Set Your Kids Up for a Lifetime of Healthy Sleep
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Chris Winter talks about what parents should know about their kids' sleep from the womb through young adulthood, and why co-sleeping is a bad idea. Dr. Winter is a neurologist, sleep specialist, and author of The Rested Child, a new book about the importance of sleeping kids.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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When neurologist and sleep specialist Dr. Chris Winter sees adult patients in his sleep
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clinic, they often come to him because of a struggle with insomnia, which as he described
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in a previous appearance on the AOM podcast, is caused by stressing too much about sleep
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so that going to bed becomes an anxious and fear-inducing routine that sabotages the natural
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Chris would see fewer adult patients like this if, when they were kids, their parents
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set them up to have a healthy relationship with sleep.
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How to establish that kind of healthy relationship is something Chris writes about in his latest
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book, The Rested Child, and it's the topic of our conversation today.
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Chris will take us through what parents should know about their kids' sleep from the womb
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through young adulthood with tips on both how to improve your children's sleep and how
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to avoid messing it up, including his take on co-sleeping, why he let his kids go to bed
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whenever they wanted, and why he discourages giving children melatonin to help them sleep.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash kidsleep.
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So we had you on the show a few years ago to discuss your book, The Sleep Solution.
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It's all about how to manage the most common sleep problems that you see people have.
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The latest book is called The Rested Child, and it's all about sleeping kids.
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So in our conversation, The Sleep Solution, we talked about the health consequences for
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adults if they don't get enough sleep or they have poor sleep.
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Are there unique health consequences for children?
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I think they are unique in the sense that maybe the difference between a child's sleep problem
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and an adult has to do with kids are sort of laying foundations.
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You know, in other words, I was talking to a patient today who was a good sleeper.
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He is struggling versus somebody who deals with something or develops something when they're
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young, and that almost gets sort of incorporated into who they are.
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In fact, one of the chapters in my book, I write about good sleepers, bad sleepers.
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If you meet somebody at a dinner party, they say, well, I've always been a bad sleeper.
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I said, I've never had a parent in my clinic who's brought their children and said, well,
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You know, in front of the kid, like you would never do that.
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And if I said, well, which is Daryl, your stupid child or your smart child, that parent
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would probably get very upset with me and maybe never come back.
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What's interesting is the way they talk about sleep with their kids.
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They'll often say, well, Daryl's my great sleeper, but Keith, he's the worst sleeper
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I mean, right in front of the child who's sitting there, you know, playing with Legos.
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I think that the consequences sometimes with children's sleep is that they develop
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identities and behaviors about sleep that are very rooted developmentally.
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It's sort of like learning to swim when you're little versus learning to swim when you're
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It's really a different thing or acquiring a language.
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And the other thing that I think tends to happen is that because children are developing
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and the things that are happening in their lives are pushing them in directions, you know,
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they're accelerating in school, they're going to college, you've decided not to go to college,
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How much of that decision is being made because of problems related to their sleep?
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So it always concerns me when I see children who are excessively sleepy and struggling in
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school because forces beyond their control are kind of making determinations about them.
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And one of the things I want to avoid is dealing with a 31-year-old who says, you know, I probably
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I can't believe it's taking 20 years to figure this out.
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And they often have this look like, if I had known that when I was in high school, I think
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my life would be very different than it is now.
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And so I want disorders of sleep to be addressed quickly and efficiently so that that child can
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And I think sometimes with adults, it's a little bit different.
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So you want the child to have a great sleeping life all their life.
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I think we'll get into this a little bit, the role of sleep and growth, particularly for
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And, but also a lot of parents are concerned about their child's sleep because they're
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Like if their child's not sleeping well, then the parent, like that's, I imagine a lot of
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the patients you see with sleeping problems, it's like, well, my kid, he just keeps waking
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So helping your kid sleep also helps your sleep as well.
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I was just in Nashville last night giving a lecture about narcolepsy, which is a disorder
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They, they have a very unique relationship with sleep and that they want it all the time.
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And I was talking to another doctor and he said that one of the patients that he had
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diagnosed with narcolepsy, it was a, you know, 20 year old somewhere, you know, early, you
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know, mid college age years, the parent, uh, parents had come with her to the doctor's
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And when he said, I think your child has narcolepsy, the mother said, it was kind of emotional and
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said, oh my God, I always thought she was our great sleeper.
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And it's interesting because my guess is it would look that way to a parent of a young
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child who, when you say, okay, kids, it's time for bed.
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And every time you put that child down to nap, they went to sleep immediately.
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So again, you're kind of back to that good sleeper, bad sleeper.
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I think to your point, Brett, part of that evaluation has to do with how much is the sleep
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You know, I diagnosed narcolepsy in a major league baseball player.
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And I talked to, I said, do you mind if I call your mom?
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So I called his mom and the mother said, you know, it's funny when he was a high school
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And then in between innings would come off the field, go to the dugout, put his glove
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And then his teammates would wake him up if it was his turn to bat, or if he had to go
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So it's amazing what we will tolerate, what we will make an excuse for, particularly if it's
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So I think it'd be useful to structure this conversation so that we go through the different
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stages of a child's sleep development and the unique needs of each of those parks.
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I imagine we've got listeners who are parents who've got a kid at these different stages.
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But I think the first question to ask, like, do we know, like, when do we start sleeping
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So sleep in a fetus does look different than it does in an older child or a child, obviously,
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Both the timing of it, but also the brain activity is just inherently different.
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Now, this is a very difficult thing to study because it's difficult to get a kid to wear
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a Fitbit when they're inside of a mother's uterus.
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But, you know, we can look at these types of things and relatively early on in the child's
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development, these stages of arousal and less arousal start to emerge.
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And that's important because if you are a parent or you're expecting to be a parent one day,
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you can influence that sleep based upon your own activities.
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So, you know, the mother's schedule, the mother's exercise, is it regular?
