SYPM 018: No Set Bedtime with Gila and Katherine

 

Jen Lumanlan  00:02

Hi, I’m Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so

 

Jessica  00:11

Do you get tired of hearing the same old intros to podcast episodes? Me too. Hi, I’m not Jen. I’m Jessica, and I’m in Burlesque Panama. Jen has just created a new way for listeners to record the introductions to podcast episodes, and I got to test it out. There’s no other resource out there quite like Your Parenting Mojo, which doesn’t just tell you about the latest scientific research on parenting and child development. It puts it in context for you as well. So, you can decide whether and how to use this new information. If you’d like to get new episodes in your inbox, along with a free infographic on 13 reasons your child isn’t listening to you what to do about each one. Sign up at YourParentingMojo.com/subscribe, and come over to our free Facebook group to continue the conversation about this episode. You can also thank Jen for this episode by donating to keep the podcast ad free by going to the page for this or any other episode on YourParentingMojo.com. If you’d like to start a conversation with someone about this episode or know someone who would find it useful, please forward it to them. Over time, you’re gonna get sick of hearing me read this intro as well. So come and record on yourself. You can read from a script she’s provided or have some real fun with it and write your own. Just go to YourParentingMojo.com and click Read the Intro and I can’t wait to hear yours.

 

Jen Lumanlan  01:32

Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today, we’re actually going to do something that we have not done before. We have two parents here with us today, they reached out to me after the still recent to us as we’re recording here, that’s going to be a little while before this episode is really on the episode with Dr. Chris Winter, where we were learning about sleep and we talked about our no set bedtime process. And at the beginning of that interview, I said, if anyone’s curious about this and is interested in applying this idea with their own children, feel free to reach out and maybe we can set something up. And so we have two fabulous parents here today, Gila and Katherine. And each of them reached out and we’re curious about various aspects. And we’re also kind of hesitant about various aspects. And so today we’re going to talk through with them what it might look like to have a no-set bedtime routine in their house. So I’m gonna ask each of them to introduce themselves. And then I’m going to talk for a bit about how this has played out for us and for what I’ve seen with the families that have implemented it. And then we’re gonna go into a q&a, and they’re gonna poke holes in this on your behalf, dear listeners so that you can really see how this could play out with your family if you decided to try this. So hello, and welcome to Gila and Katherine, Gila doyou want to go first and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you and your family and where you are in the world? And what made you reach out when you saw this offer?

 

Gila  02:54

Thanks for having me. So I am a single mom of a seven-year-old boy, and we’re in upstate New York. And I reached out for a couple of reasons. One is that my son, while sometimes he falls asleep relatively easily, sometimes, relatively frequently, he falls asleep more than an hour after lights out. And I’m a little familiar with the insomnia literature. And my understanding is that it’s not good to be in bed for that long and tossing and turning. And I want to establish healthy sleep habits. But I also really think sleep is so important. The other piece is that sleep is a time when behavioral challenges can come up. And I think there’s a lot of reasons why that’s the case. But one of them is the power dynamic that this is a place where there can be a power struggle. And I’ve seen in other places how better things go when I can shift away from the sort of power-over dynamic and have a more collaborative approach. But I struggle with that with bedtime because I do think that sleep is so important. And because it’s a place where I think structure and consistency are helpful. So but I was very intrigued and I’m very curious to learn more.

 

Jen Lumanlan  04:07

Okay, super. And my understanding is you have more than a passing professional interest in this topic. Is that right?

 

Gila  04:13

Yeah, so I am a psychologist and a neuropsychologist. And so I recommend to my patients all the time to improve sleep habits with is just so critical for cognitive functioning, emotional functioning, psychological and physical.

 

Jen Lumanlan  04:27

Okay, cool. Well, thank you very much for telling us about you. Katherine. Who are you? Where are you in the world? Who’s your family?

 

Katherine  04:33

Yes, I’m Katherine, based in Southern Maryland, just outside of DC. I have one daughter who’s both three years and three months now. So our bedtime routines have been a little bit inconsistent over time. And lately, at one point we had gotten to a pretty good timing where she was usually in bed and we left the room by 8:30. And now it’s kind of crept up to 9:30 by the time we leave, and that leaves very little time for my husband and I to spend time together or just relax, I think that the no set bedtime approach would be exciting to her.

 

Jen Lumanlan  05:16

It is to most children, yup.

 

Katherine  05:18

Potentially be really helpful for us. But I am hesitant about, alright, I can see potential challenges with getting her to actually stay in her room while we go do something else. We usually like to just watch a TV show together or, you know, spend time together and I could see her begging to leave her room and spend time with us.

 

