4 Sleeping Tips For Babies And Families One expert (Dr. Sasha Carr) weighs in on adjusting to a better sleep schedule for Daylight Savings and beyond.

March 9, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

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Nick Bell New York Family 3/8/13

 

Daylight Savings is kicking in again on Sunday, this time in the dreaded “spring forward” edition. With an hour of sleep to “lose,” we caught up with family sleep expert Sasha Carr, Ph.D., for tips on helping little ones get better sleep.

1. If your baby has a precarious temperament or is still used to multiple naps and feedings every day,gradually adjust his or her schedule over a few days, in increments as small as 15 or 30 minutes. For older children who either nap once per day or not at all, or with children with a more adaptable temperament, Dr. Carr suggests taking the “band-aid” approach–a singular, swift change of the clock without the gradual transitioning.

2. Adapt your child’s entire schedule (not just bedtimes and waking up) to adjust to the transition can also be helpful. That means eating dinner and taking baths earlier, too. However, Dr. Carr still recommends “making the switch on Friday night or Saturday morning rather than Sunday, just to give everyone an extra weekend day to adjust to the change. This is especially helpful if your child is in school.”

3. The amount of light you’re exposed to affects your alertness, so try exposing your family to more bright light in the mornings and dimming the lights or drawing the curtains when it gets closer to bedtime. Even when you’re not adjusting to a different sleep schedule, this is generally conducive to good sleep hygiene.

4. It’s almost spring! As Dr. Carr reminds us, “the sun shows up earlier in the morning and sticks around longer into the evening, [especially] the further north you live.” If you have light-sensitive sleepers, invest in some blackout curtains so that the family doesn’t rouse too early. Plus, they’ll help keep the house warm if a random springtime blizzard hits the city.

Sasha Carr, Ph.D. is a certified child sleep consultant by the Family Sleep Institute and founder of Off To Dreamland. She believes that healthy sleep is essential the whole family, especially mothers who often neglect their own sleep. All members of her family, whether two or four-legged, enjoy the benefits of a good night’s rest.  To read the original article please click the link:http://www.newyorkfamily.com/sleeping-tips-babies-kids-children-families-daylight-savings/?fb_action_ids=10151326841997951&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%2210151326841997951%22%3A555246414496238%7D&action_type_map=%7B%2210151326841997951%22%3A%22og.recommends%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D

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Wake Up Honey! It’s Day Light Saving! – an article featuring FSI Graduate Dr. Sasha Carr tips to keep Teens on track!

March 8, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

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By Diana Simeon

It’s that time of year again: daylight savings, when we turn the clocks forward and, ugh, lose an hour of sleep.

Already wondering how it’s going to go on Monday morning when your teenager’s alarm goes off? Probably not so great, says Sasha Carr, Ph.D., a certified sleep consultant with the Family Sleep Institute and founder of Off to Dreamland.

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“If you have a teenager, you should be concerned,” explains Carr. “It’s going to be rough on them on Monday morning to get up for school.”

Carr has some suggestions for making the transition easier. These include:

Turn your clocks forward early on Friday evening, not late Saturday when you’re headed to bed. Yep, you read that correctly. By changing your household routine two days early, your teenager will have time to adjust to daylight savings over the weekend, making Monday morning all the easier. “Start daylight savings as of dinner on Friday. That gives that cushion of the weekend. It also helps that on Saturday and Sunday morning, your teenager doesn’t have to get up for school.”
Or, if you’d rather ease into it, you can move your clocks forward a half hour on Friday and then another half hour on Saturday, adds Carr.

Don’t let your teenager sleep in. Teenagers are biologically designed to want to go to bed later at night and sleep later in the morning than children and adults. But this weekend in particular, says Carr, parents should get their teenagers up at a reasonable hour. “When a teenager sleeps super late on Saturday or Sunday morning and then has trouble getting up on Monday morning, that’s called weekend jetlag,” explains Carr. “I would suggest, especially this weekend, trying to get them up around 8 a.m.”
Turn off computers, phones and any other devices, even the television, for 30 minutes before bedtime. “Staring at a screen does a number on melatonin, which is the most important sleep hormone we have,” explains Carr. “It’s been shown that just looking at a screen for even 10 seconds in the half hour before you’re trying to go to sleep will affect the secretion of melatonin in the brain … it’s like turning all the lights on in your house.”
The good news, says Carr, is that within a few days, your teenager should have made up for whatever sleep deficit daylight savings causes.

But in the meantime, anticipate some grumpiness.

