Ep #112: Sleep Solutions: Fix Your Family’s Sleep Problems with Dr. Funke Afolabi-Brown

Amy: Hello friend, and welcome to today’s episode. This one is so good, and if you have ever struggled with sleep issues or had a child that was struggling staying asleep, going to sleep, waking up in the morning, this episode is for you. And it is filled with understanding and compassion and very practical tips because, my gosh, does sleep matter. And I love that this conversation is becoming so open in the last couple of years, I feel like, how critical sleep is, how much it’s impacting potential health issues long-term, how much it’s impacting memory, and all of those things. And the reality is that there are so many things that can go into why someone is struggling with sleep.

And so my guest today is incredible. We just had the most amazing conversation. Her name is Dr. Funke Afolabi-Brown. She’s a triple board certified sleep physician and the founder of Restful Sleep. She has a best-selling book that she’ll talk about a little bit in the end of the podcast, because you’re going to want it. But what she talks about is the three different categories of sleep issues. And she talks about in her practice, when someone comes in, the very first thing that you do is figure out which category your sleep issues are in because it just makes it immediately less overwhelming to face like, how do I fix this problem? And so she tells you what these categories are so that you can start to identify that.

And then she talks about really practical solutions. Where do we start first? What are some things that we can immediately do to start trying to have an impact? And then we kind of go from there to more difficult solutions or more complicated solutions if it requires some of those. But she gives such great, helpful tips both for parents with young children, and then for us, for parents, for moms, right? That are being impacted not by only our own restless brains or whatever we have going on, right? But also on top of that, we are impacted by any sleep issue our child is having because they are waking us up. And so helping resolve these things as a family is going to help our children to be more successful and happier and have better regulation of their moods and all kinds of things. And then it’s also going to improve our life and health and vitality and energy levels. I hope you love this episode as much as I did. I found it incredibly helpful. It’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast, where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow, and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves, because, you know what? We all really need and deserve that, too. I am your host, Amy Nielson, let’s get ready to start the show.

Dr. Brown, I am so happy to have you on the show today to talk about sleep. Oh, this is such an important topic, and thank you for coming onto the show today.

Dr. Funke: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Amy.

Amy: Oh, I’m so thrilled. Okay, so you have a unique and powerful combination of experience, and sleep is just such an interesting topic to get into. Can you tell us like what drew you to specialize in sleep medicine and why you’re passionate about helping families with this?

Dr. Funke: Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, just like with most things that become our mission and our passion, there’s a story behind it and it was, it is personal. So I struggled throughout my career, most of my training and things like that, I struggled with sleep. I, going through medical school, I was constantly burning the candle on both ends. And then I had a kid who had reflux and was irritable all the time and just would not sleep. So you can just imagine like just all that combination with time I hit a wall and I just needed to fix something.

And so I realized, okay, what is within my control? It’s really about setting boundaries and really improving my sleep because I just felt it was something that was dispensable. And so with changing my mindset, optimizing my own sleep, I just kind of had my life back. And so I, I really just got very interested in it. And throughout, like even through during my training or my early part of my career, that was something that kept coming back. When I would see families in my practice and a lot of times, at the end of the day, sleep is impacted.

So whether it’s asthma or whether it’s reflux or whether is anxiety or autism, ADHD, whatever, sleep just kept being the thing that was talked about. So I said, okay, you know what? I think I’m going to make this a thing. And so here I am. And so really started off with helping the kids because I know behind every child who’s not sleeping is a parent who’s not sleeping. And so that’s really how the family piece came in because I would help fix the child’s sleep and the parents are like, okay, great, thanks. My mind still racing. I’m still waking up at 3:00 a.m. and then we started really working with parents as well. So it’s been, it’s been a beautiful journey.

Amy: Wow. Oh, there’s so much I want to talk about because you brought up maybe some challenges that are affecting sleep. So I’m thinking, what are the top factors that are affecting sleep? Because I feel like there’s some that I feel like, well, that’s, you know, maybe easier to address than other ones. Like some of them just like, what am I supposed to do about that? That’s like not something I can control, where there’s other ones that are like, okay, I could go to bed earlier or I could not do screens before bed or whatever. But can you talk to me about some of the most common issues where we would typically see like regular sleep problems? Like you mentioned reflux, what are some of the other ones?

