Robbie (00:02)
All right, everyone, this is the episode that if you are a parent or if you're going to be a parent pretty soon, or if you want to be a parent someday, this is the episode that you're going to want to listen to today. I'm going to be jumping into sleep training and how it's really helped set up my family for success to get sleep. Now that being said, I still have sleepless nights and going through the whole process, having newborns, having toddlers, going through all the different sleep stages and sleep regressions, man, it is a pain in the ass and it doesn't matter.

If you have the best sleep training program in the world, you are gonna lose out on sleep unless you just decide that you don't care and you're gonna leave your children in their crib screaming their head off for 10 hours a night. You're not gonna sleep super well when you first become a parent, but there are ways to kind of ease into making sure that your kids have good night's sleep, that they get nine, 10, 11, 12 hours of sleep and that you can get six, seven, eight hours of sleep with them as well.

And when I start going through this episode and I'm going to be giving out some advice and what what has worked for my family, there's always those parents that just, are like, I don't want to have a schedule. I'm not that kind of parent. I'm going to let my kid dictate what they want. They're going to be fine no matter what. I don't need to put them to bed at eight o'clock. If they stay up a little bit later, like whatever, it's fine. They're going to live. Cool. You're 100 percent right. You're you're right. Your kids are going to live. They're going to survive. Everyone's got to find what's best for them and for their family. And if for you, it's

You don't give a shit if your kid doesn't sleep well or your kid sleeps well no matter what. That's 100 % fine. I'm not sitting here telling you that you have to do whatever it is that I'm telling you to do. I'm just going to say what worked for my family, what we decided to do, and why the reasons are that it did work for us, where it helped me, where it didn't necessarily help me. And if you are interested in this stuff, you can pick and choose where you want to go. Because there's one thing that I know, is that when I had my second born,

I did not get very good sleep. I started waking up at like four in the morning during that time. And that's when I started doing like my morning routine, which there's, guess there's some good that came out of that. But also I was up throughout the night and my child would wake up at one in the morning and he wouldn't go back to bed till three, four in the morning. My average sleep score from like that first eight months was probably three and a half to four and a half hours of sleep nightly. And that first couple of weeks,

It was probably like two hours of sleep at night, if that. And I don't say all of this to scare people off. I definitely think you should have kids. Having kids is the greatest. There's a lot of great things that come along with it. But sleeping is one of those hard spots where you have to figure out the best way to get your children to sleep for as long as they can possibly go to sleep. That way you have time to do shit you want to do at night. Or you could just go to bed when they do and try and actually get eight, nine hours of sleep.

I also wanted to give credit where credit's due because we didn't come up with all of these ideas or methods or philosophies, I guess you would call them. We didn't come up with those things. So for us, we utilize taking care of babies. We purchased a couple of her programs, went through those, really went through the program and tried to follow it as best we could. And then we kept it for our second child. And God willing, we have our third one. We'll utilize it for that as well.

She breaks it down and she kind of makes it very easy, very digestible on what you should be doing. And she's very empathetic with you and says that it's okay. And, you know, she does a good job with all that stuff. She's on Instagram. She's got her program that she sells. She gives a lot of free advice as well. You could always just like look up if you're having an issue with sleeping, you can look up her page and she probably has a free answer to it. But her program was good. I really liked it. It really dumbed it down for idiots like me.

that don't know what the fuck they're doing with kids, especially when I was a new dad. Now I'm a seasoned pro, but back then I was just some clueless asshole who didn't know what the hell he was doing. I barely knew how to change a fucking diaper.

And if you don't necessarily want to spend as much money on the taking care of babies program, it's not, you know, ridiculously expensive, but it is pricey. And you are someone who can read. There's a book called baby wise. It's essentially the same concepts. It's just not as broken down. It's not like in PDF form, not bullet pointed. You'd have to go through, actually read through and then make your own notes on it. But that book follows essentially from, what I remember it, they're essentially very similar programs.

