Foster Parent Well
Foster Parent Well is the go-to podcast for foster and adoptive parents who are navigating the complexities of parenting children with trauma while trying to stay sane in the process. Hosted by Nicole T Barlow, a foster and adoptive mom of six, parent trainer, and wellness coach, this podcast is where faith, resilience, and practical strategies come together.
If you're feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, or just plain exhausted from the daily realities of foster care and adoption—you're not alone. Here, we have real conversations about the hard stuff: attachment struggles, secondary trauma, parenting beyond behaviors, and the deep emotional weight of loving kids from hard places. But we also talk about you—your health, your nervous system, your faith, and the small, sustainable ways you can care for yourself so you can keep showing up for your kids.
Expect practical tips, faith-based encouragement, expert insights, and zero sugarcoating—just real, honest talk about what it takes to foster well, adopt well, and most importantly, stay well in the process.
Because parenting kids with trauma is a marathon, not a sprint—and you were never meant to run it alone.
🎧 Subscribe now and let’s do this together!
Foster Parent Well
Navigating Bedtime with Trauma-Informed Care with Allison Ezell
Every foster and adoptive parent has found themselves desperately searching for sleep solutions at 2 AM, wondering why traditional methods aren't working and if they're somehow failing their child. Sleep consultant Allison Ezell brings a revolutionary perspective to this universal struggle, explaining why children from hard places face unique challenges around bedtime and offering trauma-informed solutions that actually work.
Drawing from both professional expertise and personal experience as an adoptive and foster mom, Allison illuminates why sleep represents a perfect storm for children with trauma histories. "Sleep requires two things that are incredibly difficult for our kids – complete surrender of control and separation from caregivers," she explains. For children whose bodies remember neglect, abandonment, or inconsistent care, closing their eyes to sleep can trigger their deepest fears.
The conversation delves into why traditional sleep training approaches can be harmful for children who've experienced trauma, potentially reinforcing harmful beliefs that crying doesn't bring help or that adults can't be trusted. Instead, Allison offers practical strategies centered on attachment, felt safety, and meeting underlying needs. From understanding sleep associations (how a child falls asleep is how they'll return to sleep all night) to creating sensory-rich bedtime routines that prepare both body and brain for rest, these approaches honor a child's history while building healthy sleep habits.
Perhaps most powerfully, Allison shares how transformative healthy sleep can be for entire families. "People think I'm passionate about kids' sleep, but I'm not. I'm passionate about seeing families choose connection, because it's really hard to choose connection with a kid who kept you up every hour of the night." When everyone starts getting adequate rest, relationships heal, patience returns, and the capacity for joy expands. For many foster and adoptive families, solving sleep challenges becomes the breakthrough that allows them to continue their fostering journey with renewed energy and hope.
Looking for trauma-informed sleep support? Visit dwellpediatricsleep.com to explore Allison's resources, including her online course designed specifically for foster and adoptive families. Your path to better sleep—and stronger family connections—starts here.
Website: www.dwellpediatricsleep.com
Trauma-Informed Healthy Sleep Foundations Course: https://www.dwellpediatricsleep.com/product-page/a-trauma-informed-look-at-healthy-sleep-foundations-course
Instagram: instagram.com/dwellpediatricsleep
Connect with me on Instagram: @Fosterparentwell
@nicoletbarlow https://www.instagram.com/nicoletbarlow/
Website: https://nicoletbarlow.com/
Welcome to the Foster Parent Well podcast, where we have real candid, faith-filled conversations about all things foster care, adoption and trauma. I'm your host, nicole T Barlow. I'm a certified parent trainer, a certified health coach and an adoptive parent myself. This is a space where you can find support so that you can care for your kids with a steadfast faith, endurance and joy. I want you to foster parent well, so let's jump in. Welcome back to the podcast. Everybody, my name is Nicole Barlow and I am your host for today. I'm so glad you're here. I'm coming to you today with just a hint of a scratchy voice, so if it sounds like I've been yelling at my kids or singing a little too hard at church, don't worry, it's just a little bug that I picked up. So I appreciate your grace and understanding.
