Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Getting to bed and getting up in the morning are really challenging transitions. So acknowledge that, and if you're still early in working with this approach, I might encourage you to take aim at a couple of other little things. Get some wins, get some collaboration going with your kid before you start tackling something this big.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Welcome back, everybody, to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact Podcast and to part two of our episode about sleep because it's such a big topic. It deserves two conversations. 

Diane Dempster
Well, and it probably deserves more conversations than that.  

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I'm still looking for an expert. Are there any professionals out there listening who feel like you can add to this conversation? Please let me know because we are always looking for good experts.

Diane Dempster
And I think that there's so many different moving pieces of this, and I think that that's the reason this started for those of you who didn't listen to the first episode; go back and listen to the first episode is that this is one of the biggest challenges that our parents bring to us all the time is like my kids having a hard time getting to sleep. My kid won't get up. I'm late to school. I'm all the things that are impacted by what happens between bedtime and waking up time. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And the realization that going to sleep, staying asleep, and waking up are all major transitions, huge transitions, and they are super hard. And so what we want to invite us to in the first place is to remind ourselves and acknowledge that our kids, that this is hard, that we're struggling. Yes, our kids may be asking for an extra glass of water and may be stalling at night. That's typical, and that's normal. And part of it is because it's hard to go to bed. It's hard to put your best self to bed. It's hard to go to sleep. It's hard to stay asleep. And it can be particularly hard to wake up. So that's it. We've got a plan for this episode.

Diane Dempster
Right. No. And so what we wanted to do is to pull back, and we were talking about what the coach approach would do to support this challenge and part of what we talked about in the last episode is the first piece. It's about taking aim, and it's about being really clear about what is the problem you're trying to solve and the conversations.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Change you want to see is another way we put that.

Diane Dempster
Right. And the conversation we had last time was like, well, a lot of times it's, we're late to school, or I'm late for work. And so, I will aim to get my child to bed earlier. Whoa. There's a long way from bed earlier to being late for work. And we might need to look at everything that's going on in between those two. So we want to be really clear. What's the real problem we're trying to solve? But the real problem I'm trying to solve is that my kid has a really hard time getting their feet on the floor without a million reminders. My kids having a hard time getting their feet on the floor without a fight. My kid's having a hard time transitioning to bedtime and lays there for two hours before they fall asleep. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
What? That's two different things. My kid's having a hard time transitioning from running around the house to bedtime or being in bed, and now they can't fall asleep.

Diane Dempster
Right. Exactly. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right. So each of these is very specific, and when we take aim, the more specific you can get to time and place, the easier it is to problem-solve around it. Right? So, I'm thinking about what may not have been so helpful back in the day before I understood this stuff when my kids were walking around upstairs saying, I can't fall asleep. And my husband would say, well, you certainly can't fall asleep when you're not in bed walking around. So I'm really trying to understand. So one is recognizing that it really is hard, y'all, it really is. And the other is getting very specific on where the challenge point is happening that you want to try to address first because you do all of it. 

Diane Dempster
Right. And the second part is the question we always ask, which is what's going on, right? It's just being able to say, is this an executive function challenge? Is this a destruction management issue? Is this a sleep cycle or circadian rhythm issue? Is this what, you know, what is really going on and not just, was it a boredom issue? Is it a boredom issue? The reminder is a lot of times—for example, the kid who won't get off the computer and go to bed. Well, of course, they like the computer more than they like to go to sleep, and so that is part of what's going on, we don't want to discount that, but there may also be many other legitimate things that might be going on besides just the fact that playing games is more fun than sleeping.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, okay. So, let's look at what you want to get your story. It might be, My kids are not getting enough sleep because I can't get them off the game or the computer at night. Right? And they're not getting their homework done, or they're up with their friends or whatever. So when we say, okay, the change we want to see is to help our kids transition from the computer to getting ready for bed in a time-appropriate manner. When we get curious about what's going on, to your point, Diane, there's so many things that that could be.

