How to Help Your Kids Develop Healthy Sleep Habits with Sleep Consultant Ava Dark: Episode 247

Dr Danielle:
Welcome to the Health and Wellness Practitioners podcast. I am your host, Dr. Danielle Angela. In this show, I and my guest experts will talk about everything from getting your practice started to developing your clinical skills, growing your practice your way, and of course, dealing with the real stuff like burnout and work-life balance. Whether you've been practicing for decades or just started your journey, you'll find something here for you. So take a deep breath and enjoy the show.

Dr Danielle:
Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Health and Wellness Practitioners podcast. I am bringing you a new guest to the show today. Her name is Ava Dark. We're gonna be talking about kids and sleep, or sometimes lack of sleep. We're starting off this conversation with the rapid fire questions that you've been hearing in the most recent episodes. So, Ava, question number one is when there are so many career paths available for us in the health and wellness industry, why did you choose the modality that you practice? Why did you choose the path that you're on now?

Ava Dark:
So I started as a nanny, turned postpartum doula turned sleep consultant. And I think the progression of events was really where I saw challenges, right? So sleep is a huge one that I come across all the time. It's hard to function properly when you're not getting enough sleep, and it's hard to know what your baby needs and what expectations you should have for them. And so I think there are just a lot of questions around sleep, and if I can help parents get the rest that they need and get their babies the rest that they need to function during the day, then that's amazing. That's a win.

Dr Danielle:
For sure. I don't function well on lack of sleep. Now, there are times I experience insomnia and when my body goes into its insomnia phases, I'm okay without getting a lot of sleep. But if I'm not in my, whatever it is, it happens when sometimes I experience insomnia and I'm wanting to sleep, but I can't sleep because something or someone else is keeping me awake. I turn into a wild, crazy woman. Like, it's, it's really, really challenging. And then actually I've, I've even gotten sick, like thrown up from not getting enough sleep.

Ava Dark:
Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. I think we really take for granted how important it is. We, you know, we spend so much time, we're busy, right? We're super busy and we're like, we don't need to sleep that much. And then when we try to sleep, we've got kids waking us up and, you know, and we're not maybe teaching them the importance of sleep either. And and so yeah, <laugh>, it's, it's tricky. It's tough and it, it's hard to function, like you said, when you're up all night.

Dr Danielle:
Okay. Question number two, what fills you up? What excites you or resources you?

Ava Dark:
I've noticed that my favorite thing about work specifically is the connections I make with the families. When, when people are texting me and I'm at home and they're like sending me pictures of their baby with silly sunglasses on, or they're telling me that their PT appointment went well, or look who's crawling now or even just like, you know, gossip that they heard at work, <laugh>. Like, it's, it's so fun connecting with people on a level that I wasn't expecting to. I go into my job expecting to, you know, meet parents where they are and see what I can do to guide them toward whatever goals they have. And yeah, I don't know. It's been, it's an experience. It's fun to like get to a deeper level and also like have senses of humor with each other. It's been fun.

Dr Danielle:
Yeah. Great. Okay, question number three. What do you like the least about running a business?

Ava Dark:
Ooh, <laugh>. There's, there might be a long list, to be honest. It's a lot. You know, not only do you have to have all of the education and be up to date on the services that you're offering mm-hmm. You also have to be a business person entirely. So it feels like having two full-time jobs and then, you know, if you're like me, you also have a full-time job on top of that. So <laugh>, it's, it's been tough. I've been trying to take marketing classes and, you know, figure some things out. But there are certain things like SEO and writing blogs that are on my list for like 2025. It's just not gonna happen anytime soon.

Dr Danielle:
Yeah. I hear you. Wearing both hats is definitely a challenge, I think is a challenge for every single one of us.

Ava Dark:
Yeah. I wasn't expecting, I wasn't expecting all of the cans of worms that have opened with running a business. It's just, yeah, there's a lot to learn.

Dr Danielle:
Yep. Yes, there is <laugh>. Okay, next question. What book do you think that everyone listening to this podcast should read?

Ava Dark:
Ooh, I, no, this gets suggested a lot in a lot of different circles, but I think the four agreements is really good.

Dr Danielle:
I love that book.

Ava Dark:
Okay. See, a lot of people have read it. It's so good. And I couldn't tell you what they all are. I don't think I could probably name three of them <laugh>, but in theory they're all very important and like a really cool way to like a, a lens to see the world with, I think is sort of what it provides you with. I like, yeah, I like that one. And I've also recently read Hunt Gather Parent, and I liked that when it comes to parenting. It's a great one.

Dr Danielle:
I have not heard of that book. What is it about?