Jen Lumanlan  05:42

Okay, so also like Gila feeling pretty excited about the possibility of this and also like, how on earth is that actually going to work in real life with my real child? Is that right? Okay, so let me tell you how we put this in place for us. And then we can answer all of your questions on behalf of all the parents who are listening to this. So I will say that I’m not sure that everybody who’s listening to this necessarily needs to try this approach or to use this approach. I think that one of the main indicators that we can use to say, should we try this approach is maybe something about bedtime is not working for us right now, either, It’s not working for the child, and we’ll know it’s not working for the child because we see them resisting. We see them stalling, we see them not wanting to go to bed, or something isn’t working for us. And Katherine, I think you’re a great example of that, where you’re not necessarily sort of that you’re seeing the stalling and eventually the child’s getting into bed, and then you get your downtime. It’s like your downtime has kind of evaporated at this point. And so something about that is not working for you. And so if the way that we’re doing things right now is not working for one or both parties involved, then I think that’s a really good reason to consider doing something differently. So we introduced this when my daughter was about two and a half, which even Dr. Winter was pretty shocked by how young she was and basically it came about through resistance to bedtime, and thinking, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this every night, this is harder than it needs to be. What can we shift that can make this potentially easier? Our routine definitely shifted a little bit with how light it is outside and it has also shifted as she’s gotten older as well. But in general, what we end up doing is dinner is at around 6:45. And I’ve cooked every other night. Usually I cook one night and then we have leftovers reheated the second night and dinner itself takes about 20 minutes. So we’re coming into the period just after seven o’clock and then we have a good deal of flex time in that hour, that almost hour until about eight. I keep a learning journal for her and I try and keep that out on the end of the dining room table, and so that’s my period of the day to write in there. She takes a bath every other day. Sometimes she wants to have playtime if something interesting came in the mail, or we’re just back from a trip where we’ve been exploring national parks, and she didn’t finish some of her junior ranger badges and she wants to finish those. So that’s sort of a good deal of flex time in that almost hour. And then at eight o’clock, we used to have brushing teeth right at eight o’clock. And we’ve sort of flex that a little bit as she’s gotten older to have stories first, and then she brushed his teeth after. If your child has strong resistance to brushing teeth, I would definitely advise having brushing teeth before stories. So that you can sort of use that as a light touch logical consequence. If you’re having trouble getting the teeth to brush that we might not have time for stories if we don’t get the teeth brushed in an expedient manner. We’re at a point now where that’s not so much of a challenge as it has been in previous years. And so we can allow a little more flexibility there. So but at eight o’clock, we are starting our storytime and Carys actually sleeps on a pile of blankets on the floor in her bedroom. By her choice, certainly not our preference. And that does mean that her bedroom is not a very comfortable place to read stories. But if your child is sleeping in a bed like most children do, and that is a comfortable place then you could certainly read stories in your bedroom. And many parents find that the fewer transitions that they have around bedtime, the better. And so that’s one more reason to get the teeth done early so you don’t have to come out of the bedroom if that is potentially a challenge. For us. Again, that’s not so much of an issue so we have stories in the living room, and then after that we’re transitioning to this mythical time that you’re all wondering about what actually happens in this time. So our basic parameter is you can do whatever you like. It needs to be mostly in your room and we took a harder line on this when she was younger, and I am not going to be involved in this. So if you need help with stickers, or glue or tape, or anything like that, that is not a project that we’re going to be doing during this period after storytime that it needs to be something that you can do without asking for my help. In the early days with a younger child, what you will probably find is that if you just set up the options of you can go to bed, even if you’re not tired, or you can play in your room quietly by yourself, that you will probably find the child will be quite attracted to this idea of not lying in bed, which they may have been forced to do for some period of time before that. I think the key idea that a lot of parents are struggling with here is that this period of time has to meet both party’s needs and really everything that we’re doing in our interactions with our children, ideally is going to be meeting both of their needs. And the important part to distinguish there is the difference between needs and strategies. And a strategy is a way that we can meet a need. Firstly, let’s look at it from the other way, I might think to myself, well, I want to read a book every night.  That’s part of how I want to spend my time. And I need to read a book, I need that for myself. Actually, that reading that book is a strategy to meet a need, which could be depending on what kind of book it is—it could be intellectual stimulation, it could be relaxation, it could be self-care time, it could be any one of a number of needs that I’m meeting by reading this book. And when we bring this back to the level of needs, rather than strategies, we can see actually, there might be a whole bunch of other ways to get those needs met. So if my need for that time is for intellectual stimulation, I might be able to listen to a podcast just as easily as like, as I can read a book, if my need is for self-care, maybe a bath in the bathroom with the door locked, would be another way to have that need met. And that doesn’t involve anything to do with books necessarily. So if we can see this at a level of needs, then all of a sudden, a whole bunch of different ways of meeting that potential need can be met. And so we’re always looking to understand what is my real need here, not the strategy I’m using to try and meet that need. And what is the child’s real need here, maybe the child is not tired and that’s why they’re not wanting to go to bed. Maybe they don’t feel as though they’ve had enough connection time with you during the day, and that’s why they don’t want to go to bed. And we need to understand what is their needs so that we can help them to address that, because if their need is for connection time with you, then when eight o’clock or whatever is your time or you know, 8:30 once you get to the end of the story, storytime rolls around, they’re probably still going to be coming out of their rooms saying I want to spend time with you because they’re not feeling as though they’ve had that connection time with you. So if you’re seeing behavior that is difficult for you to navigate, like coming out of the room, when you’re hoping that they’re going to be spending this time in their room, then you always want to be asking yourself, what need is the child trying to fulfill by doing this behavior? And so if it’s connection time, well, what can we do about that, maybe you could have connection time with them earlier in the day, and so their cup is full by bedtime, and thus they don’t mind the Separation from you as much. If you don’t have time to do that earlier in the day, maybe an hour and a half of kind of irritated, you know, I told you to stay in your, room I told you to stay in your room is not meeting your need for relaxation and self-care at the end of the day. And perhaps 30 minutes of one-on-one time with your child could refill their cup for connection. And also then get you an hour of time on the back end, for your self-care time, your connection time with your partner, and so on. So I think that’s really at the crux of the well what do I do if my child doesn’t stay in their bedroom idea? On the younger end when they’re not necessarily as able to communicate their needs, you know, do you want to be in bed? Or do you want to play in your room quietly by yourself can be useful? But as soon as they’re old enough to start expressing what’s actually going on for them, then we can start to bring in this idea of needs and meeting theirs, and meeting hours as well. And in the meantime, we can always hypothesize we can always sort of taking an educated guess at what we think is going on for them and try to help them meet their needs to the best that we can understand it. So that’s a super important piece. Then of course you get to what happens if they go to bed late.

