Better Sleep, Happier Families : Sleep Expert Provides Tips for Babies, Toddlers, and School-Age Kids

In this episode, Kelly talks with certified pediatric sleep specialist, Erin Boswell about the biggest sleep challenges families face, from bedtime battles and night wakings to naps, transitions out of the crib, and travel sleep. Erin shares practical, parent-friendly strategies for building better sleep habits without turning bedtime into a nightly fight. We discuss why consistency matters, how to handle crying during sleep training, and how to protect sleep routines as children grow older. Erin also explains how much sleep kids need by age and why healthy sleep supports behavior, learning, and family wellbeing.

Key topics

• Kelly opens by connecting sleep to brain health, emotional regulation, immune support, attention, and overall family functioning.
• Erin shares tips for a simple bedtime routine and explains importance of the nightly routines.
• Erin provides suggestions to support bedtime boundaries and morning wake-ups.
• Kelly and Erin both discuss using visual supports, including social stories and picture charts, to help children feel safer and more confident at bedtime.
• Erin explains sleep training as teaching a new skill, not abandoning a child, and describes protest crying as short-term and responsive rather than prolonged cry it out.
• Night waking is discussed through the lens of schedule, hunger, temperature, sleep associations, and whether the child is overtired or undertired.
• Erin breaks down naps and wake windows, emphasizing that daytime sleep and nighttime sleep affect each other and that sleep pressure matters.
• She provides suggestions for the the crib to bed transition.
• Travel sleep tips to mimic the home sleep environment.
• For school-age kids, Kelly and Erin stress the importance of protecting bedtime as activities and late practices increase, because overtired kids struggle with behavior, focus, and mood.
• Erin shares age-based sleep ranges and notes that growth hormone production is heavily tied to sleep, especially for growing kids and athletes.

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