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Is she somebody who works nine to five every day, exercises every day for 30 minutes at noon?
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You know, has a very routine eating schedule, movement schedule.
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They've done studies that looked at how rocking, talking to a child, even driving influences a
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So, I always tell parents, you know, you're going to start to create and help your child
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organize his sleep before you meet him or her, which is just absolutely fascinating to me.
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And that's why, you know, in the book, I write that this process of sleep is happening well
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So the mother, her actions can influence the child's sleep before it's even born.
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Like what role does genetics play in our sleep habits?
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So genetically, I like to think about a few things.
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I mean, genetics could be potentially endless in terms of its influence on sleep, but the
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things that I think that are most relevant to a parent and maybe to a child are three
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Number one, how much sleep does your child need as an individual?
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We talk a lot about eight hours, but it's really a lot more unique to your own child.
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And unfortunately is rapidly changing during those childhood years.
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So nobody would be shocked if I told them, you know what, regardless of what your child
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needs genetically, it will probably be more when they're six months old than when they're
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I included in the book, a chart that you can look up in the National Sleep Foundation.
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If you type in like National Sleep Foundation, sleep need by age, there's this really cool chart
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that they've put out there that kind of shows that bell curve distribution of sleep, you
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know, the average, but what the outliers are that are considered normal for a child who's
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just been born all the way up to their senior citizen discount at the movie theater.
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And what you see is slowly as we mature in age, we lose sleep.
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So grandma and grandpa tend to need a lot less sleep than their grandchildren.
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And so it's not only just a matter of figuring out how much you need, it's how much do you need
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in this point in your life because it can change.
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So sleep need is highly genetically determined.
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So if you're somebody who's a trauma surgeon and you work, you know, feel pretty good getting
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six hours of sleep at night, you could very well pass that on to your daughter and she'll
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The other genetic pieces are when do you prefer your sleep?
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And so there's this idea of chronotype, meaning, are you a night owl?
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This, the idea of chronotype has been around for decades, even though it's gotten a little
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And so it doesn't mean that you can't do something in the morning if you're a night owl or vice
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But when you think about children, it's extremely important because by and large, most kids tend
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They're more on the night owl or part of the spectrum than the morning part of the spectrum.
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If your child maybe struggles in math and you know that they're very night oriented, they
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may struggle with a school start time that's early.
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In fact, there's a whole movement, you know, wanting to make school start times later to
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But, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book is there are assessments that you
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And if you did an assessment on your child and determined that he is extremely night
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oriented, that might be a tool that you could use with a school to say, look, he cannot take
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We really need him in that three o'clock trigonometry block, or we would like to help.
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We would like help making arrangements for him to take this at a community college or something.
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So I think that that understanding of timing is extremely important.
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The third genetic variable I call horsepower, because I've never really heard it refer to
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What it is, is if you deprive a child of sleep, you know, a teenager, you have three teenage
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kids and you make them stay up all night studying art history, and then you give them a test the
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next day on Renaissance painters, which of your children are able to do that and which
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are not, meaning that how do we deal with inadequate sleep?
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I think that a lot of people that I went to medical school with had that horsepower gene.
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We could stay up all night and run around the hospital and put needles in people's necks and
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function pretty well the next day, or at least we thought we were, versus there are some people
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I've met, might even be married to one, that after 11, 12 o'clock, they're not going to be
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particularly helpful getting your hemorrhaging under control if you came into their emergency room.
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So we find that individuals who possess that ability to go without sleep can become quite
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But the other edge of that sword is, you know, they can often die when they're 55 because they're
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not, they're able to not get an adequate amount of sleep and do okay.
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So we always want to be encouraging people to get the right amount of sleep.
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Don't be scared about not getting it, but don't be cavalier about the fact that, you know,
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I've got a daughter who's like, look, as long as I'm, you know, get two or three hours of sleep,
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I'm good the next day. Well, being good, however you define that and being healthy and living a
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long life might be mutually exclusive. So we always want to watch out for those types of kids
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that live in our household, the high achievers, straight A's, stay up all night, studying Latin,
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play two different sports and a musical instrument. Just because you can do it may not mean you should.
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Okay. So a child's sleep patterns are being, they're influenced by genetics. The mother is
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also playing a role that child's born, you bring the baby home. A lot of parents probably notice
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first off that your baby just like, it eats and sleeps. Why do newborns sleep so much? What's
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going on there? Yeah. So it's an interesting question. You're being sneaky, Brett, because
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what you're essentially asking me is why do we sleep? And I think it's always fun to say,
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you know, to people that we really don't know why exactly. Now, what's interesting about kids
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is that during this period of massive growth, you know, that's sort of what distinguishes a child
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from an adult in some ways that they're, you know, they're very busy growing. And we know that the
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majority of growth hormone, what makes an individual essentially grow is produced during
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deep sleep. And so when you actually look at a chart, there's a wonderful chart that you can find
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if you look it up, that looks at how much light sleep, deep sleep, dreaming, and sort of wakefulness
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during the night we have over the course of our lives. And what you notice when you look at that is
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the diminishment in our sleep over time seems to be most tied to a lack of deep sleep. In other
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words, the amount of dreaming we do seems about the same. The amount of light sleep is about the
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same. Deep sleep is about this. I'm sorry. Dream sleep is about the same. Light sleep is about the
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same. Wakefulness might get a little bit more as you get older, but deep sleep rapidly decreases as
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we age. So kids are getting tons of deep sleep. And we know this as parents, you know, you can wake
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them up in the car seat and pick them up, take them into their bedroom. They just out cold, you can put
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their pajamas on and they never wake up. I mean, that's deep sleep. I mean, you can't even wake
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them up to bring them in the car and put their PJs on. So that deep sleep is when the child is making
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growth hormones. So I think the big thing that's happening there with children is their bodies are
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exceptionally focused on this deep sleep because it's the sort of necessary component of growth
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that makes these kids get bigger. In fact, sometimes when you have children who are sort of falling off
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their growth curve, and I give a couple of examples of real patients that we've seen where, you know,
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they're chugging along 80% height and weight. When you go to the pediatrician, they plot that out on the
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chart and you get real proud when your kid's in the 80th percentile or 90th percentile for height or
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whatever. Then all of a sudden they're, you know, the next time you visit, they're in the 60th percentile
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and then maybe even less the next time. So that trajectory they were on is starting to fall off. A lot
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of times that can be a subtle indication that there is something going on with their sleep because their
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sleep disturbance is affecting their deep sleep. The deep sleep is affecting growth and now they're not
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growing. So the most common one you see is something like sleep apnea. A kid has big tonsils, they're not
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breathing well during the night. And what's crazy is you take the kid's tonsils out and all of a sudden
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their growth just surges. And one of the things I predict will come out of COVID, and this is my own
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prediction. Well, so this is not being supported by any scientific study that I'm aware of at this point
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is that a lot of kids were basically told during COVID, do not come to swim practice. Do not come to
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your early morning prayer group. Do not come to everything's canceled. So, and in fact, we're not
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even going to start school until nine 30 and that's going to be a zoom school. So you could log in,
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turn your camera microphone off and keep on sleeping if you wanted to. So a lot of kids during COVID,
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we did this kind of accidental massive experiment on what happens if we almost force kids to get more
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sleep. And I've anecdotally sort of collected a lot of experiences from people that said, you know,
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wow, my kids really grew a lot. They had growth surges during COVID. I have two boys that were high
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school students at the time. And one of them, a senior had kind of stopped growing. The other one
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had not, but they both had huge surges in their growth during this time. Now my senior was a swimmer.