 

Jen Lumanlan  14:27

And when we first started this yes, I will say there was a period of maybe it was probably two weeks at the most where we had gone from sort of an 8:30 lights out to it was heading towards 9:30 and 10. And at that point, we had been making up songs or story. I would lie with her for a little bit and make up a song or a story based on some funny thing that happened in the day or she would suggest a character and I would make up a song or story based on that. And so, of course, it gets to 9:30 or 10 and she’s like, “Okay, it’s song time now!” And I’m like, “It’s not song time.” It’s 10 o’clock at night, it is not time for making up songs and stories. And so I put a boundary in place to say, after nine o’clock, I do not have the mental capacity to be able to make up songs and stories. So if you choose to go to bed before nine o’clock, then I will be able to tell you a song, and make up a story, if you choose to go to bed after that, then I’m not going to be able to do that and I don’t have the mental capacity to do that. And so there was then a period of time where she chose to go to bed at nine o’clock, so she could get her song or her story, and there were other days where she’s like, I don’t really care that much—I’d rather keep doing what I’m doing, It doesn’t matter to me. And so yeah, there will be a period of time where they’re learning what it is like to self-regulate, and they may end up tired. And if you were to start this on a Monday, you know, they’re in preschool, and they would just spend those days in school. Would that be the end of the world if you were not the person who had to deal with that? My hypothesis might the way I approached it was no, it would not be the end of the world if I was not the person who had to deal with that. So yes, we very deliberately did this on school days, and yeah, that means you’re gonna get woken up at a certain time, and I’m gonna be super upfront about that. I’m gonna say we need to be out the door at 8:15 and it takes you a bit of time to get going. I’m thinking 7:30 is a reasonable time. We’re simplifying our morning routine as much as we can so things like getting dressed, brushing teeth, and eating breakfast, those were really the only three things we were doing in the morning at that time. And at 7:30 rolls around and waking her up, she’s pretty tired, and she’s not super happy to be woken up. But within a couple of weeks, she had learned that if you go to bed at 10, you are probably going to wake up very tired, and the day is probably going to be kind of rough. And there may be a period of time where you have to sort of say, “Hey, it’s 9:30 Are you sure you want to stay up?” And you can see they’re still in whatever they’re doing, and they don’t want to stop. It’s like, okay, I’m waking you up at 7:30 No matter what. And then pretty soon, you get to a point where the luster of staying up until whatever time I like wears off a little bit. And they don’t feel as though this is something you’re going to take away. And thus, they have to do it to the max in case my parent changes their mind and won’t let me do this anymore. They realize this is a long-term thing. And so all of a sudden, staying up until super late becomes something that it’s not a big deal. And I will say for probably a year now, right off to storytime on most nights, Carys has been going to bed at 8:30. And so we’re kind of where I might want to be if I was forcing her to go to bed at a certain time but without the forcing, it’s just coming from her desire, her fatigue her knowledge of her body, and knowing what’s coming up the next day, and things that she’s excited for and what she wants to be up for at a certain time to do before school. And so it just flows, she is regulating her own energy and her own sleep cycles so that she gets her needs met. And so as we sort of wrap up, what we find is that when a child is able to do that the stalling goes away. There’s no reason to stall, because you know, that you can stay up as long as you’d like. So any struggles you’ve had with the child saying I don’t want to do this. And I’m not tired and am just not even verbally saying anything but just resisting every single step of this process just goes away because their needs are being met, and also your needs are being met as well. And so nobody’s exerting top down control over this process but we have two people or more than two people who also need to agree on this approach, potentially, who are in this relationship and are both having their needs met. And that is a beautiful thing. So that’s the end of the lecture on how no set bedtime went for us and is currently going for us. And now, Gila and Catherine, I am guessing that a whole bunch of questions are buzzing through your minds. Let’s have a conversation about things that you’re still curious about or things that you’re really worried about. And also what might you want to jump in and try first?

 

Gila  19:09

Thank you for sharing that that is beautiful and inspirational that she has come to this place where she is actually self-regulating and that she is going to a time that feels good for you. That’s my big fear, right that much like a child who’s been really restricted with sugar and then you give them free access to sugar, they’re gonna binge and I know that well, I don’t know with sugar that at some point it’s gonna come down to that’s another topic for another day. But with sleep, I worry that you know, my son gets really into projects and that’s my big worry is that he would pretty consistently not go to sleep at a reasonable time and also that even if at some point it calibrated that on the way to calibration, it would be really challenging not just for me, but also for him. So in my observation, even, you know, one really poor night of sleep can often throw him off for more than just a day and can be hard to recover from. And even though yes, he’s going to school, getting him to school. When so right now he’s having trouble waking up in the mornings and not wanting to get out of bed and that, you know, starts to shift into school refusal, and it’s challenging.

 

Jen Lumanlan  20:30

And there probably will be a period of time if this has been restricted, that he is going to go to bed later than he has been right now. And that may lead to more struggles in the morning. And so the question really becomes is what we’re doing right now working? If what we’re doing right now is working, then chances are you wouldn’t have reached out to me. If it is working, then we don’t necessarily need to do this. But you reached out because what something about what you’re doing right now is not feeling right to you and or to him. And thus, yes, it could lead to a few days, potentially a couple of weeks where things are difficult but we’re not just sort of not saying anything about it in between times, we’re just saying, “Okay, no more set bedtime, you can go to bed whenever you like,” and that’s the last we talk about it. Every day, we’re going to be talking about how are you feeling? We’re gonna be keeping track of what time we went to bed last night, and oh, yeah, last night, you went to bed at 10 o’clock, right? How did you feel when you woke up this morning? And what was the rest of today like for you? What are you thinking might be good for what time you want to go to bed tonight? It seems as though maybe you’re getting super invested in your projects and you’re having a hard time breaking away from those so that you can go to bed at that time. What can we help you with to make that easier, maybe there you get to a certain point and you decide you want to take a break or if it’s a book, maybe it’s a certain chapter, or maybe there are some activities that are just so engrossing that they’re not good activities for right before bed, because you do get so tunnel-visioned into them, and you don’t want to come out again, maybe there’s a good activities for earlier in the evening. And we’re going to do something in the evening that allows us to stay at a bit more sort of higher level with it not so engrossed. And so it’s easier to come out of it and go to bed at a time that we think might be useful for you. What do you think about that?

 

Gila 22:28

Yeah, I like the idea of processing it that it’s active process, and not just, you know, there’s changing.

 

Jen Lumanlan  22:35

And your child is old enough that you can have this conversation with them, right? This doesn’t have to be a decision, like, we’re gonna do this now. This can be a, “Hey, I’m learning about this. And I’m really hesitant about it. And I don’t know if this is gonna work for our family. What do you think might happen if we tried this? What would happen if you woke up tired in the morning,” and you can talk about this in total hypotheticals, “What can I do to support you to get to sleep at a time that you wouldn’t feel tired in the morning? Okay, do we want to give this a try?”