Ava Dark:
It is about this woman who takes her three year old Rosie to a few different countries and she studies the way other people are parenting and how they structure their environments and she just takes lessons from that and applies 'em to her own daughter when she gets home. And it's really interesting just like the cross-cultural perspectives and what works for other people that we would've never even considered here in western culture. So I thought it was interesting and a lot of outside time and a lot of things that we're missing out on here, I think.

Dr Danielle:
Yeah, for sure. This is how much I like the four agreements. I have the 48 card deck from the four agreements on my desk. It sits here at all times. So the four agreements for anyone that's wondering, don't make assumptions, don't take anything personally. Be impeccable with your word and always do your best. So those are the four. And actually, I dunno if you know, but there was a second book with the fifth agreement and I can't remember what the fifth agreement was off the top of my head, but I do remember listening to that book on Audible when I was on a plane a few years ago and just like soaking it all up. I really love those two books.

Ava Dark:
I love that you have that on your desk. <Laugh>, it's so funny. I've got some metal bangles with the four agreements, therefore, of 'em and each, they're engraved. I need to break those out. They were a good reminder while I, while I had them on.

Dr Danielle:
Okay. Last of the five Rapid Fire questions is, on a scale of zero to 10, how crunchy are you?

Ava Dark:
Like, I wanna be a 10, but I'm probably actually a five.

Dr Danielle:
<Laugh>. I can still relate to that. Yeah. I'm like, I wanna be a 10, I wanna be like a 20, but I'm probably like a seven and a half-ish. Yeah. <laugh>.

Ava Dark:
There you go. Well, that's pretty good still. It's, I find that it's time consuming to be crunchy and I don't necessarily have that kind of time right now. Yeah. So maybe someday,

Dr Danielle:
Right? I have visions of like making my own almond milk, you know, instead of buying a store bond. But like really I struggle to have time to make time to just cook dinner at home. So making my own own milk is not a high priority right now.

Ava Dark:
There's only so much you can do. Yeah, I would love to have a garden, but I can't keep my succulent alive. <Laugh>, my half dead spider plants are behind me here and they're supposed to be the easiest plant in the world. So <laugh>. Yeah, it's all time consuming. It takes a lot of talent, but shout out to all the crunchy people out there <laugh> respect.

"SLEEPING LIKE A BABY"

Dr Danielle:
Okay. So with those out of the way then, let's talk more about small people and sleep <laugh> or as I mentioned, befor lack of sleep. I think I would like to hear from you if you're able to share, what are some of the misconceptions that people have about how kids should be sleeping at night?

Ava Dark:
I think there are so many misconceptions, and I believe that they are different depending on the age group, right? So if you start with a newborn we have the term, "sleeping like a baby". Oh, right. And people expect that the baby is gonna sleep a lot. And you know, they might for the first week while they're still waking up and you know, maybe after that things change and they're, you know, harder to, to put down and to keep asleep. A lot of people don't realize that biologically they are meant to be waking up every few hours and they have to eat every few hours. And that's just the way their rhythm is. And there's nothing really that you can do to fight it. You have to work with it. So yeah, expecting a newborn to sleep through the night is going to set you up for a disappointment if it does happen, that's great. Bonus points. Don't expect it.

Dr Danielle:
Yeah. That was a very, very hard thing for me as a new mom. My, my kid's father, he has an older daughter. So my, my stepdaughter, she's 20 now, but he always shared the story about how when she was a newborn, they brought her home from the hospital and she slept for the night, eight hours or more, like from the jump <laugh>, like out of the gates. He was just sleeping through the night. And he had shared that with me when I was pregnant with our first daughter together. And, you know, I was like, how am I gonna function on no sleep? And he was like, why would you not sleep? The baby's gonna just sleep. And I was like, I don't know if you really understand that most babies don't do that. And he was like, oh, it'll be fine. And our baby did sleep okay-ish.

Dr Danielle:
But even like, okay, sleep was really hard for me. So I felt like we could have been better prepared if we are, if we were on the same page about expectations and what might have been realistic, not just what had happened before, expecting that to happen again with the next kiddo. Right? And then our next child after that was even worse, worse of a sleeper, but worse in air quotes for those of you that can't see me, <laugh>. But she slept less overall, significantly less than my first baby did. So I was better prepared that time, but gosh, it was, yeah, Like really quiet a challenge for us to get on the same page about

Ava Dark:
It. Sounds like it. Yeah. Absolutely. And that's a big thing, right? Communication and Yeah. Talking about your expectations with your partner, it's hard because you don't know what kind of preparations to make exactly. You don't know what challenges you'll be facing, so you can't exactly make a plan for everything, but you can at least try to get on the same page with some basic stuff, which yeah. Him thinking you're gonna sleep through the, the night and you knowing that a newborn's gonna be up is Yeah. Not the same page or even the same book probably.