And actually the biggest thing that was beneficial to me as a new dad from the whole sleep training perspective and from the whole trying to figure stuff out was just the fact that these systems really are more so about like a baby's natural cycle. And there were times that my kid would be screaming or crying or fussy and I didn't know what the hell was going on. And it really breaks it down into like your child.

really only needs or wants to do a few things during the day and at night time, right? Your kid's gonna wanna eat, your kid's gonna have to poop and pee, your kid is gonna wanna play for like a little bit, a little bit of awake time, and then your kid's gonna wanna sleep. These are the main things right here. And if you don't know the timeframes that those go within, right, if you don't know I need to wait, three hours after my baby eats, it's gonna wanna eat again.

depending on what stage you're in, right? All of this is broken down by how old they are. But, it's been three hours since my baby ate last and he's really fussy. And I don't know what the hell's going on. it could be that he's hungry or it's like he last woke up from his last nap two and a half hours ago. He might be getting tired or maybe he's got to poop in his pants. And I got to change that, right? Just by knowing that the certain areas where, you know, like what the cycle is and what those timeframes are.

it'll help you deduce what's possibly wrong because your kid can't just be like, hey, dad, I'm fucking hungry. Give me some booby milk here. Right? That's not going to happen. So you've got to make sure that you're the one who understands what those cycles are. You go there and then you give your child whatever you think that they're going to potentially need at that time.

And that was helpful to me, just because like I said, I was a clueless idiot dad, know what the fuck I was doing. And having these different timeframes, if mom wasn't around to spoon feed me what I needed to know, I was able to kind of come in, deduce the situation, and then help resolve whatever the issue was for the kid.

So yeah, our family, it's been really helpful. We really like it. We're going to continue to utilize that. We're still utilizing it right now. We just went through. You remember me talking a couple of months ago how my second born was not sleeping. He was being a little terror at night. I wasn't getting any sleep whatsoever. We had to go back to the basics through sleep training and got him. Now he's sleeping through the night. Most of the time he's sleeping a little bit longer than morning. I mean, shoot, it's five 48 right now. He's still asleep.

help it incurs myself and that he pops up and starts wailing his head off. But it's been helpful. We like it. We're going to continue going down that path. And I'm just going to kind of break down a little bit on what the system is and how you can potentially utilize it. And like I said, if you're a parent who's struggling with it right now, or if you're going to be a parent or if you want to be a parent in the future, right? These could be tips that you may look into and can utilize in your parenting strategy.

And some people really hate the word like the term sleep training. It's like, well, why am I training my kid? I don't give a shit what you call it. Sleep training, sleep practice, sleeping. It doesn't fucking matter. It's just there to try and help you and your kids get some sleep, get some rest so that way you can be the best people, best parents, best kids you could possibly be. No one fucking likes to be super tired. Kids are the same way. Before all of this.

before ever having kids, if you would have told me what the concept of being overly tired was, I'd have been like, that makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever. There's no way that's real. Shut up. You can't be so tired that you're not going to fall asleep. It's real. It is real. If you don't know what being overly tired is, it's when you don't get your kid to bed on time and they are so fucking tired that all they can do is scream their head off because they can't put themselves to sleep.

and they're in so much discomfort and so much disarray, like you basically have to shock their system out of this state of being overtired to like get them to finally fall asleep. And it's not fun. That's where you that's like the danger zone. You don't want to get overly tired, especially when it's nighttime. And you just want to go to bed as well.

Anyhoo, it's into the system. Just very briefly, I am not the taking care of babies course. I am not the book baby wise. I am not here to break down exactly what you need to do, but just like a basic overview. So that way, if you are interested in this stuff and you think that it could be a route that you and your family want to go, or like I said, if you're struggling right now with it, check it out. But essentially the whole model of

the sleep training system that we utilize was making sure that you keep within those wake windows, right? It's all about wake windows during the day. And then it's all according to whatever age they're at, right? If they're six months old, if they're nine months old and these, these wake windows and these feeding periods all change and these nap schedules all change. But you essentially have this loose schedule of times that the children should be sleeping during the day, should be napping when they should be eating.