Speaker 1:Today, speaking of church and worship and just all the things, I just got back from the Filled Together conference hosted by Jamie Finn and Jason Johnson and y'all. It was so good, like one of those this is holy ground kind of weekends. It was a conference just for married couples in foster care and adoption and not only did I get to teach a breakout session, which I loved, but my husband got to come with me, and we got to attend the conference together as well, which, let's be honest, is a miracle in itself that we were both able to go. I mean, it's not every day that we get to sneak away together and actually do something that fills us up. It was such a gift to sit shoulder to shoulder with other couples who are walking the same road, folks that are facing the same joys and the same super not fun super hard stuff too. And the worship you guys gosh, just watching a room full of weary parents, arms raised, hearts open, still choosing Jesus right in the middle of the mess. You guys, that is the kind of stuff that stays with you. It was so powerful and beautiful and, honestly, it's exactly what I needed and, honestly, it's what our relationship needed in this season as well. All right, deep breath. Let's get into today's episode, because I'm so excited about this one.
Speaker 1:Today, I'm talking with the brilliant and lovely Allison Ezell, and we're diving into a topic that every one of us has probably Googled at 2 am at some point, talking about sleep. Allison is a certified pediatric sleep consultant and a mom of four from Dallas, texas. She welcomed a son home from China with her husband in 2016 and then fostered her youngest child prior to adoption in 2023. With a special passion for helping foster and adoptive families navigate sleep issues, allison brings a unique angle to her work, as she's able to bring in the trauma-informed perspective to a field where it has long been desperately needed. In 2021, she founded Dwell Pediatric Sleep and since then, she has served thousands of sleep-deprived families through consultations, digital resources and corporate speaking. Consultations, digital resources and corporate speaking.
Speaker 1:Whether you're parenting kids from hard places or you're right in the middle of a bedtime, you know messy bedtime routine that you're trying to clean up, or you're just trying to figure out why your teenager turns into a raccoon after 10 pm. We all know that sleep is a big deal, and it's not just for kids, right? I mean, I need my kids to get sleep so I can get sleep. But what happens when trauma shows up at bedtime, or when attachment issues look like a toddler who can't sleep unless they're physically glued to your body? Or when you're trying to implement some rhythm and routine but you're also trying not to trigger dysregulation? We are going to go there. Into all those spaces, allison brings so much wisdom, grace and practical help and you're not going to want to miss a minute of this conversation, so let's jump in. Welcome, allison, to the podcast. We're excited to have you on today, so why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how you got into foster care and adoption?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It's such a gift to get to be here with you guys and I just I love what you're doing with this podcast. So, first of all, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:So I grew up in a family where adoption was kind of all over the place and my grandmother and her brother were actually adopted from foster care literally like 100 years ago, in the 20s, in the 1920s, wow. So I grew up knowing a little bit about foster care and adoption and I ended up marrying a man whose father was adopted. So we kind of came into marriage thinking adoption very well, could be part of our family story and the way we build our family. We ended up having two biological kids in the first three years of marriage and so we thought, okay, well, maybe not, maybe we're good. And it kind of became one of those things that everywhere we kept looking, we kept seeing signs and we just kept feeling led, um, down this direction. So, um it, we started kind of doing some research and, you know, thinking and kind of praying about it and just kind of saying, okay, we're just going to kind of walk this path and if it's not something we're supposed to do, I feel like the door will close, right. Yeah, we sort of took the approach like it's a yes until it's a no, so we started researching different types of adoption. We ended up choosing international adoption for our first adoption and we adopted our son, brooks, from China in 2016.
Speaker 2:He came home at a year old he's now nine and while we were over there, we had just a wild experience going to the orphanage where he was staying and I will say it was more of like a group foster home. It was very, very small. It was nothing like the ones that you see in those documentaries, with rows after rows after rows of cribs, and he very much had a mama, and so it just gave me such just a profound respect for foster families and what they do loving kids, whether or not they're going to be permanent members of the family or not, and so it kind of became something that was kind of in the back of our minds, something we considered and, um, he came home and then we had a whole host of health and sleep and a medical issues that will, I'm sure, get to Um, but we were in the trenches for several years, um, when he for adjusting to life with three kids um, they were three kids under six and so I was very busy, and you know, getting him acclimated and all those things. And then COVID actually hit and we joke that our last, our last child was our COVID baby. He was born in March 2020.