Dr. Funke: Great question. I think I would start off by saying the way I look at this and the way I look at it with parents, with women in midlife, whatever, is really looking at it in different categories because when they come to me, it’s like everything’s horrible. Everything’s horrible, and it’s hard to figure out what protocol to build if everything is horrible. So we want to really drill down. And so we kind of have to figure out, is this a medical issue? Because if you have, like you meant, like I mentioned, like sleep apnea, for instance, or reflux or asthma or eczema, that’s a very common one with little kids, and they literally are itchy, but sometimes they can’t even talk about that, or constipation or restless leg syndrome. So that becomes more of the medical. So we kind of go through these kind of exhaustive lists to rule out. Sometimes it’s nutrition deficiencies, like if they’re low in magnesium or low in vitamin D, some of those things can make it hard.

And then the second category of things or the second bucket I really want to, you know, explore is, is this a behavioral issue, right? Do you have that toddler who has FOMO and wants to come out of their bedroom every time for one more hug and one more cup of water and, you know, all of that stuff, or the monster under the bed, right? So that becomes more of the behavioral piece, or the caffeine or the being on screens. So that’s sort of more within that behavioral category.

And then the third, we look at our what I call the 24-hour factors, right? If you have a child who has a learning difference, right? So maybe they have ADHD or autism, or maybe it’s a mental health issue, anxiety, depression, or something of that sort. That also kind of has its own sleep manifestations, where these kids really may have a hard time with self-regulation. They may have like a lot of racing thoughts and things like that. So once we kind of figure out where things are, then we can narrow down and say, how do we even start, right? It helps families now start to figure out, oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. It’s not all horrible, right? In some situations, it’s a combination of all of that. So I think that’s really the lens and the framework that I typically use.

Amy: Oh, okay. I love that. That already felt like it gave me like just a little bit of distance from it and I can, I can just name it better. And sometimes that makes me feel like I have more control whether when really nothing changed. But like, you know, just being able to categorize it. I love that. So you have your three categories and then where do you go next? Like if I could, I would guess it, I know I’ve had children that have struggled with sleep and I have struggled with sleep particularly at certain points in my life depending on stressors happening or, you know, sometimes life events, right? I had kids that just wouldn’t sleep for a month and I didn’t either, right? But what do you do next? Like, what’s the next thing? If you could categorize it, you know, and say, okay, I have a child that is, you know, maybe struggling with ADHD or is on the spectrum. You put them in a category of one of those three things. What’s next?

Dr. Funke: Great question. I think the first thing I would say is let’s get even the basics right. That is so critical. You know, we hear it a lot, the sleep hygiene, sleep hygiene, sleep hygiene. And sometimes we start to trivialize it. But it is a very important foundation, right? So of course, just like, you know, flossing is not going to fix a cavity, sleep hygiene is not going to fix a primary sleep disorder.

That being said, it has its role, right? So I want you to even start off with, okay, let’s just check if the basics, right? So do we have a consistent bedtime, a consistent wake-up time? And the reason why that is important is that as we go through those and I have an acronym and I’ll go over that with you now, but when you go through that, you’ll find out that even some of the behavioral stuff ends up just falling away when you start to incorporate it. So that’s why I usually want us to start with that, and then if we’re still struggling, then we can say, okay, maybe there’s a lot more going on.

So it’s CREATE is my acronym for good sleep. So C R E A T E. And so C stands for consistency. And so having that consistent sleep time, having that consistent wake up time is very important for our circadian rhythm. You know, especially when you have kids who, again, maybe have learning differences or kids who are teenagers, you know, things may feel all over the place. And so having that consistent anchor of a consistent wake-up time really helps to reset their circadian rhythm. So that’s really important.

And then the next is R, which is routines. And, you know, as much as we may take this for granted, it is one of the biggest things that help with ensuring that our brain starts to anticipate sleep. That two or three calming activities heading in the direction of the bedroom. And so it might be, you know, having a bath and reading a book and, you know, saying some prayers or listening to music, practicing some breathing exercises, you know, just finding those calming rituals that really help you to start to anticipate sleep.

And then E is the environment, right? So having the bedroom be dark, be cool and also be free of noise is helpful because if you now have so much light, it makes it really hard for your brain to wind down. And so or if there’s noise, you’re constantly waking up. So really controlling for that is important.

