If there’s one parenting topic with the power to send an exhausted parent spiraling down an internet rabbit hole at two in the morning, it’s sleep. Between the sleep coaches, the rigid wake window charts, the cry-it-out debates, and the Instagram accounts telling you exactly how many minutes your newborn should be napping — it’s a lot. And most of it makes parents feel like they’re getting it wrong.
In a recent episode of Kids These Days, I sat down with my longtime friend and colleague Dr. Katherine Wesley — a licensed psychologist and board-certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado — to cut through the noise. What she shared was both genuinely useful and, honestly, a relief. Here’s what every parent needs to hear.
What "Normal" Infant Sleep Actually Looks Like
If you have a newborn and you’re trying to figure out whether they’re sleeping the right amount, Dr. Wesley has some news: for the first six months, there is no normal — and that’s not a dodge. It’s developmental reality.
Babies arrive without a circadian rhythm, meaning their bodies have no concept of day versus night. In those early months, the broad range of what’s expected is fourteen to seventeen hours of sleep per day, spread across any number of stretches, short or long. The goal is not a perfect schedule. It’s following your baby’s cues and making sure they seem content, they’re growing, and they’re getting enough overall.
Around six to eight months, things begin to shift. That’s when a simple, consistent bedtime routine becomes helpful — even something as minimal as feed, change, sleep. As development continues, you can layer in the extras: a song, a book, a little ritual that begins to signal to the brain that rest is coming.
Sleep Training: What It Is and When to Start
Sleep training is one of the most heated topics in parenting culture, and Dr. Wesley approaches it with real nuance. At its core, it’s about teaching a child to fall asleep independently — without needing a parent, bottle, or specific prop present when they drift off.
Her recommendation is to wait until around eight to ten months before beginning. The reason is rooted in a developmental milestone parents may recognize as object permanence — the understanding that people and things still exist when they can’t be seen. Before this milestone develops, leaving the room can feel, to a baby, like disappearing entirely. After it, they can begin to understand that a closed door doesn’t mean you’re gone.
As for the methods themselves, Dr. Wesley is clear: all of them are safe, and all of them work. Cry-it-out produces the most initial resistance but tends to resolve within three to five consistent nights. Gentler approaches move more gradually — checking in at set intervals, slowly increasing distance from the crib, easing back supports one step at a time. The best method is the one your family can actually stick to.
It’s also worth saying: not every child needs sleep training. If co-sleeping or room sharing is the long-term plan for your family, there’s no requirement to pursue independent sleep. And if you want to work on it later — with a toddler, a school-ager, or even an older child — it’s never too late. The window doesn’t close.
Toddler Bedtime Battles: What's Normal and What's Not
Almost every parent of a toddler knows the scene: it’s past eight, the routine has happened twice, and somehow you’re now in a negotiation about which stuffed animals belong in the bed tonight. Completely normal? According to Dr. Wesley, yes — extremely common and developmentally expected.
Kids this age are figuring out that they have a voice, and bedtime is one of their favorite places to use it. A little pushback followed by eventually following the routine is typical. The signs worth paying attention to are when resistance escalates significantly — full tantrums, aggression, or delays stretching an hour or more consistently. At that point, it’s worth asking whether this is isolated to bedtime or part of a broader pattern that shows up during transitions and directions throughout the day.
Dr. Wesley also raised something I found particularly useful: many tasks we associate with a standard bedtime routine — baths, brushing teeth, changing into pajamas — are genuinely activating for many kids, especially those with sensory sensitivities, ADHD, or autism. Their nervous systems can be genuinely dysregulated by those tasks, which can make falling asleep much harder. The solution is simple: move them earlier. Brush teeth after dinner. Take the bath before the wind-down begins. Let the actual bedtime routine be calm and quiet — a song, a book, something that eases the body toward rest.
School-Age Sleep: The Numbers Matter More Than You Think
Once kids are in school, there’s a fixed wake-up time that drives everything else — and that changes the math entirely. School-age children need nine to eleven hours of sleep per night, which is more than most families are accounting for.
Dr. Wesley recommends starting with the wake-up time and counting backwards. If your child needs to be up at seven and needs ten hours of sleep, that means a nine o’clock bedtime — and possibly an earlier start to the routine than you’re currently building in. It’s a simple reframe, but it clarifies the whole picture.
Extracurriculars are a real factor too. Soccer practice that ends at eight makes an eight-thirty bedtime nearly impossible, and sometimes that’s a tradeoff families consciously choose. What matters is watching for the downstream effects: if you notice consistent irritability, trouble paying attention, or mood that seems out of proportion — those are signals that the sleep debt is catching up.
Social Jet Lag Is a Real Thing — And Your Family Might Have It
Here’s something most parents haven’t heard of but really need to: social jet lag. When kids sleep significantly later on weekends than they do during the week, their circadian rhythm begins to drift. By Sunday night, getting back to a school-week schedule can feel genuinely impossible — because biologically, it almost is.
Dr. Wesley recommends keeping bedtime and wake-up time within about an hour of the regular schedule, even on weekends, with the wake-up time being especially important to protect. If your child is sleeping several extra hours every weekend, that’s usually a sign they’re not getting enough during the week — and the weekend isn’t solving the problem, just temporarily masking it.
The One Thing to Start With
When I asked Dr. Wesley what she most wants parents to take away, she kept it simple: keep the bed for sleep only. No phones, no homework, no TV shows. When kids spend time in bed doing other activities, their brains learn that it’s a place to be awake — and that alone can make falling and staying asleep harder.
She also offered something that I think a lot of parents genuinely need to hear: if your child isn’t complaining about sleep, seems generally happy, is growing well, and is functioning okay during the day, they are probably doing fine. Sleep does not have to be perfect. Good enough is, and has always been, enough.
To hear the full conversation with Dr. Katherine Wesley, tune in to the Kids These Days podcast. And if your family is navigating sleep challenges alongside bigger behavioral or developmental questions, the team at Integrated Behavioral Health is here to help.
If you’re looking for more support navigating a transition, a change, or anything else going on with your family this school year, our team at Integrated Behavioral Health is here to help.
- Dr. Katherine Wesley — Children’s Hospital Colorado
- Sign up for the IBH newsletter