Speaker 2:And that is when we really started to be pushed towards foster care and we really just were just sort of burdened by like, okay, we're all home and we're so grateful to have a place that is safe and healthy and all of that for our kids. But we just kind of felt this overwhelming burden for, like, but what about the kids that aren't? What about the kids where home isn't always the safest place or they don't have the stability and the permanency that our kids do? And it was something, again, that had been kind of in the back of our minds for years and we just sort of felt like we were in a stable place, we had room in our home, we had room in our home, we had room in our family, and so we got licensed during COVID to foster.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's an interesting process, it was wild.
Speaker 2:It was wild. Everything was done online, which, having three kids already at home, was actually really helpful. All the trainings were done over Zoom, so we started getting licensed in the summer of 2020. And it took gosh, maybe nine months or so to get. By the time we went through everything we had to do, obviously, cpr and stuff, in person, but most of it was done online and so we were licensed and open in April of 2021.
Speaker 2:And our son was our third phone call in two weeks. I mean, the need was so high. He was our third phone call in two weeks and he joined us in May, early May. And you know, we weren't licensed to adopt. That was absolutely not our purpose, not why we went to this. We truly just wanted to be a bridge, just to be a temporary kind of safe spot for a kid to land until they. You know we're going to move on, um, but as, as you know, as the plans go, he joined us and never left and he's still here and went to kindergarten today. So so he just started kindergarten.
Speaker 2:So, but yeah, so lots of different twists and turns and family history and whatnot, but I do. I do think meeting my son from China's foster mom. Just it changed my life. It literally changed my life and just gave me such a heart for the sacrifice um that foster families are willing to make um to love without the, without any guarantees, without any guarantees of permanency, with it's. Just the sacrificial love that she had for him just changed my life and I'm so grateful that, you know, meeting her eventually led us to our third son and that we are now part of this incredible community.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, I love how God kind of weaves all of those pieces right, like everything you do leads to how he wants to use you and your purpose and stuff. So I just love how he kind of interweaves all of that stuff together. So you talked a little bit about when y'all came home from China. You kind of dug into some things and got your hands dirty, you know when we're talking about trauma and stuff. But specifically on sleep, right, and that has become your focus. So how did you come to focus on specifically on sleep? Because that's not your focus. So how did you come to focus specifically on sleep? Because that's not your educational background, correct?
Speaker 2:No, it's not so I have a master's in education. I was a classroom teacher early childhood and I actually taught all the way through eighth grade. Early childhood through eighth grade. It was a swing, but it's a big range. But no, I have an education background and um have always loved child development and those types of things. But that was originally kind of where I landed. I love to teach, I love to connect with parents, I love to support and all of those types of things.
Speaker 2:And we came home from China with Brooks and he was two different people. There was daytime Brooks, he was happy-go-lucky, he was, I mean, attaching beautifully, he was fun, he was, you know. And then something happened at night and he became a different little boy and his trauma just was all over night he was nighttime grieving. He was awake in panic every two or three hours all night long. And so I really went back to my training and I thought, okay, they've talked a lot about behaviors, they've talked a lot about attachment, they've talked a lot about, you know, food and food insecurity and things like that and navigating that. But where's the information on sleep? And so I went back and I said there's not any. There's really not any in your training. And so I thought, okay, so they didn't train anybody for this.
Speaker 2:Now we're in the midst of sleep struggles, which is so incredibly common with foster and adoptive families, and I don't know where to go. So it really was born out of a hole in the space. Nobody talks about it, everybody's struggling, nobody knows what they're doing, everybody's throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks and we're all just surviving. And I thought this isn't okay. Somebody needs to step into this space, really do the work to understand the science of sleep, understand the science of trauma, and build a bridge and help parents navigate through a trauma-informed lens sleep issues.
Speaker 2:And so I was talking to my husband about it one day and he was like I was like I really wish there was somebody who could do this. And he looked at me and he goes well, you seem pretty passionate about it. How about you figure it out? You figure it out. And so I um, I got certified as a pediatric sleep consultant in 20, in 2021, literally two months after our son joined us. I started, uh, my coursework. So I took 200 hours, uh, really geeked out on sleep science. Um, and I've done some additional trauma training. Um, I've done some things through, uh, tbri, karen Purvis, those types of things, and so it's truly been just, you know, just a leap of faith of stepping into a space and saying, man, I see the need, why not me? And just watching it blow up just watching it blow up.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that and I mean I can see how God can use your education background right, your ability to teach and to transfer information to other people, your background in child development and how that plays into everything your history, personal history with it and your history with trauma and trauma training just kind of pulling all of those pieces together for this one thing and I think that's amazing. I kind of did the same thing, so I train, I work with parents in the health and wellness space, kind of helping with their own health and wellness, but in a trauma-informed way, because I think there's so much information out there for people that don't experience the same things that we experience every day that don't have the same amount of stress and trauma on their bodies.