It might be that they're more stimulated by the game and that the notion of going to bed is boring. I can totally vouch for that. It might be that that's the only time they feel like they get to hang with their friends. And they're really connected, and they don't want to disconnect from the human interaction that they're getting. Even if you don't think it's human interaction on social media, they might feel like it, and they don't want to disconnect from that to be alone in bed. Right? What else could it be?

Diane Dempster
Well, I think the other thing that it could be is that it's our agenda, right? Yeah. It's like, I remember really distinctly when I, you know, I like to go to bed at 10 o'clock, and if my kid has a hard time transitioning to bed independently and I needed to be their reminder system, I needed to help them get off the computer. There became this point at which they legitimately could stay up later than I wanted to stay up. And so I'm like, But I want to go to sleep. I don't want to have to be reminding you at midnight to make sure you're in bed. So sometimes it is our agenda that they are on a different schedule than their own agenda.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, and so I think these are some good examples. It could be that they're wired up. They're actually hyped up, and they're not; they haven't had the time to decompress, or they don't know how to decompress, get a hyperactive kid. I used to think that sending my kid to go run around the cul-de-sac was going to actually tire him out, and it didn't. Lesson learned. 

Diane Dempster
So let's do the same thing with mornings, and I ask the same question and say, what are some of the things? We did this a little bit in the last episode, too, but part of what happens in the morning could be a sleep cycle thing. I mean, the example I was giving is that we figured out that I have one kid who could either go to bed at 10 p.m. or 1:30 a.m. and still get up at 7 a.m. to get to work on time. Right? And so once we figured out their sleep cycle and that they needed at least three hours and then two hours and then, I don't even remember what the numbers were. But the problem was that what was going on was more about the sleep cycle than, jeez, it just feels good to stay in bed, and they're lazy, and they want to be in bed. And yes, one of the things that could be going on is that the bed is warm and it is more comfortable, and it is, and it is difficult to transition from sleephood to wakehood or whatever it is.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
That's what I was thinking is what else could be going on? It might be that they haven't had enough sleep or the sleep cycle that they're being woken at the wrong time. It could also be they don't want to get up and go like they don't have the motivation. The school's hard. They're struggling with school. They have social issues at school. I'm not sure what. It's kind of like a Groundhog Day kind of thing. So they might not actually have enough intrinsic motivation yet, especially if the brain's not kind of clicked in. Right?

So it may be that their brain, they're still in that fog and so they're not even really conscious. I will tell you a lot of people with a lot of teens with ADHD have an extraordinarily difficult time waking up. I mean, not just a little bit hard, but super, super hard. I had kids who would sleep through hours of alarms and really authentically not hear it. My best friend, growing up, you could pour water on her, and she would sleep through it like she had no idea. And we hear this all the time how hard it is so that that may be going on. 

Diane Dempster
Well, the other piece of in what you're saying is, you know, we're talking about agenda and whose agenda is it? It's a sort of we might, you know, ultimately, we want to be a school on time, work on time, whatever the end point is. And for us, it might be I need enough time to do all these things, right? And so it's our agenda to say, okay, well, you need to be up at least an hour before you have to be out the door. It may be that it's our agenda for them to be up at a certain time. And in their mind, I don't have to be out the door until 7:15. So I'm fine to wake up at 7:05 and hit the door at 7:15. There are some people who do that really well. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So I got to tell you a story. True story. When I was a kid, I was the one who could sleep to the last possible second. I put the alarm across the room, so I had to get out of bed to turn off the alarm. My parents were not around to wake me up, so it was all me. And I knew exactly what time I had to get up to figure out exactly what time I had to get out the door to get to school on time. I had it down to kind of like a little science, and by senior year I was late a lot.  

Diane Dempster
Well, I know there are parents listening who are going, how do I get my kid to do what you were doing, Elaine? 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Well, I had absentee parents, so that may not be the best.

