How to Raise Kids and Still Sleep at Night

This video is from the WebMD
Video Archive

You are in the WebMD Content Archive for WebMD Video.

WebMD archives all video content after 48 months to ensure our readers can easily find the most timely content.

To locate the most current information on this topic, please use our search box

Channel: Sleep

Now Playing: Raising Kids and Losing Sleep?

Reviewed by Joseph Goldberg on February 21, 2012

Sources

Michael J. Breus, PhD, American Board of Sleep Medicine, Clinical Psychology, Clinical Sleep Disorders, Atlanta School of Sleep Medicine, Atlanta.

Narrator: How can we get enough sleep and raise children at the same time?

Michael Breus, PhD: This is a very tough situation and I give a few different strategies in my book about what you can do if you've got children who are disrupting your sleep.The very, the easiest thing and the first thing I tell is shifts. If you as a parent are an early to bed, early to rise person, then you may take the late shift if the child is waking up.So if the child has a tendency to wake up at 4:00 am and you normally wake up at 5:30, this might be an okay time for you to be able to handle that.Whereas if your bed partner doesn't go to bed until one o'clock in the morning and then sleeps until 8, then they may take the early shift.So, having shifts in a given night is going to be important based on your own sleep habits.Let's say it's not quite that easy and you're both early to bed people, okay.Well then what I have you do is I have you pick days during the week, so the husband does Monday, Wednesday, Fridayand the wife does Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and Sunday all bets are off uh and you're on call, if you will, for your child, or children.Because both parents don't need to have poor sleep just because a child or children are up. Only one parent really should be able to handle that situation.So again, structuring it through one evening and or across a week can be a great strategy.

My Playlist:(empty)
1 - 3 of