Speaker 1:And then, on the other end, you know there's a lot of people that understand the trauma space and they focus a lot on the kids, but nobody talks about your own health, yeah. And so there was just a little bit of hole. And I was already training foster parents. I do that pre-service training that you talked about in that COVID time was crazy, but I'm like we train parents in this but we're not equipping them in how to care for themselves throughout this process, and so I love that you saw the same thing kind of in that sleep space and it's like, well, I can meet this need, I can do this, and we need people to do that. We need people to step into these spaces and see those holes and to figure out, like, what can I? I can't solve all the problems, but what can I solve? And I know for me working with parents in the health and wellness space, we talk a lot about parents sleep. Right, it is so crucial that parents get rest, but the problem is is, if the kids aren't sleeping, the parents can't sleep.
Speaker 2:It's the darn kids sleep.
Speaker 1:It's the darn kids, I know, I know. Well, I mean and, and so it becomes this thing to where you have to have all of the pieces together to be able to walk through it. Well, why do our kids seem to struggle so much with sleep?
Speaker 2:I think it's a couple of things. Number one, I think it is um, it is so layered right. I think a lot of the kids that are in our homes through foster care and adoption have histories full of a loss of control. They had a moment in their life whether it was removal from their parents, whether it was abandonment, whether it was separation at birth from their primary caregiver, whatever it was. They have moments in their life that were a complete and total loss of control, and that's also what sleep is. When you sleep, you close your eyes and you have to blindly trust and surrender everything and everyone around you. Right, it is a complete and total loss of control.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of kids that I work with, especially, that have extreme hypervigilance and things like that at night, which was my son, like his antennas were just just all the time when are you? Where are you going? What's that move? You know you? You you adjust your legs right and he's like what are you doing? You know they were just on all the time. And so, for kids that are on all the time, we are asking them at night to do the thing that is the complete opposite of what their body is telling them to do, which is completely surrender, control.
Speaker 2:It is also a separation. Sleep is a separation, no matter if they are down the hall or across the room, it is still a separation from their caregiver. And so a lot of the kids that I see whose parents are like well, they fight sleep really hard. I don't always agree with that. I think a lot of times they are not actually fighting the act of falling asleep. They're tired, they're exhausted, and I saw this with my own. He was exhausted, we were all exhausted, but he couldn't let himself, let go, and so it was the act of separation.
Speaker 2:And especially when you have those insecure attachments that have that white knuckle grip on their parents, you know, coupled with that hypervigilance of where are you, what are you doing, where are you going. Sleep, being a separation, itself is hard, and so you put that surrender, you put that separation, not even addressing the physiological need, right, but you put those things together and it can be a recipe for some really, really difficult things, because those are two of the hardest things for a lot of kids in this space, which is because they seek to control out of fear. Right, fear is the driving feeling behind needing to control. So they need to control all of these things and we're asking them to let go and they can't, and they just can't do it. Their bodies will not let them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is so hard my kids. So I adopted a sibling group of five from foster care and we had a lot of trouble with sleep, especially in the early early years, and my younger kids were two, three and four when we got them and they would not. They would go to sleep at night but they would not stay asleep because everybody went to sleep at the same time and so they felt safer, like closing their eyes. But people would get up at different times in the morning, they would wake up at different times and they didn't like the idea of somebody else being awake and them not being awake and knowing what was going on.
Speaker 1:And so they would try to battle each other to see who would get up first. They would try to beat each other and be the first one up. Well, we got to where everybody is getting up at 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm like no, no, no. Like this, isn't it this?
Speaker 2:isn't it. You've won, you've won.
Speaker 1:Go back to bed, right, right, so we, you know, eventually we we set and you know I don't know anything about sleep, I haven't done enough research in this area but we ended up setting a wake up time for everybody, yeah, and we just said everybody is going to get up at this time, and so then they slept because they weren't worried about anybody else being up earlier in the morning.
