Sunday 19th March 2017
Sleep Training and Down Syndrome
Interview with Melissa Doman
Do you jiggle, cuddle or rock your child to sleep at night? Is it wearing you down and putting a strain on your personal life? If the answer is Yes, the solution lies here.*
* This is not treatment for sleep apnea
According to Sleep Consultant Melissa Doman with a bit of support your child could be sleeping independently within two weeks. Romance will blossom once again in your relationship and your sanity will be restored. This is a therapy definitely worth looking into.
I first met Melissa at the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP) in Philadelphia. She is the charming wife of Director Spencer Doman and when I decided to start the Sunday Sessions I couldn’t wait to speak to her about her additional role as Sleep Consultant. Melissa works at the IAHP and has worked with brain injured children for many years. She is a delight to know and I highly recommend her to anyone who, like me, is still using outdated tactics to get their child to sleep.
Gab: well I had this idea to do some interviews and you were top of my list so to start with, will you tell me how you got involved and what was it about the sleep sense, about Dana Oberman’s Sleep Sense program, how did you get involved?
Melissa: I initally heard about it from a family on the Program and this mom had a 19 month old severely brain injured little boy and he was waking her up twenty times per night, and she said “i’ve had it’, i need to sleep!” because they had just started the Intensive Treatment Program, and she was like ‘i’m not going to be able to keep going if I’m not sleeping well.
“me and my husband just stare at each other, it’s like what do we do now?”
So she did the program with him and within a few weeks he’d gone from twenty night time wake ups to maybe one. And she was getting him to bed by seven o’clock, she said ‘me and my husband just stare at each other, its like what do we do now?’.
Gab: because they have all this free time now, wow!
Melissa: yeah, this was about three years ago now, and what we started to do was to recommend the program to more and more families. I was coaching them through the book and then one day I just enquired, i was like “what kind of training program do you have?”.
It was a three day conference, I went and got certified and now here I am as a sleep sense consultant. Its been a great and interesting first few months as an official consultant.
Gab: I bet. I was telling you when we first started the conversation that my daughter Suri…being a Naturopath i give her all the herbs and vitamins that I know are going to help her sleep, but she can still be very naughty at bedtime, and we’ve got into this bad routine of jiggling her to bed, and so we know we need to transition now, because she’s nearly three, to going to sleep on her own, and she wants that too, but we struggle with that transition, so i think probably that happens to alot of parents, they get into a bad routine or bad habits of jiggling or patting or putting in the car or the stroller or whatever works to get them to sleep and then by the time they’re three or four, they’re just too heavy…
“recognising kids are brilliant and they’re geniuses at cause and effect, and the earlier that you can teach kids how to sleep on their own independently the better”
Melissa: yeah and what i liked about Dana’s program was that you know just reading through the book your realise its just like, she’s recognising kids are brilliant and they’re geniuses at cause and effect, and the earlier that you can teach kids how to sleep on their own independently the better and she gives really gentle guidelines to how to start doing that but its based on the premise that kids are brilliant, you can teach kids anything and that even means being able to fall asleep and have really good sleep habits on your own, no matter what age…
Gab: and that includes children with brain injury as well, you can still teach them…
Melissa: well that’s the thing, when I took the conference you know, the consultants were told not to take any clients with reflux or with colic, and i was like I know so many failure to thrive kids, you can do it with anybody, so i just sat there quietly taking my notes but that’s exactly it, if you see that brain injured kid as just a kid and we’re teaching you how to sleep on your own that’s all you need to succeed with it.
Gab: So why don’t they want you to train children with colic and reflux?
Melissa: well, the issue can be if reflux and colic are so bad it may just be flat out uncomfortable for the child to be put down independently, so of your dealing with an issue like that and you’re trying to sleep train it can be a challenge, especially colicy babies, they can cry for no apparent reason and they can cry for a really long time. In those cases, Dana recommends waiting until the colic is over or reflux has subsided more or less to start sleep training. What I have on my side is that I see kids with reflux in my office all the time and then I know what to recommend from a nutritional standpoint to start addressing it, so you know, i’ve not dealt with too many clients where reflux was really a big problem, it maybe was before, and that may be why the child had certain dependency’s on mom or dad to fall asleep, so that was Dana’s reasoning behind it.
