Macall Gordon has a master's degree in applied psychology from Antioch University in Seattle with a research-based specialization in infant mental health, sleep advice, and parenting culture. She also has a BS in human biology from Stanford University. She is a senior lecturer in the graduate counseling psychology program at Antioch University. She has conducted and presented her own research on temperament, sleep, and parenting advice at infant and child development conferences around the world. She has been a featured speaker at national sleep conferences and has led webinar-based advanced training for sleep coaches, mental health providers, and others on the impact of temperament on sleep. She is a certified Gentle Sleep Coach (trained by Kim West) and a featured provider on the women's telehealth platform, Maven Clinic. She comes to this work because she had two sensitive, alert, intense children, and she didn't sleep for 18 years.
537: Why Won't You Sleep?!
Macall Gordon
Do you have a kid who doesn’t want to sleep? This is for you. Hunter talks to Macall Gordon about the challenges of sleep coaching for children, particularly those who are highly sensitive or "Live wires". They explore the importance of an evidence-based approach to sleep training, emphasizing the need for a middle path that avoids extremes like "cry it out" methods. They talk about the unique needs of sensitive children, effective strategies for sleep coaching, and the significance of establishing a consistent bedtime routine. Learn about the huge effect of temperament and find out practical tips to help your children develop healthy sleep habits.
Ep 537- Macall Gordon
Read the Transcript 🡮
*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Macall Gordon: Try not to feel guilty for the choices that you've been making, but know that you've just been responding to the child you have and making it through day by day. So give yourself a reasonable pat on the back and take a deep breath and know that you're doing an amazing job, even if you may not feel like it right now.
[00:00:22] Hunter: You are listening to The Mindful Mama Podcast, episode #537. Today we're talking about getting your little ones to sleep with Macall Gordon.
Welcome to the Mindful Mama Podcast. Here, it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training. And I'm the author of the international bestseller, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
Hey, working parents. Are you feeling overwhelmed? I see you. That's why we're bringing Mindful Parents Month to workplaces. From Mother's Day to Father's Day, your company can support parents with tools to reduce stress, ease, anxiety, and navigate family life with more calm, with bite-sized lessons. A live webinar with me in practical mindfulness strategies, this program helps parents feel more grounded just in time for summer. If your business, school or nonprofit has a hundred plus employees, let's chat: email my team at support@mindfulmamamentor.com to bring Mindful Parents Month to your workplace.
If you have very alert kids from ages six months to five years, this is an incredible episode for you. You may notice that I very rarely have talked about sleep on the podcast because it can be a very fraught issue with people giving advice and it may not be evidence-based, and it's very emotional, and I don't necessarily want to dive into it, but I really love Macall Gordon. She has a Masters Degree in applied psychology from Antioch University in Seattle with research-based specialization in infant mental health, sleep advice, and parenting culture. She has conducted and presented her own research on temperament, sleep and parenting advice at infant and child development conferences around the world. She's a certified gentle sleep coach trained by Kim West. And a featured provider on the woman's Telehealth platform, Maven Clinic. She comes to this work because she has two sensitive, alert, intense children, and she didn't sleep for 18 years. And we're gonna talk about her book, why Won't You Sleep, which is an evidence-based resource specifically for parents of alert kids, ages six to five. We'll talk about the middle path, which is why I'm so happy to have Gordon here. Be that avoids the extremes. Be, ride out methods. And we're gonna talk about the needs of sensitive children and effective strategies for sleep coaching and establishing a consistent bedtime routine. You're gonna learn about the huge effect of temperament and find practical tips to help your kids develop healthy sleep habits. So this episode may be for you. You may even before you listen, wanna tag a friend and send it to them and get some advice together so that y'all can get some better sleep. So let's just dive right in. Join me at the table as I talk to Macall Gordon.
It just occurred to me. Macall.
[00:04:01] Macall Gordon: Yes.