Speaker 1:But that hypervigilance, like I have to know what's going on. I don't feel safe if things are going on around me and I'm not awake or aware of it.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Well, and that can also play into sleep associations, right? Because a lot of parents, you know, unintentionally think, okay, my kid's feeling nervous and afraid at night and so the best thing I could do is just lay with them and hold them until they fall asleep and then leave. But if you think about that from the child's perspective, they fell asleep in that state of being held and next to you and then, because of the way we cycle through sleep cycles up and down all night, when they wake up later and you're not there anymore, it actually triggers their trauma and it has triggered that feeling of, oh my God, where did you go?
Speaker 2:And so that was one of the things that a therapist actually walked me through with my own son. Because I was doing that, I thought the best thing I could do is just be with him until he falls asleep. And what she had to help me understand was even though that was super well-intentioned what I was actually doing was creating more anxiety, because if I wasn't going to stay with him all night, it wasn't really serving him to be there when he fell asleep, because later on he would wake up and I was gone, he was in the dark, his parent had left him. He didn't know where I was and it was like trigger, trigger, trigger. So of course, he was waking up with these like anxiety attacks in the middle of the night because, even with the best intent, I was re-exposing him to all of the scariest things that he knew.
Speaker 1:What are some ways that leaning into traditional sleep methods can be harmful for kids, Like why is it so important that we understand the trauma part when we're looking at sleep?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting, I actually had somebody ask me this the other day, like why should we not let a kid who has been in foster care cry it out, like why should we not do that? And you know, my gut instinct is to just say like well, duh, of course you don't do that. Instinct is to just say like well, duh, of course you don't do that. But the reality is that I think, you know, you have to remember that the body keeps the score right. And so when we really have to consider the kid's past right, we really have to consider their history. And so if you have a child who has a history of, you know, let's say, neglect or something like that, really being mindful of, okay, number one, you know, we obviously don't want to expose them to any sort of deep re-expose them to any level of the trauma that they've walked through, level of the trauma that they've walked through. But number two, I think when you have a child who has experienced some of those aces, right, those traumas, those you know, abuse, neglect, abandonment, things like that I think you have to remember that their threshold, their tolerance is not the same. Their brain has truly been changed and so, whereas you might be able to push a, you know, a child who has not had the same life experiences a little bit, that is going to have a different response.
Speaker 2:And so you know, most of what I do with these families specifically is very, very scaffolded. It is a different approach, is very, very scaffolded. It is a different approach. It is very much scaffolded because what matters more than this child independently sleeping is their felt safety. That is the heart of everything, because that's what we signed up for.
Speaker 2:We signed up to be that haven, that anchor, that safe place for these kids, and that doesn't come naturally to them. Life has taught them mistrust and so when we are talking about working on something like independent sleep, it is not always going to be a situation where you know you say, god, you just got to rip the bandaid off and let them cry, like that's not appropriate for a child who has been in this, in this place. Um, because what we signed up for was to help heal right, to help be a part of their healing and and Anytime you know that's not to say you know you can't ever let a child protest Like, of course you can, but it just it looks different here and their history is going to be absolutely foundational to understanding, so you can navigate it appropriately to this we had.
Speaker 1:Our first placement was a four-year-old and a two-month-old and the four-year-old slept but the two-month-old did not sleep yet. But even as he started to get older he still wasn't sleeping. And I remember going to one of my friends and she gives me this traditional sleep book and I was like, oh okay, like I did, it didn't. I didn't. I knew a little bit about trauma. I wasn't super trauma informed at that stage, but I didn't put the pieces together that this is not you, you can't just. But it didn't work like the same. You know, the things that worked for other parents didn't work for us.