And then A stands for assign the bed for sleep and sleeping bed. And I think this is important because especially again, nothing against our teenagers. I love them. But it’s becomes that place where they’re playing video games, they’re talking with their friends, they’re scrolling on Tik Tok, they’re worrying, they’re doing homework. Like, and then it’s time to sleep and their eyes are just like, I don’t even know what we’re supposed to be doing now. Are we sleeping or Tik Toking? What is going on? So really making sure that bed and the bedroom is that sacred space for sleep, right? It trains the brain to anticipate sleep once it sees the bed.

And then T is technology, right? So same thing, the phones, the TVs, the computer video, all those kind of things. What that does is that the light from those devices releases blue wavelength light, which suppresses the brain’s production of melatonin. And so if the brain is not really producing that melatonin as it should, sometimes it delays your sleep onset. And then the final E in create is eliminate. So really I usually will encourage families to just do like a, you know, do an audit. What are things that you might be doing that maybe you need to put aside? If you’re drinking iced tea for dinner, if you’re for adults, if they you’re drinking alcohol just before bed or if you’re eating like a large spicy meal, you know, all those things will impact your sleep quality. The kind of media you’re consuming before bed, right?

So those are things you want to say, okay, I notice when I watch this type of shows, I tend to stay awake longer or when I drink if I was hanging out and I had a soda, it makes it hard. Then in that situation, you want to try to cut back. So when you go through all of that, again, that’s the foundation. And then from there we can now decide, okay, we’ve done everything and we’re still struggling, what next? And then that then takes us to the next step.

Amy: Oh, I love this so much. Okay, so you used the phrase sleep hygiene and just to clarify, is this create the basics of sleep hygiene? Because I just want to make sure we know like we’re all on the same page if we don’t know what that phrase means.

Dr. Funke: Absolutely. So what is sleep hygiene? I’ve just not a personal, I don’t like that phrase at all. Hygiene does sounds like cleanliness, and what does that have to do with sleep, right? So but these are just healthy practices that help you improve your sleep. That’s all they are. And if you Google, the reason why I kind of compartmentalized it to sort of this acronym is to make it simple for you. Because when you go online and Google sleep hygiene, like a, you know, two dozen things come up, you don’t even know where to start. I feel like it starts to get really intense and they’re like, you need this blanket and you have to have this bed that’ll do this and all the and I’m like, oh, that feels really stressful. Like if I’m trying to do everything to, I’m like, that might be too much for me. I’m not sure.

Amy: Okay, just a couple things I wanted to ask you about. So one of the questions that’s come up in our household is that I thought, okay, technology, what I should do is have technology not in kids’ rooms because then that helps with that, right? So I send my kids up for reading time. They’re supposed to read and then go to bed, right? This is our routine. So I’m like, okay, so we should have no technology in the bedroom. Like you, you just leave it down here, like kind of check it into the charging station and go up to bed.

The pushback I’ve gotten from that is some of my kids find it really helpful to listen to music while they’re trying to go to sleep or they listen to books. I don’t know if that’s good sleep practice, but it’s a thing we do with some at our house. And listen to books while they’re going to sleep. And then they also use them as their alarm clocks. And so that gets really tricky because I have eight children, seven of them that live with us a substantial portion of the time. And so I don’t want to be the alarm clock. That’s not your favorite sound, right? I’m like, I’m not the alarm. They need those. So what do you think about that? Do you have thoughts about that idea?

Dr. Funke: Yes, I know. It’s a, it’s a slippery slope. I think depending on how old they are to some degree. And also it depends on what kind of relationship you have. If this is someone you know that will go from the audible book to Roblox or something, then we have a whole different conversation, right? The other thing that I’ve, I’ve suggested for parents, it all depends on what works in your house. One is Alexa, you can get like that plug-in device which can play anything, pretty much. It can read a book, it could play water or forest sounds or rain sounds, whatever, right? Alexa does a whole lot of things and for many people and there are other even outside of Alexa, there’s some of these other devices that can do that. And then a regular tender alarm clock on Amazon will do, right? In terms of waking up. So if there’s a, you know, if there’s a situation where maybe it’s a younger child and you think, I don’t know if I want to bring that phone into your room, I think that’s one strategy.

The other one would be to just put every other app on their phone on sleep mode except for that specific app they need for the sounds or whatever. So that’s one other strategy. And so really it’s all about having a conversation, but I absolutely agree. One of the things you want your children to be able to build within themselves is that autonomy to be able to set their own wake-up time and wake up without you. You know, when they go to college, you’re not going to be, gonna be going over to wake them up. I am not waking you up at college.

