Henry

Welcome to Henry's
sleep program

Here you will find information and supporting links to help you through the journey for better sleep.

You will be able to visit this site whenever you need as we work together, and you will be able to revisit any task, recordings and information up to 12 weeks after the end of our program, on 21st April 2022.

Here is the zoom link for all calls:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82135962257?pwd=NlNkeVlXaGdJTlA1Qm9YdFRLZXBoQT09

Meeting ID: 821 3596 2257
Passcode: Famp0E

And here is the link to join the whatsapp group https://chat.whatsapp.com/HMfA8GoDolhEiqJlMM9xu9

10th March 2022

Dear Laura and James.

It was good to talk to you today and hear about you, your family, and your sleep situation. This session was mostly to help me understand the background, and support you with some ideas to move forward. This session was also about some simple ideas, and to help you understand how we will work together over the coming weeks.

As you know, I work differently to many other sleep consultants. My approach is very gentle and respectful of children's development. I also hold parent's mental health very close and for many parents, my gentle approach is what enables them to improve their child's sleep in a way that feels right for them.

Over the next 6 weeks I will guide and support you to work towards your goals through tasks and adjustments to habits. I find that it helps to tackle sleep in small steps, so that it doesn’t become overwhelming.

You told me that you would like :

Both parents to be able to put Henry to bed or see to him at night.
Henry to be able to settle quicker and without needing to sit with you on the chair-perhaps stay in his cot.
A shorter bedtime would be lovely too but if it’s easier then happy to still sit with him for 30-45mins etc.

It is likely that in order to achieve these goals, we will need to work on:

Exploring other ways to fall asleep
Encourage connecting and challenging physical activities
Finding out what helps Henry to become regulated in the night (and supporting him to use these tools himself)
introducing a floor bed as a mid step to quicker bedtimes
Gradually including James on the bedtime routine and/or night wakes

Probable reasons for your current sleep situation

Having had a look at your sleep diary and spending time talking to you about your child and your situation, my guess is that your current issues are multifactorial but may include habits and normal challenges with limit setting, emotional needs and needing to connect. There may, of course, be other reasons, such as his natural tendencies and sensitivities.

The reality is that there is always something that could be improved with sleep.

You’re doing an amazing job of parenting respectfully and responsively, and your sleep situation is not only normal, but common. You have not done anything wrong, and Henry is actually sleeping within the average amount for his age. However, you’re describing a situation that has become unsustainable particularly with the arrival of a new family member, so we can work to address and optimize these areas to hopefully improve Henry’s sleep.

I look forward to working with you closely over the next few weeks, and moving you and Henry on in your sleep story, without using techniques that might affect attachment, trust and connection.

Thank you for choosing to work gently – you will never regret it!

Week 1

This week we will work on the following points:

Quick wins
Encourage the nap to happen slightly later. 6h after waking up ( but be guided by Henry, if he is tired earlier it is fine to sleep earlier)
Shorten the nap by 10 - 15 minutes every few days so eventually it is around 1 hour long.
Increase challenging physical activities in the morning
Introduce more 'love cup' filling games
Take the love language quiz - Take the quiz here
Introduce a floor bed

Booking call - 10th March 2022

Quick wins. You can print it by clicking on each picture.

Physical exercise ideas

Encourage a lot of exercise and challenging physical activities.

Climbing
Living room olympics
Crawling under chairs or low towel tunnels (place a towel over two chairs)
Jumping in place, forward, backwards
Pushing and pulling heavy objects (carrying and unloading the shopping, load the pushchair with books)
Running forwards, sideways, backwards
Dancing

Love cup activities ideas

Sock game: parents and children sit with feet together and they need to remove each others socks off
Do something outrageous: could be fall over, have dessert for dinner, pretend to eat a shoe. Be silly.
Chase and miss game: tag but with parent missing on purpose --- Reinforces the idea that the parent wants the child. Bellow are other variations: -Parent can then grab a chair and kiss it, then go’ oh, no, this is not you!’ -Kissing monster
Hide and seek: but finding the child quickly or pretending you can’t see them.
Let them be bossy: play might be the only time they CAN be bossy
If child says ‘go away’. Take a couple of steps and say playfully ‘ is this enough?’ keep going back and asking until child says ‘yes, that is fine’.
Human tug-of-war: parents “fight” for a piece of the child. ‘ I want him. No I do. I have the best part…’ It passes the message: ‘I want you. I see you. I love you.’
Don’t step on the lava. Parent and child on the bed and they have to push each other on the lava and at the same time they have to save each other.

If when playing rough there is an injury (physical or emotional), take a pause, acknowledge the hurt, ask if they want to carry on or if they should leave for another day. Their feelings are more important than the game!

It can also be helpful to have organised pauses to lower the energy levels from time to time.

Essential oil blend for bedtime calm

Here is a lovely blend you can use in the bath or as a spray on the lead up to bedtime.