Speaker 1:It actually made it worse. And you know, one of the things in all areas of child development I think it's really important for us as parents to think through is our kids are coming to us and a lot of times developmentally they are younger than their chronological age and so, looking at their brain development more like a newborn and it is not appropriate to let a newborn baby cry it out Like that's not appropriate, and we all know that that's not appropriate. We know that we are going to attune to that baby's needs immediately when they're that stage, but I think, because we see an older child in their physical body, that can be harder to translate.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. And I think too, you have to remember that the infant attachment cycle is based on responsiveness and attunement. And so when you have a child come into your home whose brain did not receive attuned, responsive care in the beginning, they're coming to you already having experienced mistrust. And already having experienced I cry. No one comes. What does that mean for me? Right, so you know, I remember there was a family I was working with and they had a sweet little girl who had had a pretty significant amount of neglect and the first time they celebrated, the first time she actually signaled in the middle of the night that she needed them because her experience had told her it's not worth crying because no one's coming. And so it is. It's such that dance of you know looking at responsive parenting as an opportunity, and then you know kind of tying that in with what we know about sleep science. And you know, when appropriate, healthy, loving, safe boundaries.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, because that attachment is the most important thing that we can do for our kids. Teaching our kids to have a different worldview, teaching, you know, helping form, shape their brains to have a worldview that people can be trusted, the world can be safe and they can thrive and not live in survival, is the way that our kids get to grow up to be healthy adults, exactly. And so you know, really making that on the forefront, which I think is amazing that you are taking that attachment principle and bringing it into this sleep space, okay so, but if I'm a parent, right, I'm listening to you and I'm saying, okay, attachment is the most important thing, and meeting their needs over and over again, even in the middle of the night, is the most important thing. But how do we all get some sleep? But also I'm tired, but also I can't function at this pace.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly. So I think you know, whenever I'm working with a family, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to ask a lot of questions and, you know, I think parents can do some self-reflection as well. I think we can look at routines, right. Do we have a consistent, needs-based bedtime routine, or is it? Is it a drop zone, or is it a? Oh, it's eight o'clock time to go to bed, drop you in your crib and walk away? How are we preparing our children's brains and bodies for sleep? Right? What are what are we doing? How are we meeting their sensory needs at bedtime? Are we meeting their physiological needs at bedtime? Are we connecting with them before we try to separate? Um, how, how are we looking at our routines and really being honest Cause some of us are like I put them in front of the TV and then, when the show's done, I tuck them in bed and walk away. Like, let's be real, like that's hard for a kid We've just exposed them to all sorts of stimulation and then we expect them to just shut down. Maybe we need to soften that transition a little bit. They probably need a little bit more from us, and so a lot of the work that I do on the front end is getting really proactive, instead of dealing with all the quote unquote bad behaviors on the back end of things. Saying, okay behavior is a signal that there's an unmet need, right. So if we have a kid who is asking for more connection, who is banging their head against the wall because they need more sensory input if they are, whatever it is that they're doing that we are trying to deal with the quote unquote bad behavior maybe we need to look at that and say, hey, okay, they need more connection from us. What if we sat with them for 10 minutes and we did 10 minutes of child led play as part of our bedtime routine? What if we gave them some sensory input and we did some blanket burrito rolls? Right? What if we met their needs physiologically right? What if we added a bedtime snack? What if we, you know and really kind of get on offense, right? I mean, so many of us are just reacting to the difficult behaviors all the time, but we're not really working to prevent them. So what if we could do that? So what if we can work on that?
Speaker 2:I think the other really big thing that is really underutilized is understanding sleep pressure and sleep pressure is schedule and timing and understanding that your child needs to be tired enough to go to sleep at night tired enough to go to sleep at night. I cannot tell you the number of three to four to five-year-old parents that I have who say they take a three-hour nap every afternoon, from one to four, and then they won't go to sleep for two hours at a seven o'clock bedtime. And I go.
Speaker 2:That's not their fault. You are not respecting their physiology. It's not that they're being bad. They're not tired because, for your own sanity, you're letting them take this marathon nap midday and that's cutting into their night's sleep. And so you've got a kid who's behaving badly at bedtime and won't stay in their bed and is defiant, but it's because they're not tired. Their tank is still full. So, understanding sleep pressure and really working on timing things appropriately to get your kid tired enough for bedtime, without kind of falling off that cliff into the point of no return, the dark zone. Right, we're tired yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've all been there.
Speaker 2:So really kind of doing some experimentation, finding the sweet spot for them where they're going to go to sleep and sleep well.
