#13 - ARE Parents the Sleeping Pill of School Kids?

This is a really strange sleep problem when we stand back and look at the various sleep problems that occur across the lifespan.

Everyone knows about babies not sleeping well - or adults that experience insomnia. Most people know some toddlers are hard to get into bed - because to them - ‘sleep is boring’. Heck, many more people now are aware that teenagers have trouble getting enough sleep.

But what about school-aged kids?

When we opened the doors of our child sleep clinic in 2005, we were surprised at our very first client.

It was a 10-year old girl.

If you looked at her sleep diary, and did the math, she was getting enough sleep for a child of her age.

So what was the problem?

Problem was, she was getting sufficient sleep in her parents’ bed - not her own bed.

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And as we learned, she was not alone. In fact, she did not hold the record for the longest time sleeping in her parents’ bed. That record was 12 years - a boy, who was becoming a teenager.

A boy who wanted to sleep in his own bed.

What started out as a sleep problem in infancy, where Adam was dependent upon his parents to fall asleep, continued on into toddlerhood, and then middle childhood.

But not all kids had a history like this.

For some, it may have been going on for 1 to 2 years. For others, it had been several months.

And although these kids depended on their parents to be nearby to help them sleep - not all kids were the same.

As you can see from these pie charts above, we found the majority of kids needed a parent every night of the week at the beginning of the night. Yet, almost half of these kids would wake up during the night and not be able to get back to sleep - unless they had help from their parents.

When we asked the parents what goals they wanted from our treatment, they always put their kids first. They wanted them to be able to fall asleep quickly - and independently.

But we also heard a lot of frustration.

Later on, when the parents developed more trust with us and the techniques we were teaching them, they confessed that they just wanted their evenings back. And they felt bad for wanting this. They worked hard all day, and by the end of the day, they wanted to have their time to relax. But there was always one more chore - waiting for their school-aged child to fall to sleep.

And for other parents, they just wanted to be able to sleep through the night and not be woken up.

Some parents were frank - they wanted their bed back. They wanted their bedroom for themselves again.

Developing the Treatment

For us, this was new territory. We’d worked with adults with insomnia for years. The techniques had been invented before us by the greats like Dick Bootzin.

But for these kids with this sleep problem, we couldn’t find a treatment that was invented.

So in 2006, we began inventing one.

And it was working. Working for so many families that we saw.

And then in 2010s, we published the benefits of the treatment we invented for school kids’ sleep problems.

And since then we’ve continued to refine it - learn more about how it works.

And in 2020, we’re going to make it available to everyone in the world.

It’s called KID WINK.

It’s going to be an online program - where we teach the techniques that help school kids to sleep independently - just like Adam.

Then, parents will be able to help their kids sleep - but the parents won’t be their kid’s sleeping pill.

Keep an eye out for when KID WINK becomes available here. Even subscribe to our newsletter for updates.