“Unfortunately, I would put teenagers in the group that has the hardest time with daylight savings,” says Carr. “But they eventually make up for it because they’ll start to go to bed earlier once they make the adjustment.”

Daylight savings starts at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 10. To read the original article go here: http://yourteenmag.com/2013/03/daylight-savings-teenagers/

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Graduates Sited As Experts

October 19, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Avoiding sleep problems while traveling: http://www.parenting.com/blogs/are-we-there-yet-traveling-kids/matt-villano/grappling-sleep-issues-and-after-big-trip
FSI Experts Sited: Jennifer Metter of Jenni June, Dr. Sasha Carr of Off to Dreamland, and Kerrin Edmonds of Meet You in Dreamland

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Amazing!!! 3 FSI Graduates give their recommendations for this article for parenting.com, yes, I did say 3 of our FSI Graduates!!!!!!

March 28, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

So proud of my graduates:  Jennifer Metter, Kerrin Edmonds, and Dr. Sasha Carr

 

Grappling with sleep issues on (and after) a big trip

March 27, 2012
Parenting.com
On (and after) our most recent trip to British Columbia, sleep was a big issue for yours truly and the gang.
© Matt Villano

We’ve been home from our most recent vacation for about 72 hours now, which means our little girls are suffering from what I like to call the post-trip Sleep Slog.

R, the baby, is totally off her game. Predictable 40-minute naps have devolved into random two-hour benders. Even worse: she has been awakening for her first feeding around 11:30 p.m., only five hours after she goes down for the night (previously she’d hold out until at least 2 or 2:30 a.m.).

L, our toddler, has it even worse, resisting naps all together, then fighting bedtime by jumping out of bed an average of 11 times per night. She’s also waking up at ungodly hours—the first morning it was 4 a.m., yesterday it was 4:30.

(Sadly, I am neither joking nor exaggerating.)

Unfortunately these troubles are par for the course; we travel a lot, and whenever we get home, it takes a while for the girls to get back into the swing of things. Add to this the troubles they usually have sleeping on the road in a different room and under different environmental conditions, and…well, let’s just say we grown Villanos have brewed through a lot of coffee around here lately.

Determined to get to the bottom of this phenomenon, I reached out to a number of sleep experts for their take on what I (and therefore you, dear readers) can do to avoid this debacle the next time around. Here’s some advice:

  • Stick to the schedule. Kids are creatures of habit, which means that keeping them in step with their biological sleep rhythms is key. If they’re itching to stay up later than usual, make a concerted effort to get bedtime back to normal. “Most parents mistakenly believe that if their child is up late he or she can make it up by sleeping in the next morning, or take a long nap later on,” says Jennifer Metter, a certified family sleep consultant in California.  “Unfortunately that is rarely the case.”
  • Stick to the set-up. Metter added that parents always should aim for sleeping arrangements that tactically mirror those at home. In other words, unless you co-sleep at home, avoid sharing a king-sized hotel bed with your kids. If options are limited, request a cot for your toddler, or fashion a makeshift “bed” out of couch cushions. If there’s no way around a co-sleeping arrangement, arrange pillows strategically to preserve the spirit of separate sleeping quarters.
  • Pay attention to details. Try your best to recreate a comfortable sleep environment, too. If your child relies on a sound machine in his bedroom at home, shell out a few bucks for a white-noise app for your Smartphone (I use BlackBerry, and swear by this one from TMSoft) and use it on the road. Dr. Sasha Carr, a psychologist and sleep expert in New York City, suggests that parents also consider bringing an improvised room-darkening kit by using a dark bedsheet with big hairclips for temporary curtains.
  • Bring totems. Most kids have special blankets, stuffed animals or other totems in which they find ultimate comfort. For my daughter, (as much as I wish it were an Ansel Adams photograph or Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”) it’s Minnie Mouse. Kerrin Edmonds, another family sleep consultant in California, says it’s important to bring these items with you when you hit the road. “Things may be different, but at least they’ll have that one familiar thing to take to bed with them,” she notes.

The bottom line: On the road, the whole sleep thing ain’t easy. No matter how well you plan ahead, no matter how diligent you try to be, after a vacation your children will experience some degree of adjustment. To deal with this, Edmonds preached that parents should practice patience. “As long we expect it, re-adjusting won’t be bad, just like Daylight savings,” she said. “As soon as you’re home, jump right back into your normal schedule and supplement with early bedtimes until you have caught up on your children’s sleep debt.”

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