Speaker 2:And then the other thing I do a lot of work with parents is sleep associations, right, and so understanding sleep associations is huge. It is literally the light bulb for so many families when they really look at, okay, how does my child fall asleep? What are the conditions around my child at the moment that they fall asleep? Is there music on that turns off later? Am I in the room? Am I touching them? Am I rocking them and then laying down? And then I'm having to come back later, right, because how a child falls asleep is how they will return to sleep at sleep cycle transitions. So understanding that is really a huge light bulb because if you really get honest, right, if they're falling asleep on a video and they're watching TV to fall asleep and then at two o'clock in the morning you're upset that they want more TV, well, that's a sleep association, that's the only way they know to fall asleep. So they've woken up a few hours later in a sleep cycle transition and it's the only thing they know. It would be like us falling asleep on a pillow Someone takes it away. A couple hours later, we roll over, it's not there. We can't go back to sleep until our pillow's back, right, right, and it's the same thing for our kids.
Speaker 2:So, really, looking at what, how are they falling asleep and how can I create conditions at bedtime that are as close to the same as the way they're going to be the rest of the night? How can I really work on those sleep associations that are going to be unchanging and stay consistent from bedtime to morning? Because, especially with hypervigilance, they know everything. So even little things like parents will say they have lullabies on when they fall asleep, but they go off after an hour and I'll say leave them on all night, because your kid is going to wake up and know that they went off and going to want to turn them back on, and it's yet another reason to wake up. And then, once they're up, they're going to stay up and it's a whole thing. So, really, looking at, ok, in the moment of sleep onset, right, when they're falling asleep, how can I create consistency for them? Because it is those changes we know right, that loss of control that triggers a lot of that fear and anxiety for kids.
Speaker 1:That's really good. I would have never thought of that right, that if you start something, you know that to keep it going, so that if they wake up they're they're put back to sleep with that same thing. Yeah, but I think that that is really really a really good tip for parents to consider as they're looking to solve some of those those sleep problems. Yeah, how much time do you recommend that kids sleep?
Speaker 2:That is a really good question. So, generally speaking, I mean, it's it's very much going to be age dependent, um, but you know, for kids, you know, under five, I generally recommend at least 10 hours overnight, um. Now, with that said, you know, sleep needs are primarily genetic, um, and it's a bell curve, right, there are averages and there are outliers, for sure. But you know, generally speaking, there's nothing.
Speaker 2:A lot of a lot of parents are like well, I thought they were supposed to sleep seven to seven, like, doesn't everybody sleep seven to seven? Doesn't every baby, doesn't every toddler, doesn't every preschooler? No, there's nothing magic about. And then they get frustrated and they call me because their kid sleeps from eight to six. And you know they think something's wrong. There's nothing wrong. That's your kid's sleep needs.
Speaker 2:And you know, the other piece of that is really looking at total sleep in 24 hours, right? So a kid that sleeps seven to seven may only take a 30 minute nap, but your kid takes a three hour nap, and so they're going to sleep less overnight, right? If you, you know, cause there's a bigger chunk of their sleep happening during the day. So you know, there's a. There is a big range young children under the age of five. A red flag for me is if they're going less than 10 hours at night. That's kind of my my baseline for looking at that. That's a sign to me that something needs tweaking right. Something needs to be fixed there. They are chronically sleep deprived, and chronic sleep deprivation just magnifies behaviors. Mental health Um, it just magnifies everything.
Speaker 1:And everybody in them and in us and in their parents, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:So when people start getting good sleep, it truly changes their life. People ask me all the time I'm so passionate about kids' sleep. I'm not. I'm passionate about, like, seeing families choose connection, because it's really hard to choose connection with a kid who kept you up every hour of the night before because you wake up in the morning and you didn't have time to miss them and you know. So you're sort of like oh, you again, um, as opposed to like I'm so excited to see you, you know, um. So it truly does transform relationships when, when everybody's getting healthy sleep.
Speaker 2:Um, teenagers are probably the most chronically sleep deprived population that I see, partly due to devices, and a lot of parents, especially foster parents, I think have a really difficult time implementing boundaries with devices because it is the teen's personal property. So it's that slippery slope of how do I come in and implement some loving boundaries for safety without, you know, feeling like I'm taking something that doesn't belong to me, right, yeah, so that's a really tricky thing. But because of late night devices, because of circadian rhythm issues and because of just overscheduling, there are so many kids and families that are so dramatically overscheduled. They're up early, they're up late and they're not performing well anywhere because they're so sleep deprived.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really do think that it changes the whole family dynamic Like that one piece is so crucial and everybody thriving.