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So he was used to getting up at four 30, five o'clock every morning, seven days a week. And
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suddenly was told, nah, you can sleep till nine or 10 now if you want to. So it'll be really
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interesting to see that. But that growth hormone is really tied to that infant sleep experience.
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And it's probably essential for developing a healthy body and mind. All right. So newborns are
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sleeping a lot because they're growing a lot, not only physically, but their brain, there's a lot going
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on with their brain. And a lot happens with our brain while we sleep. When a parent comes to you
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with a newborn that's having sleeping problems, what are the most common problems and what are
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parents doing maybe unintentionally to exacerbate the problem? Yeah. So I think if we're looking at
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newborns, young children, probably the biggest problem that they have is, I don't mean to sound
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flip about this. It's a lack of maturity in the sense that that brain has not really started to
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organize itself into a period of wakefulness and period or periods of sleep. And I think that for
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most parents, what they're dealing with, and we get, you know, parents all the time bring us very
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young children who, what they'll say is, you know, I get a little note, you know, here's, here's your
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patient. You're seeing him at three o'clock and here's the complaint. Can't sleep or their baby won't
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sleep. I'm approaching 50. I've never seen a child that won't sleep. I've never heard of one,
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never seen one with my own eyes. Maybe they exist, but I'm not privy to it. So what the parent is
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basically saying is the child's not sleeping in a predictable or efficient way. And parents can get a
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lot done if they know what's going to happen, even if they're not sleeping that much, if they know,
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okay, well, that's fine. When are they going to sleep? If you can tell me that it really makes
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the difference. So I think a lot of parents just need a plan, but the plan that your book is reading
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might not be the plan that's perfect for your child. I mean, it's awesome that Blake Lively and
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Ryan Reynolds, you know, post, this is the schedule we have for our perfect little child. And here's how he or
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she's sleeping and you think, well, great, you know, this is the person that helped Blake Lively
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and Ryan Reynolds' baby sleep is going to help my baby sleep. I'm going to put my child on that
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schedule, which could very well work. It might not because again, your child has very different
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genes than that, that other child. So it's really about understanding how much sleep does your kid
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need? And so what, one thing I tell parents all the time to do is for the next week or two,
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I want you to write down every minute that they're sleeping. So they, you put them down at eight
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o'clock, they slept until 10 and woke up and they were up until 1130. And then they fell back to sleep
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again. They took a 20 minute nap during the day on the ride to, you know, whole foods. And then they
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fall asleep in this little bouncy chair that your grandmother got you. Like, you know, you track every
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little bit of it. And then over two weeks when that's done, add up all that time, divide by 14 days,
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and you'll get a sleep time per 24 hours. So essentially how much sleep is your child getting
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right now on average every 24 hours? And when that number is calculated, now you can split that up
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and arrange the schedule in the way that, you know, you would like it or what's your other child.
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But, you know, what I often find parents doing is they've got a child who's sleeping a relatively
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small amount, but they're trying to get the child to sleep for like 17 hours. And one of the things I
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want you to pay attention to when you look at that National Sleep Foundation chart is the tremendous
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variance when you look at young kids in terms of how much sleep they need. And what I mean by that is
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a newborn zero to three months could be sleeping anywhere from 11 to 19 hours every 24. So that
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means when you're sitting in a park with your friend who both of you have babies that are somewhere in
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that zero to three month range, what your friend is telling you to do, what you're telling your friend
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to do could be very wrong. If you've got an 11 hour baby and they've got a 19 hour baby. And once
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again, you know, the 19 hour baby is always a good sleeper, the 11 hour baby is the bad sleeper, but
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it's not, they're both fine. This needs to be an understanding of what that child needs. And I
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sometimes think that that's sometimes lost. So figure out how much sleep your, your newborn needs,
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your child needs. And then from there, like, do you recommend establishing a schedule saying, okay,
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we're going to get one nap at this time. And then you're going to go to bed at this time to get most
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of your sleep. So my answer to that is yes, but it's qualified in the sense that if a parent,
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if I ran into a parent at a dinner party and said, you know what, we don't really have a schedule for
00:24:10.980
our child. We just let him or her be awake and sleep whatever they want to. My first question would be,
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how's that working out for you? And if the answer is lovely, well, we are so happy that I don't really
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have a problem with it. This is your child. You know, you're, you're fully qualified to make those
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decisions. Now, if you ask me, uh, how many parents have come to my clinic asking for help,
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getting their kids off of a schedule and sleeping whenever they want to that number as of today is
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zero. So I want to be very clear. I wrote this book for individuals who are struggling to make
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something happen that they want to have happen with their kids sleep. If you have a child who kind of
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sleeps whenever he or she wants to, and it's working out well for you, you can keep doing that.