Gab: so what you’re saying is you have the skills to treat the reflux first or the IAHP do, as well, and then its not an issue implementing the sleep programme. So, can you describe for me the approach the sleep programme uses to get children to sleep.
Melissa: right, so again the basic premise is that the goal is to teach your baby, your infant, your toddler to learn how to sleep on their own and for most kids, probably 99% of the kids that have sleep issues, they have some kind of prop dependency to fall asleep. So, when its time to start sleep training, depending on the age of the child, basically its like look if you’re dependent on rocking for two hours just to fall asleep, its not happening anymore, um, and there is a very gradual approach where mum or dad just basically slowly move themselves out of the room in order to get baby to fall asleep independently, but you also want to teach the brain and body to associate a certain place, a certain group of activities with falling asleep and the more consistently you follow that, the easier its going to be to remove the prop dependency, at the end of the day
Gab: so it’s about changing their habits really, or what they’re associating sleep with
Melissa: right.
Gab: and I think that’s where the support comes in, it would be quite difficult for parents to understand that or to try to implement that on their own, it’s obviously something that takes a few weeks to change
“i’ve talked to some families who’ve tried to do things on their own… and then they end up resorting to old habits and they’re back to where they started”
Melissa: exactly, I think if you ask alot of parents they know deep down what they have to do to fix the problem, it’s just taking that final step, and someone holding your hand through the process can be really important, and i’ve talked to some families who’ve tried to do things on their own, they tried a few nights, he was not happy, not having it, and then they end up resorting to old habits and they’re back to where they started.
Gab: frustrating…um, so my next question is, does your sleep programme require some basic training for parents? do they have to read the book first? do they just have a Skype session with you? What’s the first step for parents?
Melissa: right, so there’s no training needed before hand, I mean certainly I’ve worked with parents who have read the sleep sense book, again they know what they have to do, but they want the extra help and support. But no, what happens is that I send a questionnaire to parents asking them just about how the child falls asleep, how many night time wake ups, what naps are like etc etc and based on that, I would create a custom sleep plan for that child and then i can meet with the family in person or do a Skype session to go over it, um, and then for the two weeks after that they have unlimited email support with me, and then I will do at least four follow up call to see how things are going and to tweak the programme as needed
Gab: and I think that’s really what parents need, as we’ve been discussing, its not that they don’t know what to do, its that they need the support because parents are exhausted. Parents who aren’t on the ITP are exhausted, parents who are on the ITP are more exhausted and support means everything
“at 3am in the morning all you want to do is go to sleep and that’s when parents resort to bringing the child into bed”
Melissa: and the issue with sleep is that at 3am in the morning all you want to do is go to sleep and that’s when parents resort to bringing the child into bed or you know, going in and rocking them, and its just because they want their rest too.
Gab: and I mean I think alot of these parents are so sleep deprived themselves, you know, they’re really wandering around like zombies most of the time and um, yeah, its probably difficult for them to implement alot of other things outside of the program that they are already doing, so, i can see that support is invaluable
Melissa: well i don’t know if they have this term in Australia but in America moms who are super sleep deprived are called mombie’s
Gab: mombies…ah…I love it! we’re going to start using that now, mombies, I’ll make that the headline when i write your article…calling all Mombies…mom-zombies…hahahah…that’s awesome. Ok, moving right along, how long does it take before a child is sleeping right through the night without any rocking or coercing?
Melissa: Its two weeks for a reason and that’s simply because um, it really takes two weeks to get a good consistent, change out of the child and depending on how old they are, how long they’ve been dependent on something, um, you know that transition may take a little while longer, now some kids are super prop dependent, you take it away and then they’re like this is what we’re doing now and sleep training goes fine, but there are other times when a couple of nights go great then the child tries to test the waters a bit and says ok, what if i try to do this, ah, it can seem like a little bit of a rollercoaster, but by the end of two weeks parents are definitely seeing there’s a huge difference and I’d say basically in all cases the kids are sleeping through the night and on their own by the end of two weeks.
