I was hesitant to write this, because sleep is such a hot topic in parenting. Everyone is convinced that they know THE WAY to sleep train but also that none of the advice they’re getting specifically applies to their child.

The longer I parent (3.5 years lol lol) the more I realize (and will continue to realize) that there are approximately 2 billion factors that go into each individual situation. The child. The parent. The siblings. The season. Health stuff. Family culture. Stage of life. Menstrual cycles. And moooooore. They all interact and compound and you’re left with a situation that only you know, and only you can deal with. So you do you.

I just get so so many questions about how we do us. Seriously. Every week I get someone DMing my insta stories to ask how late my girls sleep or why they wake up so happy or how we sleep trained or did we cry it out? So many questions – and good questions!

Sleep is sensitive and a big deal, because it so dramatically affects everything. When the kid isn’t sleeping it affects their mood, appetite, trust, and health. When the kid isn’t sleeping it leaves the parents feeling progressively more desperate, exhausted, frustrated, confused, scared, and honestly just less able to deal. I’m not surprised so many people have questions or concerns about their own child’s sleep patterns – and mine.

I am not here to tell you how to parent your kid, or to proclaim that I know it all. I have just been so surprised at how many people have questions about how we do things, and how many people have said my info/advice was helpful so I feel it’s time to share in case it helps you.

#1 General Parenting Philosophy

I feel it’s important to start here, because I truly think your overall parenting philosophy dramatically influences how you approach sleep. For us we can sum up our parenting philosophy in five words:

Family-centric, not child-centric.

Essentially what this means is that we refuse to allow our child to be the center of the universe, the boss, in control, or get the final say. There are so many reasons for this. The first one is that we don’t want to raise a spoiled brat. The second is that we are selfish and also want to have our own personal needs met. The third is that no child should live with the pressure of being the center of the universe all the time. Further, we don’t want to cause serious problems when other children enter the family (then which is the center of the universe? Which is the boss?!!!). We also believe that this teaches kids to consider the needs of others, and that sometimes what others want/need trumps what we want/need. Finally, it makes for a happier family all around.

This means that our kids crying doesn’t bother us. Obviously we take care of injuries, hunger, hug through hurt feelings, etc. But guess what? Kids cry. Kids don’t want to go to sleep. Kids don’t want to eat vegetables. Kids don’t want to wear seatbelts. Sorry. Not sorry. We love our kids and that means they do not get everything they want. And guess what? They actually do pretty well with it because it’s not a random and monumental occasion. Not getting what they want happens a lot, so they roll with it and bounce back quicker.

Another quick summary of our parenting philosophy: Ryan calls me The Harda$$.

#2 Sleep Philosophy

Sorry to get all political on you but KIDS NEED SLEEP. They freaking need it, guys. Before Reese was born I was really worried about sleep because I knew how vital sleep was to her development, my mental state, and just life in general. I know so many adults with sleep issues, and I know that sleep is such an important “skill” to develop.

That combined with my aforementioned harda$$ mentality (which I attribute to teaching young teenagers for four years) means I am very, aggressively, pro-cry-it-out. I just am. I know there are a lot of opinions about it, and you gotta do what you feel is best. My opinion is that you are three days away from giving your kid the gift of sleeping through the night. You don’t need to crash into my comments section with articles about abandonment and emotional scarring – I’ve read them and I am personally not convinced. If you are worried about it and want to be extra safe, or you strongly feel like your kid cannot handle cry-it-out then DO. YOU. Move along. It’s ok! Trust yourself!

I think kids need to learn to sleep. Fall asleep alone. Put themselves back to sleep. Wake up alone. Hell, I think they need to learn to sleep in the car, the stroller, with the TV on, music blasting, Glen Coco the Idiot Dog barking, you name it.

#3 In Practice

In practice, this meant we pretty much never rocked our girls to sleep intentionally. We tried to put them down drowsy but awake, with a full belly and clean diaper to maximize sleep time. We laid them down, said “I love you!” and then immediately left the room. If they cried, it was ok. It is ok. If they’re still freaking out after a while, it’s usually because something is wrong and it’s pretty easy to determine that.