[00:04:02] Hunter: My new hunter, which is like my par, my mom's maiden name. I bet McCall is totally like a last name in your family.
[00:04:10] Macall Gordon: I wish that were the case. No. I was actually named after the magazine, which doesn't exist anymore. Oh yes, I remember
[00:04:17] Hunter: that a long time ago.
Yes.
[00:04:18] Macall Gordon: McCall's Magazine, there was a doll in it called the Betsy McCall. Do you know that is, this is a million now. I know. It's a million years ago. Anyway. Yes. And both of us have that experience, I'm sure, of people thinking ahead of time that we're gonna be a male or Oh yeah. That's your last name or Oh yeah.
They ask you what your first name is and stuff. Yeah. Oh, all that stuff. Yeah. Constantly.
[00:04:39] Hunter: Mr. McCall Gordon, you get all the mail for that? Yeah, I get, I actually get
[00:04:43] Macall Gordon: Mr. Gordon McCall more often now.
[00:04:45] Hunter: Oh, that makes sense.
[00:04:48] Macall Gordon: Yeah.
[00:04:48] Hunter: That's so funny. Our parents set us up for, anyway, dear listener, we did not bring Macall Gordon on to talk about her name, but we could.
No, I, as I was telling you ahead of time, like I, I told Macall that it takes, we, we filter out so many experts on sleep and the, and Macall and Kim West's book came through and I'm so excited about it because Yeah, I love that your approach was totally evidence-based.
[00:05:20] Macall Gordon: Yeah.
[00:05:20] Hunter: It, about getting kids to sleep is that, it's that middle path.
It's not cry it out. Yes. And it's not completely no cry. And that is some of my problem with bringing a guest on is I don't want people to feel shamed on either side of this 'cause it's such a fraught issue, but I know people feel so strongly about it, tell us about how you and Kim West came to the middle path Yeah.
Of the sleep coaching.
[00:05:47] Macall Gordon: Oh, such a good question. And really the way through is the middle path because the two sides of that debate only entail a subset of people. Most people are like I don't wanna do crying and out, but I also have to do something. And so the having a middle ground is key.
And actually Kim and I came to it exactly this way. So we both had children at the same time back in like the mid nineties. So thankfully really before the internet got going I had two very intense, very sensitive children and I knew I couldn't do crying it out. I knew I couldn't. Physiologically do it.
I knew they would just outlast me. So what was even the point? And at the time there was no other option. So I just carried on. And I can say I do not recommend that as a strategy. It was not good. It was not good. I was a zombie.
[00:06:50] Hunter: It can be terrible. 'cause you don't know how you're gonna react to that intense lack of sleep until you get there.
You may think you may have every intention Yeah. Of being like a great parent. Yeah. And a great human being. But then you get to that situation and it can destroy someone to be losing that much sleep.
[00:07:09] Macall Gordon: Yeah. It's not just even the fact that you ju of course just wanna sleep, but the. Act of parenting just goes on.
It's like the kids still need things. They still have, they still want interaction. It just keeps going. And meanwhile you're like, I just need a break. I need a little bit of rest. It's brutal. It's brutal because, and we'll talk about temperament, but these alert, engaged, intense kids require more from parents every second of the day.
They just do. So again, I cannot recommend just soldiering through, but I didn't have another choice, honestly, I didn't. Now Kim, at the same time, was having a similar experience. She was like this crying it out thing doesn't make any sense. And for both of us. This was at a time where we were talking about the first three years and the importance of brain development, and I was reading in magazines the importance of Responsiveness for Brain Development, and literally on the next page it would say.
But at night you should totally like not respond. And I was like, this doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah. So Kim felt the same way in a d different part of the country and she was like, there's gotta be a different way. And she started crafting up an approach to working on sleep, or she gave her kiddo a lot of help learning the skill, hands on.
And then she just backed it off over time. Now, if I had that method we'd probably be having a different conversation because I really, I was really yearning for something that was tolerable and moved the needle on sleep. So I'm glad I met her when I did. It would've been great if I had met her back in 1994, but I did not.