And then also when they should be going to bed at night and trying to follow that when they're very, very newborn, when they're, you know, fresh out the womb, you are not going to be doing any sleep training whatsoever. You are going to be you and your spouse or whoever's helping you. Or if you're doing it by yourself, fucking God help you. You're just going to be feeding that child pretty much constantly. And then.

they're going to be sleeping on you for a good portion of the time. You'll probably get them to sleep once in a while, but there is no such thing as like sleep training during those first couple of months, right? You can practice, you can do some of these things, but it's really not going to have a huge impact. That child is completely dependent on you and they are, they are a heavy, heavy load to carry during that time. So all you can really do is stock up on caffeine, try and sleep when you can.

and hopefully get some help from other people so that way you can rest as well. But once you start getting into the timeframe where it's appropriate for you to start doing the sleep training, essentially what you're trying to do is, staying within those sleep schedules, staying within the feeding times. That's a big thing is making sure that they're getting enough food in during the day and enough wake time during the day and activity during the day so that at nighttime they don't need as much, right? It's all about filling that tank up.

especially when they're when they're little, if you're if you're breastfeeding or if you're doing formula, they've got a certain tank, they've got a certain amount of calories that they need to intake, you want to try and get as much in during the day, within reason that you possibly can. So that way they can make it a little bit longer at night that that way they don't wake up every two hours crying wanting more milk.

So you stick with that. You stick with that program. And then you also try to help your baby eventually to self-soothe. It's not a let me stick my child in the crib and let them cry themselves to sleep. We did not go that route. We didn't necessarily want to sit there and let our child just cried out, let them sit in there for half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour, just screaming their head off and listening to them or turning off the monitor. We just we didn't feel like that was going to be

the best route to go. Some people will do it. I'm sure that if you are over the age of 45 or even if you're just more of a hard-nosed parent right now and you're not a quote unquote gentle parent, which like I said, I'm not a gentle parent, full contact parent here, but I take into consideration the feelings of my child because they are a human being.

I'm sure that children have done it. I'm sure that I was left in my crib to scream my head off and I turned out well, okay ish, but I'm not going to go that route. You do want to teach your kid to eventually self soothe. You don't want to have to constantly be going in there all the time, especially as they get older. And so it's all about like little increments, right? When they get to the age where it's appropriate and they start to cry or whine a little bit, you know, you let them go two minutes with some crying.

See if they can self soothe, put themselves back to sleep. If they don't, you go in there, you calm them down, and then you put them back in. If they keep on crying, you incrementally elongate whatever that timeframe is that you're waiting to go in there while they're crying. And sometimes it can get pretty long, right?

with our second born, he was older when we had to go back to sleep training. He was, you know, one and a half over one years old and he was having like temper tantrums and wouldn't go back to sleep. And so we eventually got to where it was almost like 30 minutes, but we would go back in. It was like five minutes, then eight minutes, then 10 minutes, then whatever. And like we had to do that. And he just, every time we went in, it's almost like we restarted the cycle over until he eventually started to learn like, Hey,

They're not going to just come back just because I'm screaming, right? They're taking care of me. But he eventually learned how to self-soothe. And after a couple of weeks, we were able to put him in the crib. And he would still be awake. And he would put himself to sleep. He'd kind of fuck around in there for a little bit and be like, dude, just go to bed. We'd be watching him. And he's sitting in there playing with stuffed animals and twirling his hair and fucking kicking the wall and stuff. But he wasn't screaming his head off.

Wasn't screaming his head off. He'd eventually fall asleep. And once he put himself to sleep from being awake, man, it was golden. He would stay asleep for seven, eight, nine, 10 hours sometimes. This is the program that we use with both kids. We got lucky with our first one. He was a great sleeper. He fell right into the program. He's still a pretty good sleeper. We went through some ups and downs. You're always going to have these ups and downs that come along with it, right? When your kid gets a little bit older, they're going to start having nightmares.

they're going to walk into your room, scare the shit out of you. Just this morning, my kid at one in the morning, my eldest, because the other one's still in the crib. Luckily, the eldest walked in was like grabbing my feet and like, like grabbing my fucking some ASMR for you guys right there, right? Grabbing my feet, pulling on them, saying daddy, like, and I woke up, put him back to bed. He had a bad dream and

and then I came back to bed once I got him back to sleep.