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I've got personal beliefs about that, you know, in terms of a kid who eats whenever he wants to
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goes to school, whenever he wants to, you know, sleeps whenever he wants to that, that can create
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problems. Brains like a schedule. Our brains do nothing accidentally. We don't release hormones
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accidentally. We don't create digestive tides accidentally. We, our brains like a schedule and
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it's kind of tied to the sun. So if the parent is saying, look, we would like our child on a more
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of a predictable sleep schedule, then yes. I think that once you've determined how much sleep you need,
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it's time to start sort of divvying out into sort of sleep periods that make sense for your child and
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your family's life. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. So a lot of parents, when the child's a newborn, they'll do things like
00:25:52.820
swaddling or co-sleeping. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Swaddling is interesting. I mean,
00:25:58.800
why do we hug people? Isn't it? If you think about it, like, okay, you see your friend and
00:26:02.900
friend's pretty upset about something and you get this idea in your head, I'm going to walk over,
00:26:08.100
I'm going to put my arms around him and I'm going to squeeze him and that's going to make him feel
00:26:12.880
better. And it does, you know, hugging does make us feel better. And the reason for it is that we've
00:26:19.660
got sensors at the end of some nerves that respond to pressure and that pressure is comforting. And
00:26:25.740
and that's why weighted blankets. That's why swaddling is helpful for some people. They like
00:26:32.440
that feeling of pressure. I always ask people when you go to the dentist and they put that lead apron
00:26:36.340
on you before they do x-rays, how does that make you feel? And if the answer is, well, I kind of like
00:26:41.480
it because personally I do, I think it's lovely. Then you might really respond well to a weighted
00:26:46.180
blanket or something of that nature. So swaddling to me is fine. It's, it's kind of natural. It's a great
00:26:52.160
little technique for, you know, getting a kid to kind of relax and settle down. You just popped out
00:26:56.780
of a womb, you know, in terms of co-sleeping, I want to be careful about this one too. I don't have
00:27:03.060
a problem with co-sleeping. If that's something you've decided to do with your child or children,
00:27:07.880
I do think we have to be careful when children are young. The American Academy of Pediatrics just came
00:27:14.200
out with more sort of definitive guidelines about that, which they were always sort of reluctant to do in
00:27:20.680
that. I don't think a child should be in bed with a parent until they're at least a year old. Now
00:27:28.280
they can be in a bassinet right next to your bed, but I just think that idea of you sleeping with a
00:27:33.580
child is, it can be problematic. And I write about this in the book that I have been privy to several
00:27:42.000
episodes where parents have inadvertently killed children. And one of them was a family member of
00:27:49.140
somebody who works for me. So very close relationship. And it was absolutely devastating.
00:27:55.260
The mother got up for work, picked up the child, took care of it, put it in bed with the husband,
00:27:59.440
which they did frequently. But in this point, the husband just kind of rolled over a little bit
00:28:04.640
too close to the baby and suffocated it. So I've never, now this is only in what, five or six times
00:28:11.640
in my career have I've been sort of a part of this. So I can't make big definitive statements,
00:28:16.580
but in all five, the parents said, we will never do this again. It was, you know, I think in the
00:28:24.040
book I wrote, it was like a bomb went off in the family, the family I'm talking about who gave me
00:28:28.620
permission to talk about this. They are now divorced. Significant, significant grief that I don't think
00:28:35.180
will ever end. I just don't see it as something that's really worth it. I think you can struggle
00:28:42.020
with your kid. You can cradle them. You can put them in baby Bjorns and do stuff. But when it comes
00:28:48.400
to that early sleeping as a one-year-old, I just think safety is so important, even though it can
00:28:54.320
be rare. I put the statistics of crib death and things like that in there. It's a leading cause of
00:28:59.580
little ones dying. I've just never seen it. Like, you know, when you talk to these cliff jumpers or
00:29:04.480
people who climb mountains, they'll tell you, I can't imagine a world where I'm not doing this
00:29:11.940
dangerous activity. So if unfortunately I pass away doing it, it's okay because I'm sort of dead if I'm
00:29:19.760
not doing it. I don't, I've never met anybody who's sort of talked about sleeping with children like
00:29:25.300
that. Maybe they exist, but I, you know, it's somebody else's life. It's this beautiful,
00:29:30.720
innocent little person next to you. And I just think, you know, put them in a bassinet, be safe.
00:29:36.280
Let's eliminate this risk. And when they get old enough to protect themselves and move their head
00:29:40.780
around and whatnot, then really that's, that's, that's your choice to make, I think.
00:29:45.940
Okay. So the newborn period, babies are going to sleep a lot. The big problem there for parents is
00:29:51.080
like maybe the baby's not sleeping when the parent would like the baby to sleep. It has its own schedule.
00:29:55.760
But I think the key there is like babies probably get enough sleep. You got to figure out how much
00:29:59.420
sleep it needs in a 24 hour period. And then, you know, kind of nudge the baby into a schedule
00:30:04.600
that fits in, you know, again, again, there's qualifications of that, but like moving on to
00:30:09.560
like toddler and school age years, I imagine the amount of sleep they need starts to slowly reduce
00:30:16.160
with these kids, like, you know, five, six, seven, eight year olds. Like what are the big problems you
00:30:22.100
see with parents that parents have there? Yeah. I mean, part of it is once you figured it out,
00:30:28.560
it starts to change, you know, it's like COVID. Okay. We figured it out. Oh no, there's a new
00:30:33.260
variant. Like, so you're, you're constantly having variables change in your algorithm. So
00:30:38.640
with toddlers, you know, you run into the, the problems of they're starting to maybe need less
00:30:45.200
sleep. So when do you drop that particular nap and when does it stay? The other thing with toddlers
00:30:52.040
toddlers are, they can do stuff like get out of their crib. So when you put the baby in the bed,
00:30:58.620
you know, he can cry and fuss and make little whimpering sounds, but can't really go anywhere.