Gab: that’s amazing isn’t it…
Melissa: yeah, i mean its incredible, its wonderful to see parents transform as well and the beautiful thing is that the parents did it, all I did was give you the tools, tell you what you have to do, but you’ve got to be down in the trenches doing it, and I think by the end of two weeks, parents are really empowered they’re like, ‘this is fantastic’ and you know, if you can see even the transformation in them, these parents are so sleep deprived and then afterwards they’re resting, they look much better…
Gab: they look a million dollars…
Spencer: more romance
Gab: and that’s a great way to promote this “get your relationship back”…”have a date night every night”…
“kids are super important, they’re absolutely top of the list, but at a certain point you and your partner need to have time to yourselves as well”
Melissa: yeah and I talk to alot of parents who feel really guilty, i really would like a couple of hours with my husband, and you have to tell them, kids are super important, they’re absolutely top of the list, but at a certain point you and your partner need to have time to yourselves as well, in order to make the whole family unit function
Gab: what is it about the sleep program that makes it so successful?
Melissa: I think the thing that makes it really successful, certainly the kid is conscious that there are changes but what makes it successful is that you’re really changing things on a neurological level – health basis as well, again your teaching the brain and body, this is a place for sleep, this is what we do to start winding down, this is how we start to get into sleep cycle, there are some behavioural things you have to start to address but really for this to work well parents have to be super consistent for those two weeks, but if they are successful, like I said, you’re changing things on a physical and neurological level as well, which i think is really fascinating, yeah
“there must be some children who are going to resist any bedtime changes because they like being cuddled to sleep”
Gab: I forgot to ask, Suri who’s almost three has quite a little personality, and um i can’t imagine that anything we change is going to happen without some degree of cheekiness or retaliation or, there must be some children who are going to resist any bedtime changes because they like being cuddled to sleep.
Melissa: absolutely, and what I tell my parents, is to put it in perspective if I walked into the house and I took your pillow and blanket and said ‘now you’re sleeping on the kitchen floor’ you would also be upset with me
Gab: oh yeah,
Melissa: so anytime you’re changing something that has been habitual, whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing you’re going to get some backlash, but again, parents are going to learn how to navigate that, but again if they see the end goal, sleeping better for their kids, for them that’s all they need to handle any kind of kickbacks there are
Gab: whatever behaviours emerge…so just a quick question to finish off with, um, would you recommend parents buy the book? is it a good book to read, do you think its going to help them or do you think they should just book a session
Melissa: it absolutely totally depends on the parents, certainly, I’ve recommended the book to tons of families who have successfully done the sleep training program with the kids, um, and of course, I’m seeing the child at a certain window in time, you know that one year old is not going to sleep the same, you know they’re going to have a different sleep pattern at three years old and having the book there to know alright what is that going to look like, um, is really important, again if parents are really struggling with it and they need the help, you know, thats what I’m here for, its a great book to read, its super simple and easy to read because it’s designed for sleep deprived parents, and you know it gives all the basic philosophies of sleep training and things like that,
Gab: but like you said if parents are really at the end of their tether and they’re desperate, at that stage they probably don’t really care about reading a book, you just want help and you want it now, so yeah, that’s where you come in, so if there were some parents interested in doing the program with you, what’s the first thing they should do”
Melissa: well, the first thing they should do is contact me and what i would do, is before I take a family for sleep training programme, I do a preliminary call to see if it’s something I could help the child with, or the parents with, at this point, of all the families I’ve talked to I haven’t turned anybody away, you know I even, there was a family that contacted me they had a nine year old who had sleep anxiety, so he would just lie in bed for four hours and convince himself he couldn’t fall asleep, and so, even for older kids alot of the philosophies of this programme will work, um, so for any family who’s interested, I would set up a call with them initially to find out what the main problems are and also I need to feel out parents as well you know sometimes I’ll be contacted by families who want to co-sleep, this is not necessarily a co-sleeping programme, so you know there are some things I’ll ask parents like ‘are you comfortable with these kinda changes i’ll be implementing with you?’, and most parents are like ‘yes, i’m ready to surrender’.
Gab: Melissa and Spencer, it’s been so awesome talking to you both
Melissa: yeah it’s been great talking with you, and I wish you all the best with this new endeavour