 

Gila  23:05

That’s how I tend to approach things so that’s what I was envisioning. I was interested and a little relieved to hear, I thought the success of this was in some ways dependent on not having to be up at a certain point. So we homeschooled last year and did have more flexibility and I do think his natural sleep rhythm and mind, to be honest, is to go to bed a little later and wake up a little later. But when you don’t have that luxury, it was good to hear that you did this while she was in a school environment and had to wake up at the same time.

 

Jen Lumanlan  23:35

Yeah. And if you check into Dr. Winter’s book, he describes a slightly more hardcore way of going about this. And he will actually say, “What is the time that you need to be up, we’re gonna wake you up at that time.” And then I forget the exact like how you decide on what time bedtime is, but it is going to be late. It is going to be like midnight, and you are going to do everything you can to keep that child awake until midnight, they’re going to go to bed at midnight, and they’re going to wake up at 7 am absolutely exhausted. And then when it comes down to the next night, then they’re gonna go to sleep. And you’re sort of backing into what is the time that they actually need to go to sleep, you know, I’m going to do everything I can even if it’s really unpleasant to keep you awake, just seemed more hardcore, more sort of antagonistic, and then I was willing to do. Your child is significantly struggling with sleep, then I could see potentially going down that path but for a child who’s not really struggling with sleep, it’s just the bedtime routine is not working for us, then I’m not sure that we need to go that far.

 

 

Gila  24:44

I also think that’s not necessarily effective because you get sleep sometimes, right? If you have an overtired child, sometimes they actually have a harder time falling asleep. So in my experience..

 

Jen Lumanlan  24:56

Sometimes although I think his point is if the child is in bed for long period of time and struggling to go to sleep, then that’s something that can be useful to figure out how much sleep do they actually need. Katherine, I’m curious about what’s coming up for you as you’re hearing all this conversation.

 

Katherine  25:10

Yeah, but it was interesting to hear how you kind of set up your eating from dinner on to bedtime. Because dinner is another area that has impacted our bedtime routine as well. A lot of times, our daughter will only pick out a few things at dinner, and then later, she’ll say that she’s hungry, now once she’s already like, getting in bed. And we’ve tried a few tactics like we haven’t been too successful with like, saying no more food after this time because I feel bad to deny her for stuff that she’s hungry. So lately, we’ve been letting her eat some food upstairs until it’s like time to brush teeth. And then we cut it off but contributed to the later bedtime.

 

Jen Lumanlan  25:55

Yeah, what are you allowing her to eat in the evening?

 

Katherine  25:58

Usually, something that’s not too messy, like cucumbers or apple slices.

 

Jen Lumanlan

Okay, so she like those, maybe that’s encouraging her not to eat.

 

Jen Lumanlan  26:09

You read my mind! Yeah, so there’s a couple of things that you could do if you wanted to shift something on that. The first would be you put out food at dinnertime and then leave your child’s plate on the table until they go to bed. You could cover it if you feel you need to. But after dinner is on the table, the only food that’s offered is what’s on your plate. And yes, if you’re still hungry, absolutely feel free to go back and eat what’s on your plate. And then at bedtime, that goes away. If your child is still hungry, after that, it helps to have something in your back pocket that is a tolerated but not liked snack, so that if they are genuinely hungry, we’re not going to withhold food from a child who is genuinely hungry. But also we’re not encouraging them to drag out this bedtime that is contributing to you and your partner not getting alone time in the evenings by requesting more of a favorite food. For us for a long time it was frozen mixed vegetables; requires no prep from me because she would eat them frozen, we just pull them right out of the bag and stick them in a bowl. And if she was really hungry, she’d eat them. And if she wasn’t really hungry, she’d be like, “Okay, I’m gonna brush my teeth.” So do you think that could help potentially?

 

Katherine  27:24

Yeah, I think part of it is we need to be a little more firm with limits, because she’ll say, “Well, I don’t want that I want something else.” And if we kind of give in and say, “Okay,” then she’s encouraged to keep doing that.

 

Jen Lumanlan  27:37

Right. Yeah, let me just tease out a little distinction there between limits and boundaries. When we’re setting a limit on somebody’s behavior, we’re saying what you must do, we’re trying to change your behavior. When we’re setting a boundary, we’re saying what I am not willing to do. So I am not willing to prepare any more food for you is a boundary. And the key thing about a boundary is we have to decide in advance that it fits with our values, that this is important to us that my connection time with my partner in the evening is important enough that I am not going to encourage this staying up later and later and later by providing preferred snacks. So when you get clear, in your own mind, why are we doing this? It stops becoming this arbitrary, “Well, okay, I’ll get it for you today,” and it just becomes this is what I am, and I’m not willing to do. And if that is grounded in your values, it becomes super easy to hold that. And that really comes from getting clear on is this time with your partner in the evening really important to you? If it is, then that boundary becomes super easy to set and hold. If it’s not, then that’s its own challenge by itself. And also, you will probably continue to find that your waiver.

 

Katherine  28:46

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The need that the child might have more connection time that really is that accurate? Because a lot of times she will stall the temperature, want to play more with us. She’ll want us to be telling more stories or even hold her longer. So yeah, I think where we struggle is holding the boundaries. Sometimes I will tell her, okay, we can spend this time together, we’ll set a timer for like 20 minutes, but then she’s still resisting.