00:31:03.500
I write about one of my children really at a very young age figured out how to get out of his crib.
00:31:11.260
He could climb out. And, you know, we heard it one night when we were watching television,
00:31:15.000
just thump and we walked up and he's just walking out in his room. And literally once that cat's out of
00:31:20.700
the bag, it's very difficult to kind of, you can't reason with them. Everybody's like, oh my gosh,
00:31:25.640
it's so great. Your, your child's walking so early. I mean, what in the world is great about this? He
00:31:29.700
can walk, but he has absolutely no sense. You know, I'm worried he's going to get out of his crib and
00:31:33.960
stick his finger in a socket or something. So that starts to become a problem. The idea of, you know,
00:31:39.840
you're waking up at three o'clock in the morning, your child's standing over you or has crawled into bed
00:31:44.100
with you. That that's a whole new issue of, you can't really lock them in their bedroom, you know,
00:31:49.400
for heaven's sake. So what are you going to do to convince the child to be in that bedroom? And
00:31:54.520
then I also think at that same time, they're interested in what you're doing. And so the
00:31:59.320
idea of a nap time or something like they're constantly coming out and what people call
00:32:04.740
curtain calls, you know, I need some water and my blue crayon is dull. And can you sharpen that? And
00:32:10.320
I can't find my blanket, you know, so there's constantly, you know, trying to convince them to
00:32:16.280
stay in your room and do this and do that. So I think that's sort of the toddler year problem
00:32:22.100
that a lot of people deal with. And, you know, I wrote in the book, one of the things that we did
00:32:27.040
when our kids were pretty young was we told them, we don't need you to sleep. We just want you to be
00:32:34.440
in your bedroom and we're all going to have a rest period. We never talked about sleep. We didn't talk
00:32:37.920
about napping that, okay, you know, 10 o'clock or one o'clock, everybody has rest time. So I need you
00:32:43.820
to color or you can play with your cards. You can dress your dolls up. You can write mommy a picture
00:32:48.400
or write daddy a letter or whatever you want to do, but, and you can sleep if you want to,
00:32:52.320
but you don't have to just rest. Resting is good for your body. And if you can just lie in your bed
00:32:56.540
and think about things and imagine, you know, what your dream tree house would look like or draw a
00:33:02.840
picture of it, like all this resting is very good for your body. One of the things we start to do in
00:33:07.360
the toddler years is determine the child's relationship to sleep. So when the kid comes
00:33:13.360
out of the bedroom, when they don't take a nap, they're up the entire time is, are you excited
00:33:19.140
about that? Are you angry with them? Is there stress in your voice when you're dealing with them?
00:33:24.200
Because a lot of the times we start to create a performance pressure. It's like that overbearing
00:33:29.240
parent that, you know, every time the kid strikes out, you got to keep your elbow up. You got to do this.
00:33:33.700
You got to do that. And like, you're yelling from the stands. And now the kid is so freaked out about
00:33:37.700
striking out or disappointing mom or dad at the baseball game that they really approach the plate
00:33:44.320
very differently than the other kid is like, I don't know. I just go up there and swing the bat.
00:33:47.580
If I hit it, great. If I don't, it's no big deal. I still get dinner, no matter what. Like, so
00:33:50.900
creating that relationship and those ideas and that emotion around sleep is really important in those
00:33:58.600
toddler years. Because I think that that's where we create the 31 year old who says, you know,
00:34:04.160
I've had a, I've been a bad sleeper all my life. I don't, I still don't know what that necessarily
00:34:09.020
means. And, but, but we can kind of create that in editing kids.
00:34:13.020
Well, you had this interesting for, especially for school age children, like when they're nine,
00:34:17.000
you actually don't set a strict time to go to sleep schedule. You have a time to wake up
00:34:22.840
schedule that's strict, but you don't have a time to go to sleep, but there is a go to bedtime.
