversation? We will never know.
"Middle of the night panic screams.” To be honest sometimes it is me screaming.
Special mention to the moms who bragged their 6-week-old slept through the night. Please high-five your partner in private and zip it for the group chat. ❤️
🔄 Reframe
It’s not just you. Our culture treats sleep as a parenting milestone to conquer, rather than a dynamic, evolving part of family life.
The biggest reframe for me came after speaking to Dr. Sujay Kansagra (yes, the wildly famous @thatsleepdoc who happens to be a leading pediatric sleep neurologist at Duke University Medicine). He shared 3 things that totally changed my perspective.
Sleep Isn’t Linear: sleep often changes and regresses due to age, events, and often for no reason at all
Cause —> Solution: You need to know the cause of the sleep problem before seeking the solution
Cosmic Karma: Your kids sleep style might actually be inherited…🤯
🧠 Expert Take: Dr. Sujay Kansagra’s Six Sleep Buckets
Instead of our regularly programmed crowd-sourced solutions, let’s hear directly from Dr. Sujay Kansagra on how to identify the root cause.
His take? For otherwise healthy kids, 99% of sleep problems fall into one of six buckets. Once you know the cause, you can research an appropriate solution.
Bad sleep hygiene: no routine, too much caffeine, screens before bed
Sleep onset associations with caregiver: infant needs a caregiver to fall asleep
Limit setting: toddlers testing boundaries
Circadian rhythm delay: delayed sleep–wake phase syndrome (this might be the only one where melatonin could help - but first, please see the below Reel. I promise you’ll cry/laugh by the end)
Chronic insomnia: many causes, including the bed becoming the place to think/worry
Mismatch: adult expectations vs. the child’s actual sleep need (i.e. when preschool required my 4 year old to take a 90 minute nap and then were frustrated when she couldn’t or if she did she’d stay awake until 11pm)
The magic isn’t in finding a new “trick.” It’s in naming your bucket and matching your next move to that system. So, in this edition, a crowd-sourced solutions might be the worst thing to offer because as Dr. Sujay said,
“Some tools are neutral or helpful, but they aren’t substitutes for matching the intervention to the bucket.”
- Dr. Sujay
🧠 Myth vs. Reality
Does anybody remember that show MythBusters? What if there was an entire episode about sleep? Oh wait…there was. Here is a recap of the most surprising finds. And below are a few more that Dr. Sujay shared.
If I keep my child up later, they will sleep in later
MYTH the circadian rhythm is at work here and that awake alarm is likely going to go off at their bodies wake time regardless of their bedtime. Finally I can win this argument with my husband!
All children need a set amount of sleep
MYTH there is actually a range and some kids and adults actually need less sleep.
Sleep chronotype has genetic component.
REALITY “Chronotype has a genetic component. Two night-owl parents, you'll likely be a night owl as an adult. Have a teenager? They naturally become night owls during this time, regardless of genetics. Sleep need is also heritable. Some folks are natural 7-hour sleepers; others are 9-hour sleepers.” - Dr. Sujay
With that, I’d like to leave you with this gem of a quote from Dr. Sujay. And a link to his very short but very effective book, “My Child Won’t Sleep: A Quick Guide for the Sleep Deprived Parent.”
Sleep deprivation erodes at our soul. Evolution never prepared us to voluntarily deprive ourselves of sleep—we just fall apart.
So there you have it folks. Go get some sleep. And maybe throw out the melatonin bottle.