Anyways, you're gonna be going through these cycles constantly with your kids, but just having this firm foundation of good sleep, good habits is a good way to set your children up for success when they're older. I don't want my kids to be like me where they can't fucking sleep in or where they don't have the greatest sleep habits. I want them to be able to have good sleep, get good sleep and set themselves up well for success during the day.

And yeah, that's, that's our experience with the sleep training, just a little basic overview of what sleep training is, how we implemented it, and just some of the success stories that came about. Right? Like I said, my, youngest is now putting himself to sleep. Like we'll rock him for a minute, put him in his crib. He'll stay awake for a little bit and then he'll fall, fall asleep. And then our eldest, it's a little bit tougher now. He has like fears. He's at that age where he's afraid of stuff.

And so his nighttime routine has gotten a little bit more tricky where it's like I lay down with him for a minute and then I have to come back and check on him in two minutes. And then I elongate it like, I'm going to come back and check on you in three minutes. He falls asleep fairly quickly now, but that has become a little bit more of a longer thing. But that's more so just because he's older. He has thoughts, feelings, all that stuff. And he has these fears that come from movies or from talking to other kids and

We're working through all of that with him.

One piece of advice that I would give to anyone. There's this weird thing with parents. I don't know where the fuck it comes from, but you always want your kids. I fall into it too. I'm not, I'm not greater than now. I also fall into this trend of wanting my kids to hit certain milestones quicker than other kids. I don't know if it's because we think that our kids are fucking better than other kids. Like, my kid walked it eight months or you know, my kid is now sleeping in a big boy bed or like my kid started potty training when he was

five months old or it doesn't matter what the fuck it is. Everyone, there's like this weird sense of accomplishment that you get from having your kids hit these like very generic or regular milestones, like very quickly. And I fall into that as well. I've done it before my second born. He started walking at 10 months. I tell everyone who's a big kid, he's walking, all this stuff. I say all that just to go into the fact that

If I had one piece of advice for you, it would be keep your kid in their fucking crib as long as you possibly can. We had a bunch of people, my eldest, he stayed in his crib until he was almost three years old. We didn't have any issues with him trying to climb out. He never tried to climb out. He never jumped out. He didn't do any of that stuff. He didn't have any big complaints. And so he would stay in his crib all night.

And I'll tell you what, it was great. I didn't have to worry about him trying to escape the room. I didn't have to worry about him like getting up and fucking wandering around the house. He was confined within his crib. We didn't have any issues and it was amazing. And luckily right now, our second born, he's still in the crib too. He's almost two years old. He hasn't tried to jump out. He hasn't tried to do that stuff and it's been amazing. But I've heard, horror stories of you put your kid in a bed too, too quickly and they're not set within their routine.

They get up, they wander, they come into your room, they do all these different things and it can be, yeah, it can be shitty. now that my eldest is able to get out of his bed, that's the struggle is trying to get him to stay in bed in the morning. If he wakes up early, stay in bed for longer, not get up, not wander the house, not wake mom up, not wake the dogs up, not like his brother up. Keep your kid in their crib as long as you possibly can. That's a, just a little piece of.

unsolicited advice for all of you on this show where all I do is give unsolicited advice.

And as I wrap this up right now and I'm looking down at my Nanit app, my eldest is still fast asleep tucked within his blankets. And my youngest is looking straight at the camera with his creepy, weird glowing eyes, twirling his hair. And he has one sock on, one sock off. And then the sockless foot is up on the backboard of the bed as he starts to kick it. And yeah, he's awake.

It is, well, it's 6.01. So that goes to show you right there. This morning routine where he would wake up and start fucking around used to be five o'clock in the morning, 4.30 in the morning, and now 6.01. So I'm going to go ahead and wrap up this episode here. I hope that you enjoyed it. And I know that this is probably more so geared towards current parents or parents who are just about to be. But even if you're not a parent and you

Eventually see yourself having kids which I highly suggest. I know that it's you know scary I know you're not gonna get a ton of sleep and I know that it's hard fucking work, but it's definitely worth it having kids is great I'll always say it having kids was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me besides Getting married to my wife who was able to you know, make these two little little best friends for me

But yeah, I hope that you enjoyed the episode and I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up there.