They still sometimes cosleep, which surprises people. My girls are such good sleepers that when they ~aren’t, it’s rare and I know something’s up. It’s almost always that they aren’t feeling good, and snuggling with us in bed helps them sleep more soundly. (We also have a California King, which helps because we can easily fit one between us safely.) When they’re sick, wake up freaking out in the night, or on vacation we cosleep and it’s awesome. It’s pretty rare, and then when we get back to normal it’s business as usual.

Sometimes, though, they straight up needed to cry it out. We had to do it with Reese last week! Loney’s going through what I think is the 18 month sleep regression and is fighting her naps. Sorry Loney! You’re still in that crib from 2-4 pm, whether you’re awake or asleep because eventually you will come out of this and we are not losing that nap. If they aren’t sick, don’t need the potty or a clean diaper, aren’t starving, and aren’t hurt or trapped somehow… they’re just cranky and they just need to sleep. We try to be flexible and listen to our intuition – we’re not heartless robots – but at the end of the day it’s very important to us that every member of the family is honoring a healthy sleep routine.

#4 Encourage Sleep

Our girls were naturally very good sleepers, which is also a critical thing to disclose. I don’t necessarily believe in “bad” sleepers – just babies that need a little extra encouragement. Our girls were very good sleepers, but we were also hyper committed to them sleeping as much as was physically possible. We did everything in our power to encourage sleep and resist premature waking.

When I was pregnant with Reese I read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. While insanely boring and repetitive, it was very helpful. The biggest, scariest, most encouraging thing I took away from the book was the idea that “babies who sleep more, sleep more.” Sleep is a weird, addictive thing. Bad sleep leads to more bad sleep. Good sleep leads to more good sleep. This further fueled my fire to create good sleep habits for my children.

Bedtime routines aren’t as consistent as my Type A Brain would like, but I think that’s also been a blessing – our kids have never been locked into a specific routine to get them to fall asleep (bath, book, song, rocking, etc.). Some nights it was just a fresh diaper and naked with a binky lol. But we were always pretty much frantic about making sure they weren’t hungry. I would sometimes top them off with a few ounces in a bottle after breastfeeding, just to be sure they weren’t hungry. I’m convinced it’s part of why they were both great sleepers. We love binkies and we’ll use them with every kid. Tight swaddling and even tucking some rolled up blankets along tiny newborns helped them feel contained and safe – they always slept longer that way.

When they were tiny we used “the pause” to help them learn to self-soothe, and I was always surprised how many times they were back asleep within 30 seconds but I would have interrupted it! When my girls really wake up in the night, even now, we quickly and wordlessly get them back to sleep as fast as possible. Sometimes that’s getting Loney’s lost binky or running Reese to the potty, sometimes it’s ushering them into our bed with our eyes half-closed. We don’t turn on lights; we don’t talk. We encourage sleep. We send the message that sleep is good, we need sleep, sleep is important, don’t interrupt our sleep.

#5 Mornings

This kind of goes along with encouraging sleep, but I do not go in to get them when they wake up. I go in to get them when I’m ready. Obviously if Reese is saying she needs to go potty I hustle my rear to get her on that potty. But I have found that sometimes they’re not ~really awake! Reese would hear Ryan leave for work and stir or sit up or cry out, but then go back to sleep.

Once they were big enough we started keeping safe books and toys in their crib so they had something to play with when they woke up in the morning. Take a trip through my Instagram history if you want to see countless videos of me going in to find Reese reading books or kissing her baby dolls. It’s pretty common for me to go into Loney’s room to find her standing up and singing happily.

By not running in the second they wake up I’ve tried to train them to hang out, entertain themselves, be comfortable in their own space. They seriously wake up so happy 80% of the time, and I don’t feel that frantic urgency of a screaming baby waking me up or interrupting my shower. It’s family-centric, remember? It’s important to us that they do things on a schedule that works for everyone, not just their big toddler feelings that day.

#6 Night Owls

Ok so this is probably the question I get the most – “Wow how late do your girls sleep?!!!” followed by “Wow how late do you let your kids stay up?!” Super important for you to know that yes, my girls will regularly sleep until 10 am and yes, it is absolutely as incredible as it sounds. But you also need to know that I’m not putting my kids to bed at 7 pm like a lot of parents. That doesn’t work for us.