4 drops lavender
2 drops vertiver
1 drop clary sage
1 drop lemon

This week's wins:

Henry’s quite excited about his ‘floor bed’ and gets straight in for stories, which is nice-and much more comfortable!
Henry's been having one nap nearer to 1pm, and managing that well.

Week 1 1/2

Further adjust nap timing and duration
Consider fading the bedtime
Introduce a bedtime booklet

Nap

You will need to find a rough balance in terms of timing and duration of nap depending on what is happening on your day, what bedtime you can do that evening and what Henry needs.

In general, try to leave Henry awake for 7(ish) hours before bedtime. If this is not possible you could encourage lots of physical activities in the afternoon so Henry is tired enough in the evening.

If he is napping on the way from nursery or later into the afternoon you can do 2 things: either cut the nap short so there is nearly 7 hours before bed or make bedtime later that night.

Bedtime fading

Bedtime Fading is the procedure of putting your child to bed at a much later time then you might think reasonable and after a while, gradually bringing the bedtime to an earlier time.
The Bedtime Fading technique does not teach sleep skills on its own, it just strengthens the association between the bedtime expectations at a time that Henry is really tired and super ready to sleep (it takes advantage of increased felt sleep pressure).
Sleep pressure is one of many factors that influence sleep. When sleep pressure is increased, children are more exhausted and more likely to fall asleep faster. Using this later bedtime strategy can give you faster results in the short term, by making it easier for your child to fall asleep a new way, due to feeling more tired.

Step by step

Determine what time Henry is already falling asleep without protest or with as little fuss as possible. This seems to be at 8:20pm
Do your usual relaxing bedtime routine – usually up to 20 minutes of relaxing, calming, pleasant activities as the bedtime approaches. The bath may not work at such a late time and you may find it is not included in this 20 min bedtime routine. The bedtime routine is important with this method as we are trying to build a strong association between the last steps of the bedtime routine and the feeling of falling asleep. Eventually you will end the bedtime routine lying down in bed.
Put your child to bed at 8:20pm OR 1 hour later (yes, really late to start with!). These are two variations on the same plan. We often start by putting children to bed at the time they normally fall asleep and see if it significantly shortens the overall time to fall asleep. If this does not work or if your child normally takes several hours to fall asleep, then going with the later bedtime variation may be necessary.

Once Henry learns to associate the pleasant bedtime routine with falling asleep and he falls asleep within 20 minutes in bed, bedtime can be gradually shifted earlier. Around 15 minutes earlier each each 3 nights.

Sharing a social story book with Henry at bedtime routine and during the day is a great way to reinforce the message of where he sleeps in a loving and fun way.

Social story book - Henry's bedtime

A social story is a personalized bedtime book showing step by step what happens between the start of the bedtime routine, a kiss goodnight, and ending with super happy Henry waking up in the morning. The idea is to communicate what happens, step-by-step. You can read it during the day and/or just before starting your bedtime routine.

Here is a link where you can have one done but you can also print some pictures showing Henry doing each step, including being asleep in the bed, and staple together. https://mind-matter.com/

We will work further on the steps of the bedtime routine in later weeks, if needed. For now the main message we want Henry to get is -- where he has time with mummy and falls asleep, and that is on the floor bed and not the chair.

Here is a suggestions of pictures to start with

Bath
Good nights to Arthur and daddy
Sit on the bed in Henry’s bedroom and read a couple of stories
Turn light out
Henry sits propped by pillows, on bed next to mum until he falls asleep
Henry sleeping lying down in bed
Awake and happy in the morning

The next steps would be

to lie down to fall asleep next to mum
to lie down to fall asleep on his own

Week 2

Exploring what might help Henry return to a calm state (See zones of regulation)
Practicing limits during the day

Observing, understanding and regulating emotions

Feeling all emotions, from negative to positive is normal and enriches our lives. But it is important that we feel emotions that are appropriate for the situation. Therefore, it is important to be able to regulate our emotions.
As children grow they learn to regulate their emotions so it is appropriate for the situation. eg. It is ok to be super excited, pumped and fidgety when playing in the park but not ok to be like this when going to sleep or at a restaurant.
Children who are able to regulate their emotions are more emotionally stable, more resilient, achieve more academically, and have fewer behavioural problems.
Of course we can’t expect young children to be good at this, in fact even adults find it challenging to regulate emotions when they are under stress, hungry or tired. But we can all strive to develop tools to help us during tricky times in life.

At first, our babies rely on us to regulate their emotions. We do this by:

1. Being with them and being regulated ourselves, and also by rocking, shushing, breastfeeding. So we are using all of the baby’s senses in order to balance their system.

2. Then baby accepts our tools and help. Meaning that they relax when we do these things. And as they grow, they know they can seek these actions and sensations we offer.

3. Eventually they learn ways to regulate themselves. So as children grow and develop, they learn strategies to regulate their emotions themselves, but with the safety net of having their parents nearby if needed.