 

Jen Lumanlan  29:15

Then it really does become is this time with my partner important enough? That I’m okay with this getting pushed out every single night. And I’m not feeling connected to my partner right now, because I’m not spending any time with them. Whereas if we are crystal clear in our own mind that we need this time for ourselves for our relationship, then setting and holding that boundary becomes a lot easier. And it comes from that clarity about why we’re setting it. Yes, we’re trying to meet our child’s need and we want to be looking, “Okay have I really connected with her today? Have I played one on one with her? Have I done it doing things that she really enjoys?” Not like yeah, we’re having a one-on-one time while I’m folding the laundry. And that we have genuinely connected today and if you can say yes to that, it is okay to set a boundary and say, we’ve had our connecting time and now it’s my time to spend with Mama, Daddy, whomever your partner is. That you don’t have to always give, give, give to a child, because what that teaches a child is that it’s not okay to have boundaries, right? And if we think about this sort of goes into more macro issues, many of us had our needs disregarded as children. And we didn’t have anyone to model boundary setting for us, you know, maybe our parents, maybe our mother tends to be the female figure in the family, who just kind of got walked over a little bit and didn’t set their own boundaries, didn’t feel as though they could set their own boundaries. And so now we see some parenting woman on a podcast is, “I need to set boundaries,” and I’m like, “I don’t even know where to set them, I don’t know how to identify my needs!” It can be super challenging to say, “You know what, I have a need to connect with my partner, I have a need for self-care time, that is valid because I am a person, I have a right in the way to have my needs met just as you have a right to have your needs met.” And so I’m going to help you to meet those needs. And if it gets to a point where I cannot see how to meet both of our needs, I cannot see how to connect with you and get the self-care time that I know I need. I’m going to set a boundary. And I’m going to say that I am important enough in this family to also have my needs met. It can be super challenging, particularly for female-identifying people to identify those needs in the first place, and then to set those boundaries. It sounds like we’re talking about bedtime and in a way we are, a bit in a way we’re talking about stuff that’s so much deeper inside us than that.

 

Katherine  31:39

That definitely resonates all of those. Yeah, it’s really my thought it was about the bedtime. And then the more I considered like where the problem lies, that it’s the boundaries and that it’s not just at bedtime, it’s any transition time with her as challenge. And I think a lot of it is yeah, feeling like guilty like I’m not connecting with her enough because she always wants more connection but I also need to clutter my own needs.

 

Jen Lumanlan  32:08

Exactly, yeah. And to the extent that we can do both, we will. But it’s not always possible to meet everybody’s needs many more times than we might think like, for example, Gila, you and I were emailing in a venue we’re talking about you haven’t read a book in forever. And maybe you are perfectly happy being in the same room with your child reading a book while they’re doing their project. There is no rule around a set bedtime. It says you must be in a separate room; we have this idea in Western culture that our self-care time needs to happen by ourselves in a different room, it needs to involve quiet. People in many cultures don’t have that if you don’t have that and you are able to feel fulfilled and have your needs met while your child is in the same room. Go for it! The critical part here is that both people’s needs get met. But if it’s not possible to do that, that’s when the boundaries become useful.

 

Gila  32:59

Yeah, I can definitely relate to talk about boundaries. And I find it particularly uncomfortable at bedtime because it is sort of this time of vulnerability and of you know, your kids want to snuggle. And one of my questions for you was, you know, I still lie down with my son until he falls asleep. And so if I’m leaving him to do his activity, that is not only a change in how we’re doing bedtime, but it’s a change in the connection that’s available to him. And that feels like it’s sort of a different component. So, as you were talking, I was I like what you were saying that we may initially think, “Well, what I need is time to do X,” but really, the need might be able to be met in other ways. And I was thinking, you know, I wonder like, I would love to have time to consistently do yoga, like so maybe in the same room or he’s doing a project, I can do some yoga or something like that. I don’t know.

 

Jen Lumanlan  33:58

Yeah, absolutely. And what you’re getting to is self-care time really, what does self-care look like for me? And also maybe exercise, right? Is that the strategy we want to use to cover our self-care and our exercise? Does that work for everybody? And it works for you also works for your son? Or do I need to build self-care and exercise into other aspects of my day so that when I get to bedtime, those are already taken care of? and I’m not sitting there steaming because my need hasn’t been met today.

 

Gila 34:27

Right? And I do try to do and I don’t usually do yoga at night, so that would be a shift for me. But yeah, I was trying to think of how to do this in a way that doesn’t feel like a big shift in sort of removal of that connection piece that you just do. And I thought it was really intriguing what you were saying that like you said a time of I’m available until this time. I need to think more about that because yeah, like I feel like it could start feeling to him like almost a contingency of punitiveness of well, if you don’t go to sleep by 9, I’m not lying down with you, right? But I think there’s a way to present it that that hopefully it wouldn’t be.

 

Jen Lumanlan  35:11

How do you feel about lying down with him right now?

 

Gila  35:13

So if he takes an hour and a half to fall asleep, I am going crazy. I do also will say, sometimes fall asleep with him. And sometimes that’s good for me and sometimes it’s not. I like it. I think it’s not something that I’m like chomping at the bit to get rid of and it’s a connection point that I think we both enjoy. I do worry sometimes, you know, I want him to be able to fall asleep, eventually, without me, I don’t know. Most of me for the most part, trust that that will come when he’s ready.

 

Jen Lumanlan  35:47

Yeah, I think throughout my work with families, encourage people to think about, is there a problem here? Is this working for you parent? Is this working for you, child? If it is, there’s no problem here. It doesn’t matter what society says about you having a child of a certain age, you’re still lying with them next to them to go to sleep. People in many cultures around the world lie next to their kids to go to sleep every night and their kids turned out fine.

 

Gila  36:14

Yeah, and it’s a sweet time. And I think the only time that it’s a problem is when tossing and turning or trying not to fall asleep.