00:34:27.540
Yep. And I think that one of the problems that we've created, or one of the mistakes that we
00:34:33.380
make is we focus a lot on bedtime, but not as much as maybe we should on wake time. So you're
00:34:39.560
absolutely right. And when you say strict, meaning our kids are going to wake up in our house
00:34:45.040
somewhere, you know, around seven or eight every day. Now there are exceptions. You were at some
00:34:50.440
travel soccer game or something, or a swim meet, and it didn't get in until whatever, then sure,
00:34:55.440
you sleep a little bit later if you want to, but by and large, we want that day to start and be
00:35:02.160
extremely stereotyped. It's going to be the same every day. You're going to get up. I'm going to
00:35:06.940
open up your blinds. I'm going to sing a goofy song in the morning. I'm going to scratch your
00:35:11.600
back. I'm going to say, Hey, it's going to be a great day. I'm so excited to share it with you or
00:35:15.800
whatever. Like it's, it's positive. It's not punitive. I'm not a drill. I'm not a, I got a son at the
00:35:21.460
Naval Academy. It's not what we're talking about here with blowing a bugle and screaming at you to
00:35:25.780
get up and do pushups. It's, it's just, Hey, it's time to get up and get going. And you're going to
00:35:30.520
have kids who say things like, Oh, I'm too tired. And can I go to school late? And I don't do
00:35:35.640
anything my first three periods. So could you just take me to school at lunch? And no, we don't want
00:35:40.320
to do that. Not because we're mean, but because we're, Hey, this is, this is the day we're going to
00:35:44.240
start it and it's going to be great. And you're going to feel better in 30 minutes. Once you get up
00:35:48.400
and shower and it's not going to be a big deal. So yes, we always want to focus on that. Now the
00:35:52.580
flip side is the bedtime. I think what we did was we had a time where I needed you to be in your
00:35:59.180
bedroom. Hey, it's eight o'clock for you young one. It's 10 o'clock for you older kid, you know,
00:36:04.000
whatever it's time to be in your bedroom. Now we have a very strict rule that there's no phones or
00:36:09.260
electronics in the bedroom. Now that's harder as they get older and they're like, look, dad, all my
00:36:13.480
homework's on my computer. So it becomes a little bit more of a challenge, but by and large,
00:36:17.500
be in your bedroom, read your books, color, look at your toys, do whatever you want to do. Just
00:36:21.360
no electronics, Snapchat, Instagram, nothing like that. You go to bed when you want to. If you're
00:36:27.700
sleepy, go to bed. If you're not, Oh, by all means, stay up, read another comic book. I really want you
00:36:33.080
to, I don't really want you trying to go to bed when you're not sleepy. And we really instilled that
00:36:38.760
idea in our kids at a young age, sort of welcoming it. Hey, if you want to stay up, it's okay. Now we're
00:36:45.480
going to wake you up at the same time every morning. We're not like you take a three hour
00:36:48.720
nap on Saturday, but you know, if you don't feel the net, the need to go to sleep at this point,
00:36:53.220
that's fine. I remember all the kids gave you this look like, are you kidding me? I can just stay up
00:36:57.260
and read more comic books. Like, and it fades. It was like the study they did many years ago where
00:37:02.080
they brought kids into cafeterias that eat, eat whatever you want. And there's like vegetables on
00:37:06.600
this table, desserts on this table. And for the first three days, they eat nothing but dessert,
00:37:10.680
but you know, check in with them a month later and they're actually balancing their meal quite
00:37:14.460
lovely and without being told to do so. So what you're trying to do is with every child and really
00:37:20.300
with every adult is I want you to have a healthy relationship with sleep. And that means that you
00:37:25.220
respect it, that you work on getting enough, but you're not fearful. If things don't work out
00:37:31.280
perfectly, I want you right there in the middle. I don't want you to be the person who's terrified and
00:37:36.100
taking tons of sleeping pills. Cause you're worried that if you get in bed and takes you more than
00:37:39.240
premise to fall asleep, all is lost. I also don't want you to be the 28 year old trauma surgeon.
00:37:45.580
Who's like, yeah, as long as I get three hours of sleep, I'm fine because she's not,
00:37:49.260
she's fooling herself just because she can take your spleen out on three hours of sleep.
00:37:53.420
Maybe that should be applauded, but she is headed for some problem in the future,
00:37:58.320
even though she seems to be functioning quite well right now. I want somebody in the middle of those
00:38:02.860
two people. So something I've seen an increase in with parents is parents who give their toddlers
00:38:09.040
or school age children, uh, melatonin gummies before they go to bed each night. Uh, you discourage
00:38:14.740
that. Why is that? Yeah. So I'll, I'll be clear. I don't think there's, you're going to harm your
00:38:20.540
kid giving the melatonin gummies, although there's some melatonin products that also have serotonin in
00:38:25.600
them. That can be kind of an issue, but by and large, first and foremost, it's unclear when you give
00:38:31.800
your child a melatonin gummy, what you're actually giving them. There was this recent study not too long
00:38:36.200
ago that looked at melatonin products we give adults and kids and the variance, even within
00:38:41.660
the same brand or the same bottle can be tremendous. So the idea that we know we're giving our kids
00:38:48.220
three milligrams of melatonin every night with a gummy bear is, is not true. God knows what you're
00:38:52.920
giving them. I will also say that there was a study that was done. It basically said, look,
00:38:56.960
it'd be pretty difficult to hurt yourself with melatonin. So I don't like it, but I'm not trying
00:39:02.660
to fear monger here. Oh, we're hurting our children by giving them melatonin. No, I don't
00:39:07.000
think chemically we are, but I do think we're hurting them in a different way. We're hurting
00:39:11.420
them in that. We're not really addressing the problem. You know, you're giving your child a
00:39:17.560
melatonin gummy bear every night. Why I've never met a parent says, Oh, it's because my kid sleeps
00:39:23.320
wonderfully, but we just thought this would even enhance that even more. I've never met that person.
00:39:28.740
Like a supplement. They're giving it to them because their kid can't sleep. And chances are
00:39:34.020
they've gone to a pediatrician, gotten that advice from a doctor who probably has gotten very little,
00:39:39.860
if any training whatsoever. So melatonin gummy bears are like a pediatrician's best friend because
00:39:44.600
they're harmless and they allow the pediatrician to do something quickly for a problem that often
00:39:51.280
doesn't have a quick solution. My child won't sleep. The pediatrician does not have time amidst his
00:39:56.700
flu shots and asthma treatments and school physicals to sit down for an hour, talk to you
00:40:02.040
about what is going on with your child that makes you feel like you can't sleep. So here's the, you
00:40:07.320
should try some melatonin gummy bears, you know, next patient. I mean, I don't fault the pediatrician.
00:40:11.740
I mean, I think there was a study that was done that said 25% of pediatricians have never gotten any
00:40:15.720
sleep training, even though sleep problems are some of the most common things that they're forced to deal
00:40:20.300
with. And the average pediatrician has gotten what, two to four hours, something like that.
00:40:24.440
I think the average employee at mattress firm has gotten 200 hours. So it's a real problem in terms
00:40:31.820
of the education gap here. So to me, the problem with the melatonin gummy bear is sort of like
00:40:39.140
I've taken my child to the doctor because there's some blood trickling out of their nose. And the
00:40:46.180
doctor keeps shoving a melatonin gummy bear up their nose and says, see problem. You don't see it
00:40:51.060
anymore. It's gone. No, the problem's not gone. It's just hidden now. So we haven't fixed anything.