We are night owls. We just are. We like to sleep a little later, and we like to party. We like to go out to dinner and hang out with friends and play in softball leagues. A 7 pm bedtime would feel like a prison sentence. And the idea of waking up at 7 am makes me want to cry. AND THAT’S OK. It is also ok if that is perfect for you!!! It truly is!!!

My girls are on a pretty flexible 10 pm-10 am schedule. We try to get them down well before 10 pm, but sometimes it’s much later. Sometimes we have to be up earlier and we make it work (9 am church was a pain but whatevs). Generally we just try to be home by 9 pm to start bedtime and I try not to schedule anything before 11 am. I know that sounds ridiculous to lots of people but it works so well for us. When I tried to move Reese to an 8 am-8 pm schedule she literally had night terrors and we were all miserable. This schedule is perfect for us and Ryan’s work schedule, and while eventually we’ll have kids in school we’re gonna enjoy it while it lasts!

#7 Reese’s Antics

One of the best decisions I’ve ever made is to start filming when I walk into Reese’s room. Y’all have seen her cover it in diaper cream, fall asleep in her closet, dress up in costumes, you name it. We moved her into a toddler bed right before she turned 2 out of necessity. She started climbing out of her crib and it was time. (Loney was also on the way and eventually we wanted her to be using that crib, too.)

This meant that Reese could get out of her bed. Dance with her panda. Read 50 books. Turn her light on and off every 3 seconds. And we kind of just let her. We think she needs to learn to go to sleep when she’s tired and honestly it’s just exhausting and impossible to police her every move. We also love that she loves her room and feels comfortable there. We use the Withings Home monitor which makes it easy to see if she is doing something dangerous or destructive and to figure out exactly when she did fall asleep.

Some nights we put her down and she is clearly not ready to sleep. So we let her play. We have a child lock on her door and Ryan installed smart lights so he can turn them off from his phone, so we lock her in with her light on and let her just play. Rarely does she play for more than 20 minutes before she puts herself to bed. That’s right. She happily climbs into her bed, tucks herself in, and falls asleep. We love it and she loves it. She doesn’t have anxiety about going to bed or being alone in her room. That’s exactly what we were going for and for the most part it’s working.

#8 Naps

I expected my tiny babies to nap on the go. Car, stroller, in the carseat at a restaurant. Reese once slept through an entire loud, thumping Zumba class lol. I let them sleep as much as possible and tried to never wake them up, even if I worried about it affecting their night sleep – it almost never did.

As often as possible I had them nap in their cribs in their rooms. This got them familiar with the space, even if they were still sleeping in my room for nursing. I basically never held my babies for their naps – I didn’t want them to get used to it and I didn’t want to miss out on that productive time. I’d rather take a shower and then be able to give her undivided attention when she was awake.

When Reese dropped her nap I tried to maintain the structure with “quiet time.” I still put her in her room for at least an hour, shooting more for the 2 hours she had been napping. I’ll pull out Legos or sometimes give her the iPad with letter games and Disney movies. I plan to do the same with Loney if/when she drops her nap. This week Reese actually climbed in bed during quiet time and fell asleep !!!!!

The effectiveness of all of this into the future remains to be seen, of course. Loney will drop her nap eventually (praying she keeps it longer than Reese – 22 months). We’ll probably move them in together at some point. I could get a super colicky baby that can’t do cry-it-out. Who knows. I have never professed to have the definitive sleep philosophy.

I just get at least one question a week about it, and I have my answers. We have done our homework. We feel strongly. We’ve figured things out, applied principles, and did our best. And we’re really happy with the balance we’ve found. Our girls sleep at least 10 hours a night, closer to 12 most nights. We can sleep up to that too, if we go to bed and wake up at the same times.

Usually it means we get a couple of hours for HBO before bed and an hour or two of work, scripture study, cleaning, or other kidless tasks before they wake up. But lets be real – I’m taking that opportunity to sleep till 10 as often as I possibly can fam.