Dr Danielle:
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So not sleeping through the night or like expecting babies to sleep like a baby is definitely a big misconception. What are some others that come to your mind?

GENTLE/ATTACHMENT PARENTING AND SLEEP

Ava Dark:
Some misconceptions specifically about sleep training. I would say, you know, there are facets of parenting that have gotten more popular over the last, you know, decade or so of gentle parenting, attachment parenting. It's really, I think, polarized a lot of us mm-hmm and yeah, I don't see a lot of middle ground. I see a lot of back and forth about, you know, what's right and wrong, but I do think you can incorporate gentle and attachment parenting with sleep training. I think that's important to know that it's not, it's about teaching your child to fall asleep independently. It's not about letting them cry. It's not about you know, doing it as quickly as you can getting the process over, but it it, it's like a holistic way that works for your family just to get your baby or your child sleeping independently. So I think it's important to know that you can work with a sleep consultant or even do it on your own. You can do it in a way that works for you and aligns with your values. I think that's really important for people to, to know.

Dr Danielle:
Yeah. I, I know for me, like with my second child particularly I was so desperate for sleep that I went to one sleep consultant and my baby was around nine months old at that time. And her plan, her suggestion was it did involve a lot of crying and I was, I left the office and I was like, I'm not doing that. I'm not. And I knew that my then husband, you know, my kid's father, he wouldn't be leaving our baby to cry <laugh> either, no matter how tired we were. So we just kept suffering basically for the next, oh, it was roughly six months until a friend of mine suggested another sleep consultant and she was like, just give us a try. I know you've been there before, but you don't, especially now that she's a little bit older, you might be surprised. And that sleep consultant had a much different approach and it worked so much better. And it was actually quite fast overall, I think within about oh four nights. We were sleeping through the night.

Ava Dark:
Oh wow, that's so interesting Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what did she have you do?

Dr Danielle:
My, my baby, she was you know an infant at that time. She had just turned a year old. She was sleeping in a crib and she was in a separate room from us and she would fall asleep in the crib on her own pretty easily, but she'd wake up usually around three times a night. And the only thing that would put her back to sleep or even make her happy <laugh>, was to nurse. So I was getting up three times a night out of bed, going across the hall, nursing her, sitting up in another bed that we had in that room and then putting her back in the the crib and she would just lay down and go back to sleep. But we had created this pattern right, of like, she wakes up and she wants me, and she's not necessarily hungry, but she just wants me.

Dr Danielle:
And then she, she gets to connect with me and then she goes back to sleep. And the consultant that we worked with at that time, she just said, why don't you just sleep in that room with her since there's already a bed in that room? And when she wakes up, you just go to her and you talk to her and you kind of just like rub her back and soothe her. But you don't pick her up and you just let her know that you're there because she wants to connect with you. And you do that until she lays back down. And when you, when she lays down, you go back and lay down. And I was like, is that gonna work or am I gonna stand there for hours? <Laugh>?

Ava Dark:
Yeah.

Dr Danielle:
And, and it actually did work. It was a little challenging the first night or two cuz I did feel like this is taking me a little longer than what I would like for it to, but literally by, like the third or fourth night she stopped waking up. She was just like, eh, not really getting what I wanted anymore, so I'm done.

Ava Dark:
Right. That's amazing. Yeah. And you're able to set your boundaries in a way that she knows you're still right there next to her. Right. She, you're not going anywhere. You're not abandoning her. There's no long term harm happening there. Right. She is just learning to be on her own <laugh> without, you know, without nursing. Like yeah, there are a lot of interesting solutions out there and a lot of them don't involve too much crying, which is, I mean, there's often going to be some right. Because when we don't get our way that we've, we're used to getting for, you know, some people have six month olds who have been nursing to sleep for six months and you know, there might be some tears involved there as they speak up about what, what they want. But it doesn't have to be like a traumatizing experience for anybody for sure. Yeah. And I'm glad you found somebody that was able to vibe with you and make it work.

Dr Danielle:
Thankfully, yes. And then with my, with my third kiddo, I kind of knew a little bit better from that second experience, like how to, I guess you could say how to avoid that situation. But we had some other challenges with her sleep patterns that I addressed a little bit earlier on. But with that last child, she co-slept with us and she's five now and she still co-sleep with me. She sleeps with me every night. And if I attempt to have her sleep somewhere else, and it's my idea

Dr Danielle:
She doesn't wanna take part in that at all. If it's her idea, for example, to sleep like maybe with one of her sisters as like a slumber party then, then she's all about it. It's totally fine, of course. But yeah, <laugh>, yeah, now she's five and we're still co-sleeping and I'm like, I don't know if this was really what I intended when she was, you know, one or even two years old then we were co-sleeping at that time and she was nursing still was definitely what was easiest for me. But now that she's five, I'm feeling like it's time, it's time for a little more separation. <Laugh>.