00:40:59.020
Are these going to take melatonin gummy bears the rest of their life? We've really missing an
00:41:03.260
opportunity to sit down and talk to that child or the parent and say, let's figure out where this
00:41:09.540
sleeplessness is coming from. And I say that sort of in quotations and that again, I've never met a child
00:41:15.960
that can't sleep. Like, so let's better define the problem so we can better solve it. Because when we
00:41:21.360
don't, we go down the Michael Jackson pathway, which is Michael Jackson couldn't sleep. So let's give
00:41:27.140
him a melatonin gummy bear. That didn't work. Let's give him some stronger pills. Well, those don't work
00:41:30.840
either. Let's send a surgeon to his house to anesthetize him every night. Well, that killed him.
00:41:36.100
So again, we're not killing kids with melatonin gummy bears, but we are setting them down this pathway
00:41:41.620
of I've got a brain that doesn't sleep. So I have to take this grape flavored chewy in order to be
00:41:48.880
able to sleep, which really isn't true. And I don't want any child believing that. So if there is a
00:41:54.720
sleep problem, let's diagnose it and fix it and move forward and not just simply cover it up.
00:42:00.900
All right. So don't default to giving kids melatonin because you think they got a sleeping
00:42:04.180
problem. I mean, they might have a sleeping disorder that's stopping them from sleeping,
00:42:07.760
but those are rare. The more likely scenario is that the kid's just not sleeping when the parent
00:42:12.840
wants them to go to sleep or it's convenient for the parent. And so instead of giving melatonin,
00:42:17.840
maybe the parent just needs to try that thing you were talking about, where you tell the kid,
00:42:21.960
you got to be in your bedroom at a certain time, but then go to sleep whenever they want. And then
00:42:26.420
regardless of what time they go to sleep, you wake them up at the same time. And hopefully that will
00:42:31.040
just naturally get things on track. So that's school age kids. What about high school kids? What are the
00:42:37.100
big issues you see with sleep in this period? High school, technology in school. And I'm married
00:42:45.760
to a teacher. Both of my parents are school teachers. I love teachers. I'm not bashing school
00:42:50.940
at all. I do get to places sometimes where I think this algorithm does not work. I remember one time I
00:42:59.320
was asked by the NCA to come out with a group of doctors and talk to them about the sleep in their
00:43:04.720
athletes. And I thought, well, I'm a good sleep doctor and I've worked all these pro athletes.
00:43:09.300
I'm going to arrive in Indianapolis and I'm going to tell them exactly what to do. I'm going to solve
00:43:13.380
the problem. And I remember sitting there listening to an NCA swimmer from Indiana, a school in Indiana
00:43:20.680
talked to me about his schedule. And then this was dear to me because I've got a collegiate swimmer too.
00:43:27.480
And when I was done listening to his schedule of mandatory workouts, well, these workouts are
00:43:33.480
mandatory, but you have to go. And we have mandatory study all we cannot miss or be late to a class.
00:43:40.720
I remember thinking, well, this doesn't add up to the number of hours in a week. Like how are you doing
00:43:46.200
this? And to be blunt, my son who was a swimmer, collegiate swimmer said I was spending 27 hours a week
00:43:55.300
doing my sport and I just couldn't do it. I'm not strong enough academically to be able to lose an
00:44:02.000
entire day and be able to keep my grades where I want them to be. So he decided after his first year
00:44:08.400
of swimming that he was not, he was done. So to me, you know, I think that school can be that for some
00:44:15.920
people. I think every child has the right to go to school, play an instrument and play a sport and be
00:44:22.640
able to fit all that into a 24 hour day or, you know, a regular work week. And when I look at my
00:44:29.060
own children, sometimes I'm like, my God, why do you have four tests tomorrow? Do your teachers not
00:44:35.180
discuss that? And when were you made aware of this project? And I just feel like sometimes schools,
00:44:41.800
and I've gotten letters and communications from parents that are just, they're not the experience
00:44:46.660
I had in high school. What they're experiencing in high school is kind of what I experienced in medical
00:44:51.340
school. Like the math doesn't work out and it's dangerous, but Hey, it's only for a few years and
00:44:57.440
it'll be okay after that's done. So school is a big problem. I think technology is a massive problem.
00:45:04.240
And I don't have the answer for that. So if you're looking for the answer to technology,
00:45:10.380
I might provide some guidance here and there, but I'm going to tell you right now, save your money.
00:45:15.240
Do not buy my book. I do not have the answer to how to get technology under control with
00:45:20.860
your child. I mean, it's just everywhere and everything's working against us. Like we have
00:45:25.060
pretty strict rules about technology in our family. I follow them as well. I do not bring a cell phone
00:45:29.700
into my bedroom. We plug them all up in the kitchen at night, but I had one child build a phone out of
00:45:35.580
a piece of wood and he would plug the wood up every night. Cause I thought it was a phone cause it was
00:45:40.060
an iPhone case and he had his phone up in his bedroom and it's like a little drug for kids.
00:45:44.320
And it always upsets me. You know, when you, when the parent brings the child in and I'm talking to
00:45:50.900
the eight-year-old and the five-year-old's rummaging around in the purse, grabs the cell
00:45:55.180
phone out and sit there, sitting there the entire time we're talking on that phone. Like it's all,
00:46:00.960
it's begun, you know, it's happening. They're getting that little dopamine hit in their brain. And
00:46:05.700
to wrestle that phone out of their hand is going to be tough. I was talking to a professional
00:46:11.060
football player who said, I get home because I've got a problem with my phone. I'm addicted to it.
00:46:17.040
And it's, it's hurting me professionally. He said, I get home, I'll put the phone in a drawer.