Diane Dempster
So look, and you have just enough anxiety. Maybe that might be.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I did have enough anxiety, and I did wanna get to school on time until senior year. That's another story. But here's what's interesting about the story. So, my kids struggled a lot with mornings, and there was lots of fights and yelling and screaming, and getting out the door on time was a nightmare. And I remember so vividly sitting down with all three of my kids one afternoon after school and I kind of sat on the couch and I said, This morning was rough. I would love for mornings to be better around here. Would anybody else like that? And everybody was like, yeah, mom, it was awful. I agree. Like we, so I enrolled them. I got some buy-in to creating change, and I wasn't pointing fingers saying, you guys need to get out the door. I was saying, does anybody else want this to change? And we all did. So we ended up this great conversation, and I know we'll come back to break this down the steps, but I want to tell the whole story.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So we ended up with this great conversation and what I found out. So it's like we started problem solving. How do we want to address this? I was waiting till the last possible minute to get my kids out of bed because that's what it worked for me in high school. And because I wanted my kids to get as much sleep as possible and it was hard to get them to bed. And so the doctors all told me they needed as much sleep. So I was waiting till the last possible second. You know what my kids said, you know, mom, we really need to wake up half hour earlier. We need time to putz around in the morning, we need time to kind of do stuff. And, and I was the one that was resistant because I didn't want to have to wake up early. But, they realized they needed the time to kind of slowly get up instead of having to race through it. And it changed everything. Like I had their buy-in, I had their engagement; they were willing to experiment and try new things. And it was their solution, and their solution is one I never would have considered.

Diane Dempster
So, let's take a break, and then we can come back and talk about the other three things we want to include in the coach approach conversation. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
All right. Welcome back, everybody. We're going to continue the conversation about sleep and how do you manage it with a coach approach.

Diane Dempster
So the first two things we talked about were being clear about the problem you're really trying to solve. Then, the second one was to look at what's going on underneath it and all the things that might be going on underneath it. The third thing, the story you just told before the break, was a great example of the third thing, which is that this is one of those areas where you really have to collaborate with your kids, right? I one of the things I said in the last episode that I'll say again You literally cannot make another human sleep You probably can't even make your own self go to go to sleep, but parents all the time. My kids need more sleep. Well, are they interested in getting more sleep? Do you have there? Do you have anybody go? It's this sort of No, but they need it, right? And so when something's your agenda and not theirs. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Note to self: if you ever hear yourself as a parent saying no, but they need it, chances are it's time to reevaluate that. 

Diane Dempster
Well, and to look at, it's your agenda, not theirs, right? And I think that that's the important thing. And we talk about this all the time. It's something on your agenda and not yet theirs. It doesn't mean you can't tackle. It doesn't mean you can't work on it, but it does mean you need to find some way to get there by it. I mean, I used to pay my kids an allowance to talk to me about what we would try next to get up and out the door on time, right? It was a sort of motivation to get them involved in trying to figure out what would work. Because it was part of how they learned, they earned their allowance was working and partnering with me to solve this particular problem. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And what I want you to hear about what she's saying is, even if there was a motivation of an allowance rather than, you know, what's in it for them, well, it's what's in it for them either way. Yeah. Important here is it's very hard to problem solve if the person you're trying to get to do something isn't in some way bought into the experiment to try to create the change and so helping them see what's in it for them. It becomes a really important part, and it can't be because it's good for you. Because trust me, y'all, your kids are not going to do it because the doctor said you need nine hours of sleep. Like I remember you, Diane, one of the things that really worked for one of your kids was they recognized that their social time in the morning was hanging out with their friends before school and it helped.

Diane Dempster
So they wanted to get to school earlier. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that your point is good, which is that, you know, if it's your children and not theirs. You need to either help them see what's in it for them, or you need to put something, you need to put some stakes in it for them. So create some motivation, incentive, those sort of things. And again, that's harder to do when you have a young adult than it is when you've got a little kid, but you want to do something to engage them and get them involved in the process because this has been a work so much better. I remember same kid that was having trouble. Getting feet on the floor, which is what we were talking about before is like one of the biggest challenges feet on the floor. And so we brainstormed 20 things that we could try over the next, you know, four or five weeks to say, okay, so what are the things I could do that might help you get your feet on the floor?