[00:09:00] Hunter: Oh my goodness. Yeah. And in your book you guys talk about some kids being really particularly alert and really challenging for parents to get to sleep. These just genetically really challenging for kids to sleep to. Yeah. Genetically set up to be really challenging and the listener knows. That we've talked about highly sensitive kids.
My daughter's a really pretty, highly sensitive kid. I remember just the shaking and the shushing really vividly. I. I thought it was gonna be something else, but you guys talk about these kids as live wires. Yeah. It's such a, it's such a great a great description and it really, it goes along what we do.
We had a guest on talking about exclamation point kids, describing the same highly sensitive kids. Love that too. But tell
[00:09:49] Macall Gordon: us about the live wires. Yeah. I think we're all talking about generally the same thing. It's like one of those things like you know it when you see it, and you definitely know it when you have it.
People say, fomo, fomo, babies, same. Spirited, alert. It's all high needs, all the same. Ballpark. I used live wires because, at least with my daughter, it just seemed like she just had more current running through her system. It just, everything was turned up. Everything was a big deal. Happy, sad.
She just wanted to be in the world and awake and if she didn't like something, she just. It absolutely let you know it in the biggest possible way. Very extroverted. My first, my second one was more an introvert, so I distinguished between what I call kind of nies and outs, right? So Audis are like this to the world, and Nies are like, hang on, go slow. Highly sensitive. More introverted. They're both in the same group, but they just express it differently. And I think Kim would say 80% of the people she's worked with are live wires. And of course, I would say it's easily that, if not more. I think most of the people who find their way to a sleep coach have one of these kids because.
The sleep strategies that are out there in books are written for the mellower, more easygoing kids. They're not written for these kids. So when parents try a strategy that the book says is gonna be pretty straightforward and easy, and instead it's hours of sweaty screaming and parents are like, whoa.
This is not what I expected or what I feel like I can. Hang with then they don't know what to do. And those are the people that this book is really for.
[00:11:45] Hunter: Yeah. You have a great description of them in your book. They go from zero to screaming bloody murder. I don't re respond quickly.
[00:11:54] Macall Gordon: Yeah.
[00:11:55] Hunter: They, yeah. HATE, hate the car seat or the swaddle. They're either asleep or go, like the energizer bunny. There's no in between. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the idea of a live wire like this Yeah. Intense alertness and really vigorous crying and Oh man.
[00:12:17] Macall Gordon: I feel for, yeah, they just seem to have, they seem to have a thinner, a thinner skin on some level. They have less of a covering on their nerve endings is another way that I used to describe one of my kids, that they feel everything and they feel it. It's having a sunburn. When we have a bad sunburn, we feel everything.
We feel the clothes on our us. We feel the sheets on us. We feel every just moving hurts. We, it's like our nerve endings are raw 'cause they are. But I think that's what these kids are like in the world. Everything impacts them. They feel it, they see it, they perceive it. And that all makes sleep really hard.
Really hard.
[00:13:06] Hunter: Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
And you guys have some great strategies and tips you tell. Tell us about the big four strategies that you have to help.
[00:15:37] Macall Gordon: The four strategies are related to what I call the. The four main sleep tankers. These are the things that generally are where people really get stuck with live wires. I mean with any kid, but live wires.
Absolutely. For sure. One of the biggest ones is overt tiredness. Because people will say they never look tired. They never look sleepy. They never have sleepy signals. So overt tiredness by itself causes these kids to power up. A lot of parents are like, yeah, we're putting, we're having a really late bedtime 'cause she's just not sleepy before that.
We're waiting for her to slow down. But what you find is these kids speed up. It's like you've given them coffee and now they're. Now they're like buzzing, right? And so now they can't sleep. So sometimes with these kids, one of this. Big four strategies is get ahead of the second wind. Do not wake for them to look tired.