Speaker 1:I know there was a season where one of my kids I mean I think she went like three days without sleeping at all, yeah, and and I mean I was afraid she was going to have like a psychotic break, you know, because because she went so long without any kind of sleep and I was afraid I was going to have a break in that. But well, I mean thankfully, like I have a spouse that we could trade off. I mean it was like a newborn, you know what I'm saying, where we could trade off a little bit. But I do think it changes the family dynamic and I think for teens it can change the dynamics of their day and how they perform in school and how they perform and all the other things that they do, their ability to learn and grow right like as healthy adults, their ability to learn and grow right Like as healthy adults. And I think for all of our families, I think this one piece is just crucial for success, for connection, for everybody thriving and loving one another.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it just strengthens everything. And you know, I've had families come to me after the fact and be like, now that we're actually sleeping, we want to have more kids, and you know I mean there's all sorts. You know we actually opened our house back up again because we finally were sleeping and we felt like we could, we could foster again or you know whatever. And that's that's the stuff that just just thrills me, like I, you know, just to see the relationship strengthened by by everybody just operating at their best, and and that's the piece I think that was missing for me. Personally, in my own family I went through major post-adoption depression at the point where we were really really sleep deprived with our son and it, you know, it was really really difficult, and so working through his issues changed our relationship, and so I love when I get to see that magic happen with my clients.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, how can people find you, how can they work with you if they're having problems with sleep or they want to make sure that they're not having problems with sleep?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Dwell Pediatric, um, my consulting name, um, so I am dwell pediatric sleep on all the socials except Tik TOK. I don't have a Tik TOK cause it got weird for a minute and I just decided I didn't want to be there, so I am sleep on Facebook. Instagram is my favorite place to hang out. My website is dwellpediatricsleepcom and if people are looking for just a, they don't necessarily have like a one-on-one need. They don't need a one-on-one consultation, they don't need any sort of support, but they just sort of want to either prepare to take foster placements or, you know, they kind of just want some healthy principles.
Speaker 2:I have an online course. It is a trauma-informed, healthy sleep foundations course. It's about two hours where I walk you through what I call Sleep 101, where we dive into sleep science, we walk through the intersection of trauma and sleep and then we actually walk through three different kiddos' case studies and the changes that we made and the improvements that it made for them. So it's a fantastic resource. It is deeply discounted right now for summer, um, and so that is available on my online shop, on my website, which is a great. It's a great place to start, um, if you're sort of starting to feel like I don't know that I'm ready to actually need the one-on-one support, but I just kind of want to do a check-in. That's a great place and for people anticipating placements it's a great thing to go through.
Speaker 1:That sounds amazing, and I will put the links for all of those things in the show notes so that people can find them easily, because I do think this you are making an impact, allison, like you are impacting families and this can change. I mean, this can change the dynamic for a family completely. And so I appreciate you and all the work that you're doing and I appreciate you coming on today and kind of sharing some tips with us as well.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. Thank you so much for your sweet words and for having me.
Speaker 1:I told you guys this was gonna be good. I hope this conversation with Allison gave you some practical tools, but even more than that, I hope that it reminded you that you are not alone. The struggle around sleep is real, especially when you're parenting kids with trauma histories. You're not crazy. The struggle around sleep is real, especially when you're parenting kids with trauma histories. You're not crazy, you're not failing, you're just doing really, really hard, holy work. If today's episode spoke to you, would you do me a favor? Screenshot it, share it to your stories on Instagram, tag me, tag Allison, let us know what landed with you. It's the best way to spread this message and to build up this little community of parents who are fighting the good fight together. And if you haven't yet, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes. We've got some incredible guests lined up and I cannot wait to keep walking this road with you. All right, let's end our time together, the way that I love to, with a moment of prayer.
Speaker 1:Jesus, thank you for every single person listening today. Thank you for their hearts, their homes and their obedience, even when it's messy, even when it's exhausting. Lord, you see the tired eyes, the late nights, the middle of the night, meltdowns. You see every tear, every whispered prayer. Lord, I ask that you bring supernatural rest, not just to our kids, but to our souls as parents. Be our peace, be our anchor and remind us that you are always in the room, even in the chaos of bedtime, even in the chaos of bedtime, even in the middle of the night. Strengthen us as parents today. Remind us that we are not doing this alone, that you walk this road with us. Jesus, we love you and we trust you. It's in your name we pray Amen. In your name, we pray amen.