So, so yeah, so I think they’re different ways to go about it. I will just caution that if you’re going to use the phone, because technically, if you want to listen to a book, you’ll just press play and maybe you put it on a timer to turn off after a while. So you literally should not need the phone after that. The other piece I would say is also depending on the child. Some children, once the timer goes off and the book stops playing, they wake up because their brain is just used to hearing it. So then you have to decide, is this something we want to play all night long, or is this something we want to play for just a short while? So for some, they’re fine. You just play for 30 minutes and that’s it. They drift off to sleep and they’re all, they’re sound asleep till morning. But if you have a child that’s waking up repeatedly, there might be some kind of association with that, in which case you may need to change your strategy a bit.

Amy: So that was my next question, as we’re kind of sorting through this, is there like, amongst some of the things we talked about, is there a wrong strategy? Like, should we not be having our kids listen to music while they’re going to sleep or not be having them listen to a book? Because for me, like when I was in the midst of going through a divorce, and there was a lot of stress and I was having, you know, trouble sleeping, and I go to sleep very easily. I’m very tired. But then I wake up, you know, at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. and what my brain would be just processing and thinking, solving all the problems, doing whatever, you know. And so one of the things that I found is that music didn’t really work for me because it didn’t stop the thought thing, you know, that I had going.

But if I could turn on a book that was just interesting enough to kind of get me out of my thought loops I was having or whatever, right? And then not too interesting that I could sleep, then that was like the perfect thing for me. But I wonder sometimes if that’s negatively impacting my sleep. Is it getting into my dreams? Does that matter? You know, so is there a wrong strategy if it’s working for you and it’s making things better?

Dr. Funke: Absolutely not. And I love that and everyone is different. Like some people do not like the sound of a woman’s voice or a man’s voice, whatever, just droning in their ears all night long. Yeah. Sure. And for some people that’s what they need. I think you just have to be cautious of it becoming a crutch, because what if the device is broken and you don’t have access to it? Will you still be able to sleep? Well, I hope so. So I think that’s really important. You know, if you think about it similar to having babies who maybe want to use a pacifier or they want to drink a bottle to sleep. These are all associations. And so it all depends on what works for you. There’s really no wrong or right.

One thing I would say though is, if for instance, you’re listening to music, or you’re listening to someone talking, you just want to make sure there’s not significant fluctuations in the level of the noise. Because that will wake you up. So if you have, you know, a scene being played where there’s noise and there’s shooting maybe, or someone suddenly yells out, you’re more likely to become more fully awake versus if you have someone or something playing throughout the night with even tone.

I personally usually would recommend more of white noise. So white noise, brown noise, the sounds of forest, those kind of things are more soothing. There’s just usually one tone versus multiple tones. And people tend to do well with it. In terms of the racing mind, I think it’s really important to try to get to why and what’s going on. And so and trying to do that before bedtime because it’s a very common phenomenon with a lot of women. So either you do spend some time journaling, of course, talking to a therapist, whatever, depending on the level of the racing thoughts, I usually encourage journaling before you get into bed, not in bed, but before you get into bed to say, are there unprocessed thoughts that may start to come up in the middle of the night for me?

Let me just try and run through them. And as you’re going through them, there are some of these things that are within my control and there are some that are out of my control. And for those that are not within my control, I’m just going to make a decision, conscious decision to let it go. So you’re addressing them. Are there the things within my control, okay, what’s one step I’ll do in the morning? Because right now it’s bedtime. I’m not going to be able to solve the world’s problems.

So whether that means I’m going to call a friend, I’m going to pick something from the store, I’m going to follow up with a client, whatever, you just kind of write that down and release it because what your brain is trying to do when it’s racing in the middle of the night is protecting you because it identifies all this information as critical. Everything is critical. That grocery list is critical. We mustn’t forget it and it’s just running. It doesn’t know the difference, right? So you kind of anticipating that these are thoughts that tend to be, you know, more bothersome and recurrent, I’m going to just put them down so that we release them and there’s something so powerful about writing, which is one of the things I encourage a lot of the women I work with and families to do.