Know how long they can be awake for their age and just give it a try. It's almost always sooner than you think.
Sooner, getting a nap or bedtime earlier and sooner than probably people have been. These are kids who are like, parents will say, oh, they're low sleep needs. I'm like. I am not so sure.
I think they just act like they're low sleep needs, but they actually do still need quite a bit of sleep because their brain is so on fire all the time. So that's one. The other one is having a really good lead up to bedtime. So we really want strategies that we use to be in the service of them, learning how to wind down.
Some things that are normal for a bedtime routine do not work for these kids like a bath.
For lots of, for some of these kids, a bath is party time, fun time? Like they're more awake after the bath or picture books, huh? If a picture book starts, a whole cascade of questions and ideas might not be the right thing for bedtime.
And these kids are, by the time they're two and a half, three years old, we can really start doing some mindfulness work, getting them to learn how to do some nice deep breathing, some gratitude, some calming of their thoughts, putting the thoughts away for the day, like real strategies, yoga.
Getting them in their body, fantastic. Because guess what? This temperament's not gonna go away. So this idea of helping them learn to slow their brains down before sleep is gonna be that's gonna be a long-term skill.
[00:18:18] Hunter: And that makes so much sense because when you lie down, you ask someone to light down, go to sleep, you're then there without any stimulation, right?
So you're suddenly aware of all your thoughts and your sensations and so to just. Get ahead of that and say let's be aware of our sensations and then let's practice calming them together. That makes so much sense. I think that's why mindfulness practices work so well for adults to help us go to sleep too, right?
Yeah. But to just say, okay, let's understand, what are the sensations in my body? And then here are practical, easy tools to calm them down, slower exhales in whatever way you're doing them. Just helpless to. Calm that nervous system down. And yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love the yeah, I love the, like teddy bear breathing.
You put the te, the stuffy on the belly and you take a breath in and then you take a long, slow exhale and the te the stuffy moves up and down.
[00:19:14] Macall Gordon: That's great. Yeah. And it's also, I do think I agree with you, getting into their body is really good because what that also does, these kids are really vulnerable to rumination and spinning or even creative rumination.
So sometimes they'll get. If that fixated on something that happened in the day, or some fear, some worry. But they can also just, their brain can just start going with ideas and stories and all of that. We really as early as possible, need to help them identify and start, I. Turning towards sleep.
That's the hardest thing for these kids, even as tiny babies? I think so. When we talk about fomo, babies, parents will say it's like he doesn't wanna go to sleep 'cause he's afraid he'll miss something. These kids do not want to go to sleep. They see it, I think as a waste of time. Like, why go to sleep when I could be doing so many cool things?
So helping them learn how to go from awake to asleep or from activated to calm in their mind as well as their body. Yeah. Boy, what if we all had learned that as children, right?
[00:20:24] Hunter: Yeah, so this makes sense to me when you're thinking like two and a half maybe up. What about from, and you guys say some sleep coaching can start six months.
Six months to say two and a half. What about at that time? What are some things, some of the strategies to just make. That time more effective?
[00:20:42] Macall Gordon: Yeah. We can't do deep breathing. It doesn't totally make sense. Part of that is, is making sure that they've had enough nap time in the day at the right moments if we can good early bedtime with a really predictable routine.
These kids need absolute consistency. They really do. I think they need it more than other kids. They really need to know what's gonna happen. And then what's not gonna happen.
[00:21:08] Hunter: Yeah. That calms the nervous system. That was so interesting for me to, my daughter's now 17. Oh wow. Who's the real highly sensitive kid.
[00:21:15] Macall Gordon: Yeah.
[00:21:15] Hunter: But it, it makes sense to me and it was just explained to me in that way of yeah they're not even aware they're doing it, but that they're predicting what's coming. Coming, and then that calms the nervous system, right? Yeah. Even in this sort of short term prediction, it's oh, if I know what's coming, I don't have to be so on alert, right?
