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Hello, and welcome to the first installment of the NYT Parenting newsletter! I’m Jess Grose, the lead editor of Parenting, and the mom of two girls who are 6 and almost 3. I’ll be your guide each week as we discuss all the issues affecting your fertility, babies and kids and your lives with them. In May, we’ll be launching our own fancy website full of evidence-based guidance, news and personal stories. And we’re sharing some new articles in this newsletter to give you a taste of the full Parenting experience.
One piece we’re excited to run this week explores how to get your kids to share a room without killing each other. It’s a subject dear to my heart, as my children have been splitting a bedroom with varying degrees of success for a while now.
My 6-year-old is a stereotypical first born. She never met a rule she didn’t like to follow or enforce on her little sister with an iron fist. She’s always been an excellent sleeper — my husband and I were those jerks who barely had to sleep train our first baby. She just started sleeping a solid 12 hours a night from 6-months old; no muss, no fuss.
Her little sister, however, is an agent of chaos. For a nine-month period early on (or was it a full year? I honestly blocked it out), she awoke between 4 and 5 a.m. Every. Single. Day. Right before she turned 2, she finally started sleeping until 6:30 a.m. in the same room as her big sister, and going to bed without much drama around 7:30 p.m. … until about a month ago, when she figured out that her bedtime is a scam.
I could see the realization dawning on her. All this time, she’d been just going to bed because we told her to, but what was in it for her? One night she asked, “Why I have to go to bed before sissy?” and started refusing to go to sleep earlier than her older sister. So we moved her bedtime to 8:30 p.m. Then, she started refusing to go to bed until 10 p.m. We tried sticker charts, where she’d earn a pony sticker of her choosing if she stayed in bed without getting up 47 times for hugs, glasses of water, tummy rubs. She did not care one bit about those sticker charts.
What ended up working for us is something that Craig Canapari, M.D., the author of our room-sharing article and the director of the Yale Pediatric Sleep Center suggested in his piece. We put our oldest to sleep at 8:30 p.m., then let the little one come back into our bedroom to read another book or two, and put her to bed at 9 p.m. It’s counterintuitive, but as Dr. Canapari, who is also the author of the forthcoming book, “It’s Never Too Late to Sleep Train,” pointed out, if your younger child is still napping, she’s getting more total sleep even if she goes to bed a bit later at night than her older siblings. Ideally Lil’ Chaos would be going to bed earlier than 9 p.m., but it’s still an improvement.
P.S. — If you’re enjoying this newsletter, sign up to receive it in your inbox. (Know a sleepless parent? Forward it to them.)
Want More on Kids and Sleep?
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In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that parents share a room with their babies, “ideally for the first year of life.” That year, Claire Cain Miller and Aaron E. Carroll explained why that recommendation should not be taken as gospel if it doesn’t work for your family. The evidence for sharing a room for a full year, they wrote, “is not conclusive, and doctors need to understand the trade-offs before demanding that parents follow the recommendation.” Trade-offs might include parental sleep, sanity and a sex life.
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Our friends at Wirecutter — a product review site owned by The New York Times — put together a guide of their favorite books and gear for putting their kids to sleep. My personal lifesaver has been a variety of white noise machines.
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Maria Russo, the children’s books editor at The Times, recommends the book, “The New Small Person” by Laura Child, for kids who must make room for a new sibling in their private space. “Child really captures the tragedy of the situation for little Elmore,” Russo said. “But the ending may surprise even those most opposed to room-sharing.”
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If you’re struggling with your kid and sleep, you can find solace in this cartoon from the brilliant Emily Flake in The New Yorker, which includes the sentence, “But what is parenting if not an exercise in eating your own words?”
Tiny Victory
Every week we’re going to publish a “Tiny Victory” from a Parenting reader. Tiny Victories are meant to celebrate the little accomplishments that get you through the hardest days. No one wants to hear about how you potty trained your 9-month-old. Everyone wants to hear about how you tricked your children into going to sleep in the same room at a reasonable hour. See below for our first installment.
The only way to get my 3-year-old daughter’s shoes on was to play “shoe store.” If I pretended to sell her the shoes, she allowed me to put them on her feet.
— Camilla Okamoto, Philadelphia
If you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; or email us. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style.
Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us.