Diane Dempster
And it was okay let's try 17 reminders, and lets I'll come in here with a big trumpet and I'll throw the dog on the bed, and I'll give you a tickle fight and I'll, you know, yell in your ear, or I'll whisper really quietly and we had this long list of them, and one of them was, and I'll go to bed earlier because I really did want to try to find a way to get this kid to try and see what would happen if they went to bed earlier but I didn't make it the only thing we worked on. We tried a lot of different things to see what could we learn from. And how do we make it happen? And so it was that partnership of brainstorming that really helped us do it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, here's an example of how that shows up, right? So we did something similar with our kids and one of my kids particularly struggled extremely in getting out of bed in the morning. And so we tried a lot of things. We experimented. I probably invested single-handedly and at least six different kinds of alarms. We had one that shook the bed and another that jumped all over the room. So they had to go like chase it around the room to get up and they would just go back to bed. Um, you know, we tried all kinds of things. And so we finally and everybody's frustrated, including them. Right? And we finally came to an agreement. They said, why don't you use a spray bottle of water? And we're like, um, are you sure we want to do this? This does not sound like you're going to be happy with that in the morning. And so it was kind of in the back pocket.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
We could do that. And they said, okay, first, why don't you just try pulling me out a bit? And, you know, again, kids don't try this at home unless you have an agreement and buy-in and collaboration. So, I'm in the kitchen one morning and I hear this really, really loud cacophonous noise, like really loud. It sounds like something's an explosion upstairs, and I go running upstairs. And, I see my husband and my child in the room laughing hysterically. My child is holding on to the edge of the bed with their hands, and my husband's got them by the ankles, and they're, and he's pulling the kid across the room, the kid's pulling the bed across the room, which was the noise, and they are laughing their heads off. Now, I can't tell you if we got to school on time that day or not, but I can tell you that we really had their buy-in in the process of trying things, and somehow that kind of created a trigger, a moment of transition for them to realize, okay, this is hard, and it's going to take some effort. We never did have to use the water bottle, I will say, thankfully, but we did have to try a lot of things to get them up.

Diane Dempster
Well, and I think that what you're talking about was both your story and my story is that this is about experimenting. Yeah, and once you have buy-in particularly if the older your kid is you're going to have an idea of how it can work. Well, you were talking about what worked for you and what worked for you does not work for your kids. I had the same problem. And so, part of this is being able to try different things, and what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. And what worked for one kid might not work for the other kid. And so a big part of Experimenters' Mind, not just for you, but for them and to remind them that it's okay, we're trying different things and part of that is patience and willingness to experiment and, and to do this in the long game because ultimately what we're trying to do is not just get your kid to school on time tomorrow. What we're trying to do is to develop healthy habits. I mean, I've got three young adults and one of them struggles still with getting to work on time and it's really hard for them and it's really frustrating for them and they've dealt with it all their life. And they still haven't figured out what the secret sauce is, and they may not. It may just be something that they struggle with for a lot of their life. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, and and it doesn't have to be. I mean, one of my kids, the same kid who couldn't get out of bed when they figured out something they really cared about and they started acting and they were really motivated, they have not only never been late to an audition, but they're always half hour early. So one of the ways they manage is to change their time schedule so they're not rushing. And my kids really don't like to rush. So, the Experimenters' Mind, looking at options. I had another client I worked with. They had a nine-year-old, and the dad would stand at the door every morning and say, get out of bed. And there was this all this conflict. And when they had the conversation with this kid and they realized one day the kid did really well when the dog accidentally got in the room and jumped on the bed. And the physical engagement really got this kid, he had a great day. And so they talked to him about it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
They came up with a deal. The kid was really looking for connection with the dad. And so they started tickling him awake. The dad in particular, instead of standing at the door with his hands on his hips, was going into the room and tickling him awake with one of my kids that was rubbing them on the back, whatever their desire, you know, for that connection is. But what the kid really wanted was to connect with his dad in order to help him get up in the morning. So, really looking for what works for them and what reinforces the connection can be a really powerful way to look because it is hard to transition from sleep to wake. And as a child, it may be that the person they want to see first and to feel connected to is the parent who's trying to support them in getting up instead of demanding or expecting them to get up.