The stage of learning the skills and strategies for regulating emotions is very important and is a long and important process that can be done with kindness and warmth.

Task 1

Name emotions. Help your child identify and name emotions

identify the emotions your child is experiencing instead of telling your child how they should feel. You could use the emotion faces bellow. start by selecting the most simple first.
naming emotions helps soothe a child
set a good example by naming your own emotions and talking about them
as your child grows, help them build a vocabulary for different feelings

If your child is very upset, wait for them to be regulated and then talk about the emotions. Be careful to avoid judging and criticising the emotion. The objective is to identify the emotions and not to place value on them.

An important step is to find good solutions for when we are becoming dysregulated.

If we are able to recognize when we are becoming less regulated, we are able to do something about it to manage our feelings and get ourselves to a healthy place.

‘Zones of regulation’ is a tool to help parents identify when a child may need support or guidance to regulating their emotions. Understanding the zones of regulation is also helpful for children to identify big feelings and develop skills to help regulate their own emotions during the day, when they are old enough.

Throughout our day we fluctuate through all zones. What is important is to be able to regulate ourselves so to go back to the Green zone, where our parasympathetic system is active and we feel relaxed, calm as well as ready to learn and socialise.

Once we identify in which zone ourselves or our child are, we can use regulating strategies to return or remain in the green zone.

Task 2

Explore when your child is on the different zones, what triggers them to go there and what helps them to return (or maintain) to the green zone and feel calm.

When trying strategies to return to the green zone, explore what works for your child and keep an open mind.

Also consider:

which strategies your child needs all the time to support regulation and maintain the green zone behaviour and emotions
which strategies are helpful when your child is on the yellow or blue zones to help return to the green zone
which strategies are helpful when your child is on the red zone and which strategies will not work

Regulating strategies

Here are some ideas of strategies, please add on to this if you find other things that work for your child. Strategies can provide the sensory input the child needs to maintain a calm, alert and organised state or use posture, flexion and breath to organise the body and re-set the nervous system

The following strategies provide the sensory input children need to maintain a calm, alert and organised state.

Tactile system:

Deep pressure. e.g. massage, firm touch when drying from bath, sustained touch, heavy pillows
Sucking/blowing activities. e.g. Blowing bubbles or into a glass of water, drinking through an intricate straw. Blowing ping-pong balls with a straw. Model long out breath at bath time and when your child is relaxed.
Neutral warmth. e.g. Warm bath, wrap in blanket, womb like space, sleeping bag
Soft textures. e.g. Fluffy blanket and cushions

Propioceptive system:

Pushing, pulling, carrying heavy objects
Climbing, crawling, jumping games
Squash under pillows
Jumping on trampoline
Walk with backpack on
Riding bikes/scooters
Squeeze against gym ball, roll over ball

These activities are not to do too near bed time. If your child needs this kind of calming activities at bedtime, try balancing lying down, tummy down, on a gym ball on the trampoline. The idea is so your child is in curled up postures, and not extended positions. These postures are more calming and encourage deeper out breaths.

Auditory system:

Low noise level

Soft or classical music particularly Mozart

Quiet style of interaction and speech

Soft, rhythmical singing, sing-song speech

Low amount of verbal input

Vestibular system:

Rhythmical swinging, slow movements
Rolling or rocking slowly over a ball
Rocking in a rocking chair
Rocking side to side or back and forth
Slow rhythmical movements

The follow strategies support regulation and help re-setting the nervous system

Physical and sensory strategies:

flexion postures
arms to midline
physical activities
deep pressure
movement
messy play
visual toys
vibration (toys, snakes)

Use of self and communication strategies:

tone of voice
give space
physical support
pre-empting
body position (own and child’s)
body language (own and child’s)
use of eye contact
breathing
watching for approach vs. avoidance communication
limiting language

Environmental strategies:

quiet room/ space
outdoor spaces
visual (darker as bed time approaches)
timetables
pictures
now & next personal book

Calming strategies:

yoga
massage
use of breathing
having space to play and movement
limiting space to make it easier to calm down e.g. put a duvet on the floor to play on, so space is defined. Or cuddling up and reading a book in a flexing position
alone/free time
preferred activities

Week 3

This week you will work on finalising the transition away from using the chair as the main sleep tool at bedtime.

As we spoke on our call, you think Henry will react better and it will work better for you, to remove the chair from Henry's room on Monday and 'love him to sleep'.

So just go for it!

and remember to:

Role play the bedtime. Talk about it in the day - not include the chair, emphasis on cuddling in bed
Use tools you found last week to help with boundaries at bedtime and in the middle of the night
Arrange ways to support yourself so you are as regulated as possible to support Henry through this big change.

Wins so far!

Calmer and easier bedtimes
Henry really likes his bedtime book!
much shorter time on the chair
some nights only 1 or 2 wake ups
Once James could help Henry back to sleep in the night