Amy: I love that so much. So journaling, but do it before you even get into bed. I love that idea. Okay, I want to shift just a little bit into how do we know if our kid is struggling to sleep? I think there’s some indications, right? If they’re a toddler, they’re going to probably come climbing in bed with you or cry or whatever, right? But, but past that maybe, and then maybe if they’re not at an age where they’re really talking too a lot about it. I think my kids will usually tell me, but if you didn’t know, like what are we looking for? Are there behaviors we’re noticing? Are there symptoms we should be noticing where we should say, hmm, I wonder if this kid is not getting enough sleep and I need to pay more attention to their sleep patterns.

Dr. Funke: Yes, there are telltale signs for most children. Some might tell you and say, hey, I didn’t sleep well last night. I’m tired, right? Some are things you will observe when you, you know, you see them in the morning. They may come up with, you know, bags under their eyes. They may be hard to wake up in the morning. The younger ones is tricky because they tend to fight that tiredness. And so you’ll see a child with hyperactivity. You may see more impulsivity. You may see more tantrums, those kind of things you will see, more irritability. The older ones may be flat out tired and sleepy, where they’re nodding off, or they may be moody, so more irritable, more anxiety, things like that. You might also see learning and attention problems. So you know, at the end of the day, we see, I work with a lot of families or kids with ADHD, too. The symptoms, interestingly enough, if you think about the symptoms of ADHD, it does mimic the symptoms of poor sleep.

Amy: I know. I’m like, which one is first? Like, cause ADHD can cause you said, like poor sleep, but then poor sleep can mimic those same. So how do you know which one it is?

Dr. Funke: Yeah. It’s hard to tell, but we do know that poor sleep will make ADHD symptoms worse. And here’s something I always tell people, like before you take on that diagnosis of ADHD, before you start using medications, make sure you get a sleep assessment because 80% of people who have ADHD have sleep issues too. So we want to make sure we address the sleep. That doesn’t mean all of a sudden all the ADHD symptoms will go away, right? But if all I get away from is, you know, instead of using three medications, I’m now only on one because with optimized sleep, the behaviors are better, then that’s a win. What really irks me is when people just get medications thrown at them and, you know, there are some underlying sleep disorders.

Amy: That’s so interesting. Yeah, because the sleep, even if it didn’t take all of those symptoms away, it could help and make a big difference. And that would be a healthier thing to address because sleep affects so many other things too. Oh. Okay, so like maybe just kind of as a review for people who don’t maybe understand how important sleep is. What’s kind of going on in a child’s brain that we need these like really healthy sleeping patterns? What are these processes that matter so much that they’re getting sleep? I mean, because we care about behaviors for sure, and not being irritable and tired and hyperactive and all those things. But what else is going on? Why does it matter so much?

Dr. Funke: Yes. So, you know, sleep is not just a passive process. Most people assume that, okay, sleep is just something you do at the end of a busy day. Sleep is a very active process, and there’s so many things that are going on. The first, I would say, is the cleansing. The brain actually literally undergoes a cleansing process over the course of the night. So as you sleep, there are channels in your brain that kind of open up to flush off any waste products that have built up through the course of the day. So that is a physiologic process we do not want to mess around with.

And then you have also memories being consolidated, memory consolidation occurrence during sleep, the mood and emotion regulation is occurring during sleep, hormone production. So certain hormones actually rise like growth hormone increases during sleep. And then some of the, you know, appetite hormones, insulin, all these kind of things kind of decrease over the course of the night. Your stress hormones are decreasing. And so you can imagine that all those play so many roles in our body. Physically, your body is actually undergoing muscle repair and tissue repair as well during sleep. So on the flip side, you don’t get enough sleep, you’re again, may have memory issues, may have irritability, may have issues with self-regulation, increased risk of things like diabetes, increased risk of obesity, hypertension, because your heart also kind of rests during that sleep period. So many things are going on during that sleep period.

Amy: Wow, that’s wild. It’s just so impactful. And this, of course, is going to affect learning and mood regulation or self-regulation, like you talked about all the things that we’re really focusing on hopefully as these young kids are growing. Let me ask you this question, because I’ve wondered this as an adult, because I’m coming at this time, I’m like, yeah, I want this for my kids and I’m going to apply this to my children, but I’m also like, I secretly want this for me too. Like tell me how to have better sleep.

So let me ask you this question. When I’ve gone through periods and it seems to be for me like periods of like higher stress where I’m having a little bit more struggle with sleep for me personally. But when that’s happening, if I’m waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to sleep, can I get some of those benefits of sleep by just trying to rest and laying there and being restful and just trying to rest, even though I’m not asleep because I can’t sleep. Like, should I get up and go do something, watch a show, read a book, you know, whatever, do a puzzle, or is there benefits to just laying and resting and just trying to still get some benefits from that? I don’t know. Tell me, I’m curious.