That's oh, that makes so much sense
[00:21:34] Macall Gordon: to me. That's a good point. I do think it throws them off if it's different every night or this is what happens so much. See, this is the other part I love about the book is that it's not just about what you do to the child. It's a, it's also about what.
What is the experience of having a child like this?
[00:21:53] Hunter: Yeah.
[00:21:54] Macall Gordon: And how does that impact you as a parent? So for example. A lot of bedtime routines get very mushy simply because parents are exhausted and cannot hold certain limits that they normally would. They're just beaten down. And so if a child says no, I wanna banana parent's okay, fine.
I can't, I just can't do another meltdown right now, and I get it. I really get that. So what part of our work is to say, okay, but we also need to decide on some of this and stick to it because that Wobbliness really throws these kids off, number one and number two for older kids. It gives them the message that there are options on the table and that they might, that, that means what other options are there.
And then you start getting these bedtime routines that are just gigantic. So circling back to your question about babies, I know I got off track. I think body oriented stuff, so squeezy, massages, the ot, some of those OT exercises, rolling them up in a, like a burrito and doing a gentle squeeze.
Massage, swinging is great. A lot of stuff that's occupational therapy related sensory processing is great for those kids. But really the biggest factors for babies is enough nap time and early bedtime and then gradually getting get, if you're doing all the work. To get them to sleep.
You're doing the whole thing. We gotta start pulling you out of that pattern gradually so that the child can take on more of the work. That's the bottom line, honestly, to all sleep. I. Work is, and it just depends on how fast you go and how much support you're gonna give them.
[00:23:48] Hunter: Okay.
So you are setting up a really consistent routine, effective lights out, you're avoiding the second wind, you're getting enough sleep, then you get this real consistency. You gotta just decide on some things and go with them.
For a while, get into that real. And then start to what are some of the things that parents can first start to back off on.
[00:24:08] Macall Gordon: Yeah, it's a good point. With these kids, there's not a lot of tiptoeing generally that we can do because they hate change. They hate it. And for a lot of parents, we could say, for example, let's pretend we're talking about a generic, like a generally easygoing kid and mom has been nursing the baby to sleep or feeding the baby to sleep, and they put the baby in the crib and the baby goes to sleep.
Great. If they were gonna start working on it, they could probably say, I'm gonna go really slow and I'm gonna get the baby like 99% sleep, and then 96%, and then we're gonna back it off in just these tiny little increments with these kids. Any change they pick up on. So there is no kind of, I say there's no, there's nothing we can change that they're not gonna notice.
So we might as well make a change. For example again, if you've been rocking them or bouncing them on a ball all the way to sleep, we really do have to start slowing the bouncing down and then. Sitting on the ball without bouncing. And then there's gonna be a moment where one night they've gotta go into the crib and then we help them fall asleep in the crib.
Some of this sounds intense, but there's always a moment where the rubber meets the road with these, with working on sleep, there's always gotta be a moment where you say, okay, now we're gonna start the work of you learning to fall asleep, where you're gonna wake up. Because if we rock them to sleep and they're like, okay, I'm fed, I'm rocked, and then they wake up in the crib, for example, they're like.
How did I get here? Come back here, come do that Fiji, rocky thing so that I can go back to sleep. Yeah. So you're on the hook for middle of the night. Ugh. We really want them to see where they are as they're falling asleep, so when they open their eyes, they can go, oh, I got this. I know how. I know how to do this.
[00:26:08] Hunter: Stay tuned for More Mindful Mama podcast right after this break.
[00:26:44] Hunter: Yeah this really reminds me of I remember we would do this like swaddle, shushing shaking thing and then we would just we would be doing like, yeah, we had, it was when you had, you could have a dropdown rail crib, we had a dropdown rail crib.
We would be doing the shushing shaking thing in the crib and then we would just like slowly start to back off. Off of that, but yeah, but you have, you you have a thing and look, looking into you and the work you're doing with Kim West, I could also couldn't hear about, I was thinking about the shushy shaky thing.