 

Jen Lumanlan  36:26

Yeah, and you’ll need to play with this, right? This isn’t a one-and-done conversation. This is how we’re going to do it and this is how it’s going to play out. You’re going to need to see how it goes and then readjust so you may decide that nine o’clock is your time, that if you are going to bed, child before nine o’clock, then I’m going to be able to lie next to you. If it’s after that, I’m going to be doing my own things, and I’m not going to be available. And I don’t see that as punishment, I see that as a boundary as something that says I have needs as well. And I’m not saying nothing magic about nine o’clock. That’s my boundary and that’s what it means my needs, yours may be entirely different. And so the key challenge for you is to think about, well, what really is my need here? Is my need for intellectual stimulation while could I listen to a podcast while we’re falling asleep together, what else could I do that helps to meet my need, and also meet his need? And if we don’t see a way to make those two things happen, then that’s when we use a boundary. Again, this is you’ll try it, you’ll say nine o’clock the time before that, yes, I’ll lie with you after that. No. And then okay, yeah, I’m realizing that actually, maybe 9:30 might be a better time, like I’m feeling as though my needs are being met, I have enough time to do the things that I want to do. What if we tried 9:30 for a bit, or maybe you try 10 and you realize, yeah, actually not enough time. Let’s wind up back a little bit. What you’re doing here is not just making decisions about bedtime, you are starting to use a way of being with your child that holds both of your needs with equal weight. It doesn’t say you know; permissive we’re going to do everything you want. It’s the opposite of that. It’s saying your needs and my needs have equal weight and when we can meet both, we’re going to do that. And how we do that is this constant negotiation throughout our lives, not in a bad way where a child is like, I want this, I want this, I want this, and you’re like, seriously? But in a way where, yeah, I see your need isn’t being met here, and my need isn’t being met here either. What are we going to do about that? And that is a practice that will hold you and carry you, the two of you, the three of you that however many is in your family through the rest of your lives, and also that they will take out into the world and use with other people when they see, “Oh, your need isn’t being met in this situation. Mine isn’t either. What are we going to do about that?” So what you’re practicing here is so much bigger than just sleep.

 

Katherine  38:51

How much time do you? Well, in your experience with your daughter, Jen, like you said, you’ve kind of adjusted things as she’s gotten older. Were there signs that it needed to change? Like, was she starting to resist some aspect of it?

 

Jen Lumanlan  39:05

I’m glad you put the word resistance. When you’re seeing resistance in a child and when you’re feeling resentment yourself, those are the two keys that you’re going to know that something isn’t working with the way that you’re doing it right now, with whatever you’ve landed on that maybe has “worked” for six months, and all of a sudden, your child’s resisting something or all of a sudden, you’re like, you know what, this doesn’t feel good to me. That’s how you know that something needs to change. There is no sort of marker necessarily. It’s really much more fluid than that. It’s yeah, we’ve been doing it this way for a while, and you know, I realized I actually can’t do this wholeheartedly, like I can’t actually say yes, I want to do this for you, I want to do this with you. That if I can’t say that, and there’s some part of me looks like, really, I don’t want to. That’s a signal for me that something about this needs to change. So and of course, things shift a little bit, she’ll just kind of organically by themselves. So maybe they’ll have a particular project that’s already set up in the living room, and she’ll say, you know, “Can I do this project? I’m going to do it by myself. You don’t have to do anything.” “Yes. Yeah, I’m good. That’s okay.” So the more she’s gotten older, the more that kind of flexibility works, you may find that with a younger child, having in the living room quickly turns into Mom, I want this mom, I’m still hungry, mom, can you do this for me? And so you may decide to try it, and then you’ll say, you know, what my needs are being met here, and so the only way that I can see right now to make this work is if you stay in your room. So you can always try things and then acknowledge my need isn’t being met here, I would like to go back to the way that we’ve been doing it before. What else? What other reasons do you have that you may not want to try this.

 

Gila  40:53

So my son, we did this for a while, he was always hungry right before bed. So we would do midnight snack at seven o’clock.

 

Jen Lumanlan  41:38

But then it feels so much more special.

 

Gila  41:42

Very adult. So then it’s coming from the parent, it’s you’re comfortable with this, you have, you know, decided on it. It’s not her kind of pushing to see what she can get. Not that I don’t know if she’s doing that but I don’t personally see kids as manipulative or anything like that. I just think you know; she may sort of this draw to that. So it may help her to be able to count on it, right? To know, I don’t need to worry about being hungry right before bed, Mom and Dad, have her mom and mom, whatever have this set. And I can count on that. It might take that power struggle out of it.

 

Katherine  42:22

Yeah, I think that is a good suggestion. Maybe it’s more of like the expectation in my mind of how it should be like she should just sit down and eat with us instead of getting up from the table after two bites and running off to play.

 

Jen Lumanlan  42:34

Yeah, there are societal expectations of what things should look like are super, super powerful. And that’s how getting it needs helps us to overcome that and actually do things that work for us. Instead of getting caught in well, it’s supposed to look like this, she’s supposed to do this, and I’m supposed to say that, and it’s supposed to work. I think it was super important in what Gila’s saying is, if you don’t mind her snacking at this time, it’s okay. There’s no problem here. If she is a late eater, and you’re sitting with her, maybe you’re chatting with her while she’s eating in a way that you’re not able to do at dinner time, then there’s no problem here. The problem is there if that is detracting from the time that you are wanting to spend with your partner and it’s not possible for you to spend time with your partner at another point in the day because one or both inside the house or leave super early, or whatever it is. So really, they all always come back down to needs. Is the way we’re doing it right now or the way that I’m thinking about that we could do going to meet all of our needs? If yes, let’s do it. Who cares what society says? If no, then let’s not do that. And let’s try and come up with a way that we think can meet both of our needs.

 

Katherine  43:51

Yeah, that’s really helpful.

 

Jen Lumanlan  43:52

What are you excited about? And what are you planning from here?

 

 

 

 

Katherine  43:57

Yeah, I’m excited about trying it out. Like, I think I was jumping to all the reasons that it might not work. But yeah, I think it’s worth trying it and knowing that it’s something that will be tweaked over time. Like we don’t have to find the perfect solution that lasts forever.

 

Jen Lumanlan  44:13

Yes, exactly. Okay, so let’s make sure that we get you on a path that feels good and that is likely to set you up for success. How are you planning to approach this conversation with your partner? Conversation with your child? How is this gonna play out for you?

 

Katherine  44:24

Yeah, I think starting the conversation with my husband first to make sure that we’re both on the same page, and that we identify our needs individually and as a couple so that we know the boundaries that we want to hold. I think that was the first step and then we can maybe brainstorm together how it might look and then present it to her options.