Dr. Funke: Yeah, not as much as you would if you were actually sleeping, because it’s actually as you’re going through the different stages of sleep. That being said, there is incredible utility in resting. And so you can imagine like what people usually say, right? If you’re sick, you don’t necessarily have to sleep, but people always say you got to get some rest, you got to get some, so that period of just slowing things down is still beneficial. I think the issue for most people is that you wake up in the middle of the night, but you’re not resting, at least your mind is not resting.

So if you’re in that situation where your mind is spiraling, you’re getting very frustrated, well, that’s not rest. That’s not rest. Get up and that’s when maybe doing some of the things you said, maybe reading a book, doing a puzzle or things until you calm that nervous system down. And then once that nervous system down is calm enough, then you can go back to sleep. So the benefit really comes from trying to relax and bring whatever it is back down to a level you could go to sleep.

Amy: So if that is reading a book or doing a puzzle or something like that, then that is beneficial to do that as opposed to just staying in bed. Because I feel like I’ve almost heard advice and maybe this is just me being, you know, like, but I thought I’d heard advice where it’s like, if you’re having trouble sleeping, don’t get out of bed because then you’re training yourself to wake up or something like that. But you would disagree with that and say, if you need to do that, then yeah.

Dr. Funke: Yeah. In fact, that’s one of the mechanisms we use for retraining people to sleep is that sometimes the wakefulness they feel where they have a hard time falling back asleep is because their brain has become used to being awake in bed for too long. So we really want to have to change that the other way.

Amy: Oh, I’m glad I asked that question because, okay, so let me talk to you just practical strategies for kids really quick, and we’re running out of time. This has been so good. But so we have kids that are stalling bedtime. I assume I’m not the only mom that has kids where you’re like, hey, it’s time for bed. And they’re like, oh, look at this other thing I want to go do, right? They do not want to go to bed. Stalling bedtime, if they’re getting up really, really early more than they need to, or you know, trying to take screens to bed. Like some of these common things that we have, do you have like some practical solutions for maybe what’s causing this and then how do we, how do we help our kids be on the same team with us in getting them into patterns of better sleep hygiene or not sleep hygiene, the CREATE. Like how do we, how do we do that?

Dr. Funke: Yeah, yeah, no. So what you’re describing is sort of what we put under that umbrella of behavioral sleep issues. Very common anywhere from toddlerhood all the way to teen, all the way to teenagers. And there are different types. There are some kids who are the bedtime stallers, all the multiple curtain calls. And it’s about setting healthy loving boundaries. I think this is really important. Because if you have this long-winded routine that it’s taking you an hour and a half or two hours, like I’ve seen some patients in my practice to fall asleep, now you’re frustrated. And there’s usually a high likelihood that frustration is expressed to the child. And so now they’re frustrated and everybody’s going up in arms and everybody’s upset and nobody’s sleeping.

So setting healthy boundaries, and there are so many ways to do that. You could either sometimes in a child, for instance, who’s coming out multiple times, you could do a bedtime pass to say, okay, you get two passes, one pass, and every time you use a pass, you trade it up, you have to trade it. So what do you want? You want to sip of water? I’m going to have a pass. And so you blame the passes when the passes are done. You’re not blaming yourself. Well, the passes are done, so there’s no more requests, right? That’s a common one, especially for I would say that early like preschool age, it tends to be quite effective, because now they start to think, is this even worth a pass?

Amy: Yes, I love that. Do they have like a physical pass that they have to give you or is it just a mental pass?

Dr. Funke: You want to be as concrete as possible. So a physical pass is good, and they can make it, they could color the pass, almost make it like a ticket. So it becomes more of like, something they could trade for, you know, a sip of water. Trade for whatever. So that’s a good one.

Amy: I love that so much.

Dr. Funke: If you have the, if you have the early wake-uppers, I usually encourage using the okay to wake clock. That tends to work very well also, where even though you don’t want them coming out of their bedroom before six, they don’t know what’s 6:00 a.m. is, if you have a two-year-old or a three-year-old, they don’t know what’s that is. But they know the color, like if the color changes from red to green or green to red, we know you have to stay in your room. And so you can use that as a way to say, well, the clock didn’t change colors yet, so you have to stay in your room until it changes. And so that would be one other way to help with the early morning wake-ups.