The shuffle could not help but hear about the shuffle. 'cause the shuffle has gotten it's way around the internet apparently. What is the shuffle?
[00:27:22] Macall Gordon: What is the shuffle? It's what it's, first of all, it's what Kim developed in those moments with her own child. And then just kept testing it. It's really just exactly what we're talking about.
You put the child in bed, in the crib, wherever and you help them at first padding, shushing, humming. Here's the. Best part, if they really freak out, you get to pick them up and calm them down and put them back. Because I don't think anyone's learning anything when they're hysterical. They're not self-soothing after they've become totally hysterical.
Self-soothing only happens when they have a manageable amount of distress. Once you go above that. That's not what's happening. They're just freaking out. So the idea is pick, pick 'em up, calm 'em down. A lot of the cried out books will say something like then you're just teaching 'em that. If they cry, you'll pick them up.
[00:28:19] Hunter: Yeah, I'm here for you when you're in distress, basically. But then. The shuffle is somewhere between that and you're not gonna complete my child's never, I've heard that from people. My child's never gonna cry. I am, I'm never gonna let them cry. There are problems with that too, right?
[00:28:35] Macall Gordon: Yeah. We can talk. Yeah, let's talk about that. So the important part of the shuffle, actually the word comes from the idea that you don't stay stuck at crib side. You move every few days, you move. So you're at the crib, then you're a few feet away from the crib just using your voice, and then you're at the door.
Now, this is where parents can go as slow as they want, but you have to keep moving. You cannot get stuck seeing a lot of people get stuck because then that becomes the new thing. No, we wanna, we want we're constantly nudging, it's like. Where they talk about in yoga, the grow your growing edge, right?
You don't wanna hurt yourself, but you also don't wanna stay super comfy. So that's what we're doing, is we're getting them to grow and stretch until you can be outside the room. This can work for co-sleeping, it can work for room sharing, it can work for kids in beds. It really is adaptable to whatever you wanna do, which is what I also, what I love about it.
Folks who say, I can't handle my baby crying at all. Or they'll say, I'm worried it'll damage. If she cries, I'm worried it'll damage her attachment. First of all, attachment is not that fragile, that cry, that any crying is gonna damage it. Attachment is, stems from a con, a pattern of responsiveness over time that gets built.
That in that generally you are reliable as a source of comfort. It doesn't mean we prevent our child from crying, it just means that we're there to support them. Change is not gonna happen in a way again, that your kid isn't gonna notice there's that. If that existed. I would be in good shape right now.
[00:30:25] Hunter: Also you'd be worried about that kid, right? Like they're not even aware of some things, right? Yeah. Yeah. They a child obviously you don't want your child upset and crying all the time, but Yeah, I think if that pattern were played out for over time, a, a young child could get the message that it's not okay for you to be sad or have those feelings and that we don't wanna give that message either, no. And you want them to get better at frustration.
[00:30:50] Macall Gordon: You really do. That's
[00:30:51] Hunter: so they need to deal with frustration to be able to get better at frustration. And initially we're. We're like it seems like it's like the learning ladder, like I don't if you've ever seen that this learning steps which is first I do it for you.
[00:31:04] Macall Gordon: Yeah.
[00:31:04] Hunter: Then then it's you watch me do it and then it's, I do it with you, and then it's, I watch you do it. Yeah. And then you're doing it on your own. Something like that. Yeah. But it's just that whole, this sounds like it is very much in the same vein.
[00:31:17] Macall Gordon: I joke around. That's not really a joke.
It's actually a really good analogy. I said, look. Nowhere else in child rearing do we use this idea that if you help, your child won't learn? We don't use behavior modification in any other aspect of child rearing except for sleep. I'm like, what if, we don't give a kid a bike. A two wheeler and say, I'll be over here.