 

Jen Lumanlan  44:43

Yeah, and for a younger child, I think presenting options is appropriate to the extent that the child can express why they don’t want to go to bed and express their needs. Then we start to take those on and hold them to the extent that we can, but particularly if you’re sort of in the twos and threes, then setting up these are your options, I think is an appropriate way of going about doing that. Sounds like a plan, Gala.

 

Gila  45:07

Yeah, I’m percolating, I have to say, I’m feeling less skeptical than I did before this conversation, I really was thinking, well, if I’m gonna try this, maybe I’ll try it over the winter break from school. And I actually like the idea now of it might be harder to get him up at a consistent time during winter break. But what I couldn’t commit to, is to having a conversation with him as I do talk through these things with him. And I think it’s worth the conversation, and maybe giving it a try, I just need to first think through a couple of things for myself about what those needs are. How, I might want to meet them and where my boundaries.

 

Jen Lumanlan  45:47

Okay, and I think just to pick up on your idea of when to do it, yes, we can do over winter break. The challenge with doing it in winter break is, as you say, there’s no need to be up at a certain time in the morning. And what you may find is that the child sort of settles into a routine of going to bed quite late, and getting up quite late, and then it’s difficult to make another transition once school starts again. They think they’ve got it figured out, they know how to regulate themselves, and then all of a sudden, oh, no, actually, we have to be up two hours earlier than that. Whereas if you start during a period of time when you do have to be up early, then it’s like, okay, yeah, when I need to be up at seven, this is what it feels like, late at night, I’m still learning. They’re gonna mess up, there are going to be days when they’re like, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing, and then the morning, they’re like, I’m not fine. And I mean, think about the ways we mess up in understanding what our needs are and there’s so much younger, with so much less experience, and not even fully developed prefrontal cortex isn’t all the stuff that needed to fully engage in planning. So anticipate that they’re going to mess this up and get it wrong and think that when things are going to turn out one way, and actually, they’re going to turn out another. And we’re going to scaffold their learning through this process and say, hey, when this happened last night, you ended up feeling like this, and what does that mean for how we’re going to do things moving forward? And yeah, if you start that on a day, when you have to be up at a certain time, then it turns into, okay, now it’s going to break, okay, we can let it slide a little bit, but we’re gonna remember what it’s like to have to be up at a certain time, and we know we’re going to have to transition back to that when school starts again.

 

Gina  47:13

Yeah, and one of my concerns is that I do now sort of point out, wow, it’s really hard for you to get out of bed last night, you went to bed later than normal, you know, he would have like, interesting, right? It might register in a different way if it’s his own decision to go to bed later. I don’t know.

 

Jen Lumanlan  47:33

Do you like being told what to do?

 

Gina  47:35

Right. Exactly.

 

Jen Lumanlan  47:39

Do any of us like being told what to do?

 

Gina  47:42

Right. So no, I’m intrigued.

 

Jen Lumanlan  47:44

There’s something about making the decision for yourself. Think about how hard our kids work to just stay out of bed to just stall the process when we have a time that they have to be in bed, and then they start going to bed at the time that we wish they would have been going to bed all along, because they get to make the decision. If someone tells me you must do X, I might have been going to do that anyway, but now I think I’d rather do why because I want the autonomy to make that decision for myself, right? And children are just learning about autonomy and resisting is one of the very few ways that they have to exert their autonomy to say I want to have some control over my own life, I want to say what happens to make decisions about my own body. And so that’s where that resistance comes from and if we sort of drop our end of the rope as it were, and stop pulling on the other end so that there’s nothing to resist, then that just kind of evaporate, and then need to constantly be pushing just goes away. It’s possible you’ll find that he may actually go to bed earlier because he’s gotten to choose it we’ve definitely absolutely seen that with children. I mean, I’m just thinking of someone in the parenting membership to his child was resisting getting dressed. This member lives in Norway, so getting dressed is sort of a necessity to go to school in the morning. And the members super, super worried about well what happens if they don’t get dressed, they’re gonna get sick and you know, get cold, it’s gonna be really bad. And so there was so much pressure from the parent to make the child get dressed. And then one morning parents says to the child, “You know what? You can manage getting dressed yourself. It’s okay, you can choose whatever you want to do,” and what happens? Child runs off and gets dressed. And it’s just that the child wanted to have the say over what happened to their own body.

 

Gila 49:28

I did have one question that I realized I didn’t have. I feel like in the sleep literature, I’ve also read that it’s recommended to keep the bed and often the bedroom mostly for sleep and for adult activities. So one of my concerns is that if the bedroom becomes you know, this place where he spends lots of time during fun projects and things like that. Like is that in a way going to affect his ability not is like cognitive resistance to sleep, but even just his physical ability to associate that with sleep and to get into that sleep?

 

Jen Lumanlan  50:08

Yeah, I’ve definitely seen that in the literature as well, curiously more in the adult-facing literature.

 

Gila  50:13

Yeah, and I was wondering that. I don’t know the literature.

 

Jen Lumanlan  50:17

Now you draw it out. Dr. Winter has also written a book about adult sleep that I read, and yeah, that’s super prominent in that book, and not at all mentioned in the rest of child. So it has not been our experience at all. And with the parents that I’ve worked with, as well, actually, I have not ever heard of anyone say my child is now spending more time in their room doing things other than sleep, and all of a sudden, they’re having a hard time falling asleep. If that is a concern for you, then you made or if it actually happens, like you try it, and it actually happens that the child is having a hard time falling asleep, you could always relocate some of those activities to another room, or perhaps a corner of your bedroom, or a corner of the living room. And if spending time apart from the child is something you’re trying to achieve, then you just separate them in other ways, sort of nontraditional ways, like you and your partner, spend some time in the bedroom, or your child is in your bedroom, doing something in a corner, and you’re in the living room. So I would say I have not seen it play out in that way, I wouldn’t be too concerned about it. If you are concerned about it, you could always preempt it and just separate those activities, the sleep from the pre sleep activities if you want to, or just give it a try and see if it even is an issue. And if it is, then deal with it then, and if it’s not, then it’s not.

 

Gila  51:28

Yeah, and as I’m thinking about it, I think a lot of kids do use their room as playroom also.