Amy: I love that. That’s so cool. I haven’t tried one of those. Are they just like available on Amazon or just you can find those? Like it’s it’s okay to wake up clock?

Dr. Funke: Exactly. So if you just put exactly that. Okay to wake. So once you put okay to wake clock, it shows up.

Amy: I need to go back in time like 17 years and get one of those for one of my kids. Oh my gosh, I did not know. That sounds amazing. Okay, let me ask you kind of one more question. Is there something that we are doing that we don’t realize we’re doing that might be sabotaging our kids sleep? Like that we could easily just eliminate like you talked about? Is there anything like that you would just say, hey, this is one thing that really impacts kids, maybe take this out.

Dr. Funke: Yes. Quite a few things come to mind. But in a situation like this, I think knowing especially for children, how hardwired they are to those routines, in our bid to sometimes, especially if you’re tired, you just may say, you know what? It doesn’t even matter. I’m just going to do whatever it is. But when you do and you’re not really providing them a structured bedtime routine, it’s possible that they, you know, they may start to struggle because now they’re pushing back and there are no boundaries and things like that. So I would say that’s one thing that I see a lot of families because mom is like, I’m exhausted, so if they want to sleep in my bed, if they want to sleep in the living room, if they want to sleep in their bedroom, I just don’t care anymore, right? So I think really being able to help your child with that self-regulation and providing them with the tools they need to ensure that those routines are in place would make a huge difference.

Amy: And that feels doable most of the time. Like, I’m I’m not, you know, going to be perfect. There’s times when I’m like, I am so tired. I can’t I can’t do all of it. But yeah. No, I love routines because I feel like it takes tension out of the relationship too, because you’re like, it’s not me. It’s the, it’s the, this is our thing, you know? Growing up, my kids, we had what I called my pumpkin time. And it was my pumpkin time. I’m like, it’s my pumpkin time. You have to go do your reading. Like, you got to go read and go to bed. I’m turning into a pumpkin. Like, anyway, like I can refer to that and then there’s not really a big discussion, which I feel like is kind of one of the benefits you’re talking about. It’s like this is our routine. And this of course was when my kids were independently able to put themselves to bed. They could go brush their teeth and read and go to sleep. But anyway, I love that idea. So whatever your routine is, if it’s, you know, younger children, that would include like reading them a story, brushing teeth, bath, whatever your bedtime routine is.

Dr. Funke: Exactly. Exactly. Whatever it is. And try to keep it as consistent as possible. So they almost always, it’s almost becomes automatic. They know exactly what to expect. And that’s it. Yeah.

Amy: Yeah, I love that. I feel like that takes away so much tension. Their body’s preparing for it and there’s probably stuff you know that’s going on in the brain too that’s helping them like do their sequence to get ready to shut down and go to bed. Oh, this has been the most amazing conversation and I know you have a book called Beyond Tired and that we should all go get this book. So tell us just a little bit about this book and where we get it.

Dr. Funke: A lot of the things I talked about today, I mean, those are just like tips of the iceberg in terms of how to really go. So this is a book that it’s very practical, easy to kind of grab, and you don’t have to read from cover to cover depending on where you are. You may say, I need ideas for a sample routine. We have things there. We have chapters there on sleeping children with ADHD, how families can help, how to have that conversation with your child, depending on how old they are in terms of how they can improve their own sleep. And then I also have, we also talk about those various sleep disorders and what you really should be looking out for that might make you consider seeing either a sleep specialist or at least talking to their doctor for help. It’s a great book. It’s a, it’s my little, it’s my guide. It’s I always say this is, it’s the guide you should have gotten when you, when you left the hospital with your child.

Amy: When they were born. I know I’m like, I kind of want you to be like my next door neighbor so I can just be like, Dr. Brown. So I love that you made it like so practical and because my gosh, we have a lot going on and we’re like, we’re already so tired and now we have to figure out sleep. So I love practical and just like, here’s the thing you can do. And it sounds like you have conversation pieces in there too to have with kids that are like even teenagers when they’re having sleep issues or anyway, I love that. Thank you so much. And we’ll put a link to that in the show notes for all of you listeners so that you can get that too. Dr. Brown, thank you so much for coming and sharing with us today. I found this massively helpful for me and I’m confident that our readers or our listeners are too.

Dr. Funke: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been such a joy to talk with you.

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