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My Partner and I Don’t Agree About Sleep

In an ideal world, parents talk through major parenting decisions and values ahead of baby’s arrival. However, we don’t live in an ideal world. It’s hard to know all the things you should discuss, and even when you do, it’s hard to know how you’ll feel once baby is here. The reality of your emotions and experiences can be hard to predict.

Sleep training research: unpacking sleep training culture

We live in a sleep training culture.

Its effects on parenting around sleep are powerful, and parents feel that pressure. When you dig into the research on sleep training, however, you find that it isn’t as soundly supported as many parents and professionals believe. In this post, I’m highlighting 10 facts about sleep training research that everyone should know to make informed decisions about how you support sleep for your children.

How Much Should My Baby or Toddler Sleep? Developmentally Appropriate Expectations, Birth To Age 5

This article features an outline of realistic expectations for your child’s sleep in the first 5 years, updated for 2022. It can be hard to know what healthy sleep patterns even are at each age. This article will cover healthy and developmentally appropriate sleep expectations for infants and toddlers by age. Download this as a PDF for an easy reference.

Bedsharing Guide: Benefits, Safety, and FAQs

Bedsharing is a wonderful, biologically normal way to care for your baby at night. It’s also a big controversy in safe sleep. Since many pediatricians only focus on a “just don’t” attitude towards bedsharing, parents are stuck trying to navigate safe sleep messages and the reality of nighttime parenting. In this guide, I’ll answer some of the many questions I hear from parents about sleeping with their baby, cosleeping safety, bedsharing, and many questions that I also asked as a new parent.

Posts tagged parenting community

Responsive Parenting: What it is and why it matters

You may have heard, or identified with a lot of different parenting labels: Attachment parenting, positive parenting, gentle parenting, respectful parenting, conscious parenting, peaceful parenting, intuitive parenting, responsive parenting….Likely I’ve missed a few . All of these various labels are variations of each other. They may differ in how the core elements are presented, but they share a lot in common. Sleep is part of parenting, and how we parent around sleep is part of how we parent over-all. In fact, some of your sleep parenting decisions are the first big ones you make that either emphasize connection or separation, emotional availability or emotional distance. Responsive parenting includes night time parenting. Those decisions and approaches are connected.

EncouragementKimberly HawleyDecember 10, 2021responsive parenting, night time parenting, parenting support, parenting communityComment

Three things to do when you are feeling alone in your parenting

Being a responsive parent is parenting against the mainstream. It’s easy to feel isolated and as though you are the only one parenting this way when all your friends and family parent from a different philosophy. While they mean well, being the only responsive parent in your support system often means lots of unwanted advice, pressure, and even criticism. Here are three things to do when you’re feeling alone as a parent.

EncouragementKimberly HawleyAugust 5, 2021parenting, parenting community, parenting encouragement Comment