Ava Dark:
Yeah. Sometimes it works until it doesn't and you just have to keep readjusting as as they grow and as both of your needs are changing. So

Dr Danielle:
Yeah.

Ava Dark:
Yeah. It might be time. <Laugh>.

OLDER CHILDREN WHO DO NOT SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT

Dr Danielle:
On that note, I, I think that one of the things I wanted to talk with you about on the podcast was older children who are not sleeping through the night and maybe some misconceptions or strategies there because you know, most of the people that listen to this podcast are women that have children and they also have professional careers in a health and wellness profession. And they are trying to do all the things. They're often trying to do more than all the things. They've got a lot on their plates, taking care of their patients or clients, their family themselves, their significant other in their home, their business, the dog, the cat, et cetera. And

Dr Danielle:
Yeah. If they're not sleeping, it can really feel like, you know, they're trying so hard to push themselves to get all these things done, but they just don't have the bandwidth to to do that. So I have had clients that have come to me for help with their practice and they want to grow their business and I'm like, you're not even sleeping through the night and you haven't for five or six years, so we've gotta fix that problem first before you can expect that you should be more organized at work.

Ava Dark:
<Laugh>. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's the basic need that we have. We can't function well at work without sleep, food, water, shelter yeah. We need those needs, those needs to be met.

Dr Danielle:
So what would you want parents of what I would call older kids in this scenario? What would you want them to know if they are struggling with kids and still are not sleeping through the night?

Ava Dark:
I would want them to know that it's never too late to make some changes. Like you said with your daughter, she's been in that bed with you for five years. Right. And that might sound really daunting because she, that's all she knows and change is hard, but it's definitely possible you can do it in a way that's empowering for your little one and make it fun. It's not a punishment. We definitely don't use punishments, I'm big on rewards and praise. And getting the child on your team, you wanna be supporting each other and working as a team instead of against each other. Right. So you know, whether that's teaching your kids about the benefits of sleep, I think there are kids books out there that talk about that, you know, like maybe bedtime books about, you know, why it's important to sleep and what your brain does while you're sleeping.

Ava Dark:
And yeah, you can, I mean, there are reward systems you can use with quarters and sticker charts and there's all kinds of stuff you can do. What I do is I look at the big picture of how families are functioning and what struggles they are facing. And then I take all that information and I try to make a plan with incentives that I think the child would respond to or I say, you know, fill in the blank, you choose the incentive, you know your child better than I do. But you know, maybe there's a reward at the end of the week or there's just some, so many ways to do it and make it a positive experience while also setting your boundaries and having your own needs met as a parent. Who needs to sleep in order to have mental and physical health.

Dr Danielle:
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, I think that setting boundaries is one of the hardest things, especially as someone that has attach has practice attachment parenting for the most part. I have felt like there are no boundaries, but that's not necessarily the intention of, of attachment parenting, right. Where it is not to drain the parents, but the intention is more so to help the child feel securely attached and, and to give them that healthy start in their development. And yeah, like looking back now with my kids being twelve, eight, and five, I can see, you know, of course things that I would have done differently or might have done differently. But one of those things is definitely having clear boundaries around expectations with them. Like what, what is okay and what's not okay in regard to what they're taking from me specifically?

Ava Dark:
Yes, for sure. Yeah. If your five-year-old or, or you know, hypothetical, your toddler crawls into bed with you every night and they know that you're gonna let them stay there, they're, there's no reason why they will stop doing it. Right. Right. Yeah. If they know that they can come out of bed and come into the living room where you are and start a conversation with you and you'll engage with them for five minutes, they're gonna keep doing it. Right. Because that's what they want. They want to connect with you they wanna see what's going on outside of their room. Right. So what you let them do, they'll keep doing, I think is the bottom line. And so really they, you have to be clear about what you're expecting and you have to find a way to make it clear to them. And kids are smart, they're very, very smart. We often don't give them the credit that they deserve and overlook a lot of that, but like, they know, they know what's going on <laugh>. Right. So it's better to level with them than it is to like fight against them, I think.

Dr Danielle:
Yeah, for sure. So let's wrap up on this. If there's, if there are parents that are struggling <laugh>, I know for me when I've been in like the worst, the hardest phases of the not sleeping through the night with my own kiddos, it has led me to have like a really hard time making decisions or thinking clearly at the worst of the times. Right. What would you want parents that are feeling like that to know or to do right now?