 

Jen Lumanlan  51:35

We have a lot of sleep challenges in our culture that people in many other cultures don’t have. It’s interesting to reflect on why that might be the case. Okay, so it sounds as though you’re both feeling fairly confident, at least about having conversations with the other people in your lives to sort of start setting this in motion and seeing if it’s something that you think might meet both of your needs or any final questions as we wrap up that you’re like if I could just get this one thing answered, I will be confident that we’re on the right track here.

 

Katherine  52:03

I guess one other question is, if at some point in the process, you, the adult want to go to bed before your child decides to go to bed. Well, I guess just imagining that maybe you would need some parameter on like having the door shut at a certain time or length, they would turn the lights off themselves.

 

Jen Lumanlan  52:19

Maybe one parent goes to bed earlier than the other and they’re going to bed early. The early parent is not available after 10 o’clock, or whatever your witching hour is your magic time. And that means the other parent is going to put you to bed, if you’re going to bed after the only parent or after both parents, then yeah, it’s that’s going to be something you’re going to need to navigate by yourself. We are not going to be adjusting our sleep time to meet the child’s need here. So the child may then decide, well, you know what, actually, I really want to be tucked in, and my need for connection in those last few minutes before I go to sleep is more important to me than finishing this project. And so I’m going to wrap this up now because I want to be tucked in. Again, it comes down to what are the needs of the individuals participating and also making sure your house is safe, obviously, for a child of a certain age to be up past their parents. You may decide to make your bedtime a little bit later if you’re seeing this an issue just for the first week or two, just while they’re in this period of pushing it, and seeing, “Is my parent really going to let this go this far? Are they really going to rein me in after two days if I go to bed at 11? Because if so, I’d better make the most of this.” You may find that there’s a period where there is some pushing and things are happening later, you may want to accommodate that and just say, “You know what, I’m gonna tuck you in tonight and just make sure that you’re okay.” And then if it goes beyond a week or two at the most, or what are basically whatever feels right to you, then it’s gonna be like, this is not working for me long term. And so I’m going to meet my need, and I’ll be available to tuck you in until 10 o’clock and after that, you’ll need to shut the lights off by yourself.  I would definitely have a no-screen role in that in that period, as well. As with anything, there’s research on both sides of that, saying it’s an issue saying it’s not an issue, I believe it could potentially be an issue, and also lift the light itself is not an issue, certainly, we know that are going to get sucked into I don’t wanna use the word addiction because that means a certain thing, they tend to get sucked into things that they really enjoy, and chances are they’re going to have a hard time shutting it off. So really, we’re going to stay away from anything that they might have a hard time breaking away from. And then one other thing that I realized we haven’t talked about is I’m realizing that both of you only have one child. And how can this work with more than one child? Your question about screen time brought that up for me sort of you know, how does it impact other people, and well what if the child decides I want to run around the house, and have a party in my after stories time, and there’s a baby’s sleeping? And so yeah, there would need to be restrictions on that because the baby can’t articulate, well the baby will articulate when you wake them up; they will cry, and then it doesn’t meet your need, and so there’s a whole bunch of people whose needs are not being met. And so yeah, there would need to be more potentially stringent restrictions on a child who has a sibling who is trying to get to sleep than you might need for a child who was an only child, and it’s only the parents who were potentially inconvenient who were there. You also may decide if you have more than one child, particularly if the child is an infant to just play with do I want to introduce this right now? Is this another potential source of stress that I need in my life, if the baby’s not sleeping, you’re up every couple hours in the night nursing anyway, is your older child going to bed later, something that is worth dealing with. My hypothesis might come down on the side of No, in that particular circumstance, and you may want to wait until things are more settled with the baby, and the baby sleeping longer, and you have a bit more mental bandwidth to cope with a child, an older child who might be staying up a little bit later, but hopefully older child was old enough that you then also might be able to have conversations about what activities are appropriate during after hours time.

 

Jen Lumanlan  56:08

Exactly, yeah. Yeah, it’s possible that the older child might say, “Well, my need is for play and activity in that time,” and then, “Okay, well, let’s get you play activity earlier in the day so that hopefully you have other needs that we can meet during this time.” And if it is not possible, again, may not be possible to meet everybody’s needs all the time, in which case, we’ll have a boundary if we can. But we may end up needing to set a limit to say something that is going to say, “You need to change your behavior if we want this to work, if you want to be able to stay up then the limit is you can’t make loud noises.” Or you have to be in certain rooms in the house that are further away from the baby’s room, and those limits are needed to make sure the baby’s needs are met to make sure my needs are met, and also to meet yours to the extent that we can so. So a judicious use of limits, I think can be helpful, particularly when there’s more than one child involved. All right, so it seems you’re both heading in this direction and I would love to hear how it goes. Maybe you wouldn’t mind reaching out in a couple of weeks and just letting us know how these conversations are going, what you’re trying, and when we have some more to share, would that be okay? Okay, all right. Well, thank you very much for both of you for reaching out and being willing to come on camera and share what’s going on for you, and dig deeper than the sleep stuff to realize that yes, some of it’s about the sleep stuff, but a whole lot of other stuff is not about sleep. So I’m really grateful for both of you for being here.

 

Katherine  57:36

Thank you so much. Yeah, I really appreciate you walking with us.

 

Jen Lumanlan  57:41

Great. I also wanted to mention that I recorded this episode at the end of November 2021. And in January 2022 I reached out to Gail and Katherine to see how things were going and there is some information from them in a video on the episode page for this episode. So you can find that at yourparentingmojo.com/nosetbedtime. There’s updates from them as well as thoughts from me on what seems to be going well and some ways they might want to consider adjusting their approach too. So I hope you find that useful if you are considering trying this for yourself.

 

Jessica  58:16

Hi, this is just from Burlesque Panama. I’m a Your Parenting Mojo fan and I hope you enjoy this show as much as I do. If you found this episode especially enlightening or useful, you can also donate to help Jen produce more content like this and also save us from those interminable ads then you can do that and also subscribe in the link that Jen just mentioned. And don’t forget to head to yourparentingmojo.com to record your own message for the show.