Diane Dempster
Well, and I think that, you know, underneath all of this, whether it's the experimentation or whether it's what you were just describing. Part of this is mindset for us, right? And I was thinking about the reminders. It's this sort of a parent who's like, my kid won't get out of bed without six reminders. And I'm like, okay, so, you know, do you want to arrange your life so that you can be able to be there for six reminders? Do you want to try to move from six to five or five to four or whatever else? If you're thinking that it's got to work a certain way instead of okay, what does work? Let's try this. And the other side of that is that you need to be willing to fail. I think about there's a coach in our community whose thing with her daughter in school was we got to school three times on time this month, and we were so excited that it was three o'clock. Nine year old kid at the time.

Diane Dempster
Nine-year-old kid, right? And it's just sort of, but, if you're terrified that you're going to be late for school, and you're worried about what the principal's going to say, or the looks you're going to get, or the whatever else, address that. Have a conversation with the principal to say we're having a really hard time, and we're going to do I'm working on it there by 20 after, but please look the other way if we're walking in the door late and because I'm going to feel this giant wave of shame and I'd really rather not deal with the head and love that you help me with that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Transparency. That's beautiful. That's self-advocacy. And now we need to wrap. There's one more piece I want to add to this, and I'm thinking, Diane, maybe we'll do another episode and talk about other aspects of mornings or nighttime because I think this is really instructive. One of the things, the example you're using, a lot of times parents are tired of being the reminder, the wake up, the whatever. My kid says they're going to do it on their own. They set the alarm, and then they don't get out of bed. So, the collaborative approach there is to ask this question, how do you want me to handle it? When? So, if your kid's taking the independence and saying, I'm going to do this on my own, and you see that they're struggling with it, instead of saying, I don't want to have to remind you, I shouldn't have to, I want to invite you to ask them to say, I can see that you're trying, you're setting the alarm.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
You're still struggling with this. How do you want me to handle it? When I hear that the alarm is going off or I know that you're supposed to be up by now and you're not, what would you like me to do? So that we're putting the kid, and this is particularly effective for teens and young adults. You're putting them back into the director, letting them be the director and asking you, guiding you how to support them, how to be the reminder to get them up instead of waiting until you get frustrated and then letting that guide the dynamic. The other thing, just one other thing before I lose it, that came up in the office hours when we were talking about this yesterday is that you may need some other little wins under your belt before you take on a big one like this. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah.  Right. Getting to bed and getting up in the morning are really challenging transitions. So acknowledge that. And if you're still early in working with this approach, I might encourage you to take aim on a couple of other little things. Get some wins, get some collaboration going with your kid before you start tackling something this big.

Diane Dempster
Well, and I think the thing that I want to leave us with is as I was listening to you tell that story, Elaine, is the mindset shift of can't versus won't and how many times do we say my kid won't get up on their own? My kid won't get up with an alarm. My kid won't break. It's just sort of my kids having a really hard time getting up independently. My kids having a really hard time. Getting up, even though their alarms going off seven times. I mean, it's that the minute we think that they're refusing, we're going to go on the defensive. We're going to go on the aggressive. I mean, all of those things that we know are not as effective in terms of the way we're partnering and parenting.

Diane Dempster
And so we can just say, this is a good kid having our time. Yeah, assume best intentions, all those tools that we teach. And really say, okay, this kid is struggling. How can I help them? Even if for a while you're helping more than you want to, that's a good problem to have because you're helping. And then you can figure out how do I work myself out of a job here? How do I start by helping maybe more than I want to and then figure out how to back off and let them become more independent instead of just expecting them to miraculously be independent right away? 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Beautiful. All right. I think that's a wrap. We did a good job on this. I like these conversations. Thank you, guys, for tuning in and for doing this profound work for yourself and for your kids. You make such an enormous difference, and we are really honored to be in this conversation with each other and with you and kind of stewarding you through these challenging years. So, thanks for tuning in. Next episode, do you know what's coming up next? I don't think we know what's next, so tune in, click forward, hit the next one, and we'll talk to you in the next call. Take care, everybody.