00:46:21.880
And he goes, an hour later, I'm sitting on the couch with the phone in my hand. He goes,
00:46:24.840
I'm not entirely sure how it got there. I mean, that's the kind of dialogue you would hear with
00:46:30.720
a drug addict. And so I think that those two things within the teenage years or something,
00:46:36.700
parents have to be extremely organized and thoughtful about as to how they're going to deal
00:46:42.460
with technology, cell phones, streaming services, computers in your bedroom, whatever, as well as
00:46:51.460
schools that can sometimes, I think, overstep what they should be doing from a work perspective
00:46:58.300
with our kids. And again, I'm not a snowflake. I don't know what the word would be for. I mean,
00:47:02.920
work the kids, make them work, you know, make them organized. But at some times I'm just kind
00:47:07.100
of like, what on earth were they thinking when they gave you this five page paper to do today,
00:47:14.420
when you've got these two other exams going on and, you know, it's like, it just seems mean to me,
00:47:20.840
like, make them write the paper because they do it next week when they've got nothing going on.
00:47:25.780
And so anyway, I just think those are two things we have to be very organized about.
00:47:30.120
And I think with the school thing too, just in the high school years, you may, as a parent
00:47:34.340
have to, you know, subtly encourage or discourage your kids from taking on too much. So they're
00:47:39.960
like, well, I don't want to do this third sport. Well, maybe not.
00:47:44.240
And I think that there are kids out there and schedules out there that they can do it.
00:47:48.440
And if you're saying, well, my kid's sleeping a ton and it's playing three sports and all that,
00:47:52.680
then great. I don't have a problem with it. I think that, like you said, they're entitled to one
00:47:58.700
sport. If they want to play two concurrently, or, you know, I want to do a sport, I'm doing quiz
00:48:04.660
team model you in and this other thing, they might have to cut things out a little bit. I think
00:48:10.140
beyond, you know, there's what, what's a right and a privilege and what's what, and what's a
00:48:15.860
privilege. I think you're, you're, you have a right to one sport and maybe one other activity.
00:48:20.620
I think everything beyond that becomes a privilege. So yeah, I think we as parents do have to step in
00:48:25.700
because it's kind of an arms race, isn't it? Well, Susie's taking three APs and two, you know,
00:48:32.260
they say, I want to get into a great college. And I think that that's, that's a very difficult
00:48:37.380
thing for, for parents to know when to be like, Hey, look, this take the standard level, this or
00:48:42.820
the honors level, this it's, it's going to be okay. You're going to be fine. I don't meet a lot of
00:48:49.120
adults who are like, you know, drinking in bars because they didn't do AP psychology their junior
00:48:55.120
year. They instead took, you know, just regular biology and it's just, and, and all was lost when
00:48:59.980
that happened, but it's hard in the moment. Like dealing with kids in schools was definitely the
00:49:05.480
most unexpectedly hard thing for me personally, as a, as a parent, I just had no idea the kinds of
00:49:12.700
pressures and things that they would be exposed to because it just wasn't what I was exposed to as a
00:49:16.960
high school student. So it sounds like the overarching goal as a parent, when you're trying
00:49:21.400
to help your kids sleep is okay. Your kids are sleeping, right? That usually most kids don't
00:49:27.760
have like sleeping. Yeah, absolutely. Most kids don't have a serious sleep disorder. Usually if
00:49:32.540
the problem is, is there, maybe they're not sleeping when you'd like them to. Yeah. So the goal is as a
00:49:38.520
parent throughout there from crib to college is to, I don't know, just help your kids develop good
00:49:44.440
sleeping habits and a good, have a good relationship with sleep. Yeah. And be, and to be on the lookout
00:49:50.120
when you feel like there might be something wrong with sleep. And the problem there, particularly in
00:49:56.520
the teenage years is I think we're as a medical community, much more likely to jump to the idea
00:50:04.840
of depression or anxiety or ADHD before we actually consider, Oh, maybe his concentration is okay.
00:50:14.680
There's just something going on with this sleep. So if you, as a parent think my child sleeps a lot and
00:50:22.440
always just seems tired. Like when my mother-in-law comes to town, she always says, you know, Jonathan
00:50:28.680
always looks so tired. You know, I think that that's where you want to sort of exercise that parental
00:50:35.500
radar that you have, because you know, that child better than anybody in the world, particularly their
00:50:39.780
doctor and say, you know what? Yeah, he is struggling with some attention and he has been a bit moodier,
00:50:46.600
more depressed lately, but I'd like to, to, to explore more about his sleep because I don't think
00:50:53.560
that it's as healthy as it could be. To me, it's always disappointing when we figure out a sleep
00:51:00.200
problem and somebody who's been dealing with those symptoms for years, it's all that lost time and
00:51:07.220
energy. And so to me, I think a sleep evaluation so that they can sort of, you know, make the proper
00:51:15.580
arrangements to figuring out what they need to do to get, get help and be that advocate because it can
00:51:21.660
be life-changing for a kid. Well, Chris, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to
00:51:26.100
learn more about the book and your work? Yeah. So the book's available wherever books are sold. It's
00:51:30.680
called The Rested Child, While You're Tired, Wired, or Irritable Child May Have a Sleep Disorder
00:51:36.080
and How to Help. You can buy it on Amazon. And then my social media is drchriswinner, like drchriswinner,
00:51:43.340
d-r-c-h-r-i-s-w-n-t-e-r, Twitter and Instagram. And I try to put good stuff about adults and kids
00:51:50.260
sleep on those feeds as well too. And yeah, so I really appreciate the time and the spotlight.
00:51:56.280
This is a book that I think would be very helpful to parents and really look forward to it being in
00:52:03.020
their hands. Well, Chris Winner, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Hey, Brett, I really
00:52:07.320
appreciate your time too. Thank you so much. My guest today was Dr. Chris Winner. He's the author
00:52:12.260
of the book, The Rested Child. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find
00:52:16.220
more information about his work at our show notes at aom.is slash kidsleep, where you can find links
00:52:20.880
to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the
00:52:31.540
AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanly.com where you can find our podcast
00:52:35.540
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00:53:03.400
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