If I help you, you won't learn how to ride. First we give them training wheels, and then we take the training wheels off and we hold on for dear life. But if we always held on
[00:31:54] Hunter: Yeah, I just was gonna say that. Yeah. Yes. If you're always holding on, they can't learn anything.
And that's the same. Emotionally and with the soothing piece.
[00:32:03] Macall Gordon: Yeah. And so we practice, right? We let go for a second and see how they do, and then we grab back on and we let go again. And then we, and pretty soon they're off and running on their own. And the thing, another thing I just love about this philosophy is that it's consistent with how we teach children everything else.
It makes sense, I think. I think the fact that we, that experts and researchers. Know that we have to talk parents into doing, crying it out. I think that's a really huge problem. There's a whole body of research on basically how to talk parents into, do, into being okay with crying it out. And I just, I'm like, why should we have to talk them into it?
Why don't you change the method so we don't have to talk them into it?
[00:32:53] Hunter: This is so reassuring to me because, I to think that we can, yeah, we can be responsive to our kids, be the same parent at that time that we were in the daytime, that loving, responsive parent. Yeah. And. Also shuffle our way out of that room or to have a little time where you are out of the role of parent and you can just take a break and you, your child can get that healthy sleep that's so healthy for both parent and child.
It's much healthier. Yeah. I think to just, yeah. To have some time, where this, your child is learning. It's safe, it's comfortable for me to sleep on my own. And then you can, as adults, you can have, a time with your parenting partner or whatever you need to do to re, to
Fill your cup again. 'cause it, sometimes I feel, I sometimes I get very frustrated with Yeah. The attachment parenting styles and the idea that like, I, I slept, I co-slept with my daughters when they were little and I love that. It's great. So I'm very much understand all of that. And that baby wearing, I loved that.
That was like my ergo was the best thing. But I hate the way, it's oh, you as mom particularly, you're, if you are not a hundred percent responsive all the time. Even at nighttime, you're gonna be, you're gonna mess up your child, is the kind of implicit sometimes message, under that.
And I, that frustrates me so much because parents need to, that, you have to be resourced to be able to do any of that. And that's not fair to parents or kids.
[00:34:27] Macall Gordon: I do know that the, it, some of the. As things do got, can go a little off the rails. I do remember it, Dr.
Sears himself saying if at any point you start feeling exhausted, resentful, you have to draw some lines. And with these kids, with more intense kids, I promise you, I say I followed my kids' cues right off a cliff. Like I. I had no idea. It was like, I think I should have set a boundary back there, but I don't know how to get back to that, where I should have been.
And so here we are, and now I'm reading eight books at bedtime and it's taking three hours. And I don't know how to, I don't know how to get out of this situation in a compassionate, but. Not firm, concerted way. And I think that's what this is. The other thing I think we need to change is that so much of the discourse about sleep could, can either be what you mentioned there, I.
Or it can be really parent and baby shaming. I think there's a lot of the language sleep, crutches, negative sleep, asso. Rocking a newborn to sleep is considered a negative sleep association. I.
Bad habits. I have so many parents who have weeks old babies, and they get on the call with me and they go, I know I'm so sorry.
I'm sure I'm creating bad habits, but I feed my eight week old to sleep. Good for you. Yay. Good. Like people are so saddled with this. Fear and shame, and it's not coming from them, it's coming from the information that basically says if you don't start early, number one, it's gonna be way harder and two bad things will happen.
Obesity, ADHD, conduct problems, all these bad. So parents are just scared out of their wits. And I think it's awful. Honestly it's not fair to them at all. One major takeaway, if I can reference some research. There is literally no evidence that waiting to sleep train is any harder at all.
No one's ever asked that question. It's never been researched. Yeah. Huh. Consider it made up.
[00:36:43] Hunter: That is a common, this is like colloquial wisdom. Yeah. That it's not true. Yeah. Oh, very interesting. No, there's no
[00:36:49] Macall Gordon: data that says that's the case. Yeah.