WHEN YOU'RE SLEEP DEPRIVED

Ava Dark:
I would suggest cutting through the noise as much as you can. Choose one person that you trust and make sure they're not speaking in a broad make, make sure they know what your situation is specifically and aren't just giving you blanket statement advice. Right. Like, we don't really care what worked for your neighbor's granddaughter. We care what would benefit or solve this problem specifically that you're having. Right. So don't get a million opinions choose something that feels right with you and stick with it. I would say at least for four or five days, if you try something in one night, it doesn't work. And then you try something the next night and that doesn't work. You're just changing, changing, changing all the time and your, your kids can't adjust to that. And so nothing's gonna work if you do that.

Ava Dark:
So be consistent. Pick something that you wanna change and yeah, keep with it. Make it, make sure your kids know what the deal is. Your routine should be the same every night as much as it can be. And expectations should be clear and kids, yeah. They should know what's coming next pretty much at all times. If it's, you know, bath time after dinner, then that's what it is every time. We're not negotiating five minutes of TV in between. Yeah. So yeah, that's how I <laugh> that's how I look at it. We do, we do this, then we do that, and then we do that and then, you know, every time.

Dr Danielle:
Yep. That is, I think you hit the nail on the head for me, like that's one of the biggest things I would do differently with my kids is I would have created more structure and more routine for them. More consistency. Because in the past you know, over the last 12 years, a lot of times when their father and I were still living in the same home, we would just be like, oh, tonight let's go out to dinner. Boom, we're gone. You know? And then we don't get home until nine o'clock.

Dr Danielle:
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. There really was no bedtime routine. They'd just fall asleep in the car and then we'd carry them in the house and plop them into bed. Right. And we did that a lot. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, you can only do what you know, right. And what works for you at the time might not be sustainable, but it works for you at the time. And so <laugh>, you do what you gotta do. Yeah. Setting boundaries. That reminds me of a story from a nanny job that I started a few years ago and it was my first day and it was after nap time and I was telling the four year old, we're gonna go outside now. We'll go to the park. Which park do you wanna go to? And he was like, I do not wanna go outside. He was not about it.

Ava Dark:
And I said, well, that's what we're doing next. So like, I'll wait until you're ready, but we're not gonna play with toys. We're not gonna do anything else. The TV's not going on. I'm just gonna wait here for you to put your shoes on and then we'll go to the park when you're ready. And we sat there for like 45 minutes waiting, just waiting for him. His parents were like, what do we do? I don't know what to do with him. And I'm like, nothing. This is, this is the expectation. I'm gonna wait for him to get on board and that's that. And I let him be, and you know, it took a while, but he put his shoes on by himself eventually, and he was, had an amazing time at the park and we never had an argument or any kind of tiff about that ever again.

Ava Dark:
And he knew like, when it's time to go outside, we go outside and you know, there's room for negotiations sometimes and I'm not like super militant, but in general the expectations are pretty clear. And I think that's really helpful to kids to know what you want them to do. <Laugh>. A lot easier to do it when they know what it is.

Dr Danielle:
Yes. Awesome. Ava, thank you so much for everything that you've shared and for having this conversation with me today on the podcast. I know will help a lot of parents in the future who are tired. <Laugh>.

Ava Dark:
so good. I hope so. I hope so. I know it's foggy, especially like that first month of parenthood, it's, it's so foggy. So find somebody that you trust. Find a sleep consultant if you need it. Don't wait until it's too late. <Laugh> but it's not, it's not ever too late, but don't wait until you're really in the depths of it. And it's hard to claw your way out. <Laugh>.

Dr Danielle:
Yes. Awesome. Okay, so if there's anyone that's listening who would like to connect with you and learn more about what you do, where is the best place for them to go?

Ava Dark:
Yeah, so my website is virtualvillageparenting.com. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram virtual village parenting. And yeah, follow me there and I'll look forward to meeting some of you.

Dr Danielle:
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Ava Dark:
Thank you. Have a great day.

Dr Danielle:
Hey, thanks so much for joining me for today's episode. If you love this podcast and be sure to join our free community, the Health and Wellness Practitioners Group over on Facebook where you can continue the discussion and get to know other people in the community as well. We're a group of chiropractors, natural paths, acupuncturists, midwives, doulas, massage therapists, mental health therapists, counselors, nutritionist, and a list goes on. So come join us, get to know other people, build some personal and professional relationships. You can find the group by heading to drdanielleangela.com/community and request to join the group. I will see you inside from there.