[00:36:52] Hunter: Is it ever too late though?
What if you have a 4-year-old now that is, you are just like jumping through hoop after hoop and they are just, there's the banana. There's the eight books. Oh yes. There's the sound machine. There's all the things. And you are going to bed at 10 o'clock. Yeah.
[00:37:08] Macall Gordon: Perfect.
[00:37:08] Hunter: Is it too late for at
[00:37:10] Macall Gordon: some point?
Never. Never. Because guess what? The older the kid is, the more you have to work with, right? They have cognitive capacity, they understand time, they understand their role in the world and in the fam. There's all kinds of stuff we can do. For three and four and I talk, I actually end up talking about three year olds more than just about any other age, I have to tell you.
I'm not surprised. So what we really say is that's where we have to reign the shenanigans in. We have to reign in all the options. We have to put it in a chart that we decide about, that we tell them ahead of time, that we go over way before bedtime, that we rehearse any changes. And that chart does not change ever.
Ever. There's no curve balls, there's no on the fly decision making. That's the routine. And then we do start even with a 4-year-old doing the shuffle. Basically saying, Hey, I'm gonna stay with you while you learn how to do this, and now I'm gonna back out of the room. It really works. It works with that whole span, age span,
[00:38:16] Hunter: E even with the kids who are getting up and running to the door and then yelling.
[00:38:22] Macall Gordon: Yeah, I know a few minutes later. Once you leave, yeah. There's that. Yes, there's that. So then some of that becomes some of the behavioral stuff where you just keep reinforcing it. And then what I usually tell people to do is keep track and then the next morning go over how things went and make a huge deal of anything that was better.
Yeah. You only got outta bed six times Last night. The night before it was eight times. That's two times less. Yay. Woo hoo.
[00:38:49] Hunter: I'm so proud we are going in the right direction. Yeah.
[00:38:55] Macall Gordon: Okay. All right. Awesome. Some of that's hard because you are like, then what? And, but that's where the general parenting dilemma crops up.
What do I do if they don't? And I also am, we don't have to get into this now, but I also d really dive into physiological causes of bad sleep. 'cause there are kids who have stuff and it looks shenanigans and it's not, it's actually, they have restless leg syndrome or they have sleep apnea or they have Oh, wow.
A variety of things that can really destroy sleep. Yeah,
[00:39:29] Hunter: I think this is such a great resource that you have here Macall Gordon and Kim West. Their book is, “Why Won't You Sleep? A Game-Changing Approach for Exhausted Parents of Nonstop, Super Alert, Big Feeling Kids”. That's “Why Won't You Sleep?” You can get it where anywhere books are sold. Macall, is there anything that we missed that you wanna leave the listener with who's been struggling with this?
[00:40:00] Macall Gordon: I think the main thing that I love telling parents is if you have really struggled despite trying a lot of different strategies, it's because those strategies are written for mellow or kids and you have a different child. And try not to feel guilty for the choices that you've been making, but know that you've just been responding to the child you have and making it through day by day. So give yourself a reasonable pat on the back and take a deep breath and know that you're doing an amazing job, even if you may not feel like it right now.
[00:40:35] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. This will change. Yeah. Get Macall's book. “Why Won't You Sleep?” It'll help. Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it. It's been a great conversation. Thank you. It's great.
I hope this episode was helpful for you. I really like Macall's middle path approach, and yeah, we just need some help and this book seems really helpful, so I hope that it helps you if it does. Text a friend, tell a friend about the show today. Text someone who could use it.
And if you are looking for more sleep stuff, you can check out maybe our one other episode on sleep where we talked about how to get your baby to sleep with Sarah Mitchell in episode #188. So go digging in and look for that. And you can find all the whole archives of Mindful Mama Podcast on MindfulMamaMentor.com. Just go to podcasts. You can just search and podcast archives for #188 and find that episode. And I hope you have a lovely restful week, my friend. Thank you so much for listening. Namaste.
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