Understanding the core principles of sleep biology can be a game-changer for your sleep coaching practice. By mastering these concepts, you can achieve remarkable results for your clients without resorting to unresponsive sleep training techniques. In this guide, I’ll share five proven steps that will not only deepen your knowledge of sleep biology but also transform your approach to sleep coaching, leading to sustainable success in your business.
Sleep biology might sound like a dry or intimidating topic, especially if you have memories of confusing science classes. But I’m here to tell you that it’s far from boring. In fact, it’s the secret weapon that can help you solve even the most challenging sleep issues with ease and confidence. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to elevate your sleep coaching business, understanding sleep biology will empower you to make a deeper impact on the families you support.
In this blog, you’ll learn how to assess sleep needs accurately, optimize sleep schedules, and implement holistic strategies that respect each child’s unique sleep patterns. By the end, you’ll have a clear, actionable pathway to improving your clients’ sleep—and growing your sleep coaching business to new heights.
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What is Sleep Biology?
When we talk about sleep biology, what exactly do we mean? Sleep biology encompasses the various biological processes that regulate sleep, including factors like circadian rhythms, environmental influences, and individual chronotypes. It also delves into concepts such as sleep pressure—the natural buildup of the need for sleep—and the interaction between circadian rhythms and homeostatic control, which together determine when and how long we sleep.
Moreover, sleep biology examines how the body’s stress response, sensory regulation, and even neurodivergence can impact sleep quality. Genetics and epigenetics also play crucial roles in shaping sleep patterns, behaviors, and habits, making each person’s sleep needs unique.
For any holistic sleep coach aiming to deliver truly effective support, a deep understanding of these elements is essential. Mastery of sleep biology allows you to tailor your approach to each client’s individual needs, leading to better outcomes without resorting to unresponsive sleep training methods. However, given the breadth of this topic, today we’ll focus on one key aspect that can make a significant difference in your sleep coaching practice—assessing sleep needs and understanding sleep totals.
Why Start with Sleep Needs?
Why is assessing sleep needs the first step in any sleep coaching strategy? Simply put, understanding whether a child’s sleep pattern meets their biological needs is crucial because it shapes every subsequent decision in the coaching process. This foundational question—Is this child’s sleep pattern meeting their needs?—guides the entire approach to improving sleep for the family.
Before diving into other important considerations, such as the sustainability of the sleep routine, potential underlying problems, or whether the sleep pattern is optimal, the priority must be ensuring the child is getting enough sleep. If this basic need isn’t met, any other adjustments or strategies are unlikely to be effective.
Knowing the child’s sleep needs helps you make informed, evidence-based decisions that can significantly enhance the quality of sleep—and life—for the entire family. Without this knowledge, you’re essentially navigating in the dark, unable to make the precise adjustments needed to improve sleep patterns.
Why Does This Matter So Much?
Why is understanding and adjusting sleep needs so critical? It’s because some of the simplest adjustments—like tweaking bedtime and nap timings—can lead to dramatic improvements in a child’s sleep quality. These small changes can reduce nighttime wakings, improve daytime behavior, and address issues like early rising, prolonged bedtimes, false starts, and split nights.
What’s even better is that these changes are gentle and stress-free. There’s no need for crying, no stressful situations for parents, and no disruptive methods. It’s a straightforward, effective approach that can make a world of difference for the entire family.
However, this approach only works if you have a deep understanding of sleep biology and the individual sleep needs of the child you’re working with. Without this knowledge, even well-intentioned adjustments might not yield the desired results. But with the right insights, you can make these simple yet powerful changes that significantly enhance the child’s sleep—and by extension, the family’s well-being.
How Do I Figure Out Whether a Child is Getting Enough Sleep?
Determining whether a child is getting enough sleep starts with understanding that sleep needs can vary widely from one child to another. To assess this accurately, it’s crucial to move beyond the rigid, one-size-fits-all recommendations often promoted by mainstream sleep training methods.
Many popular sleep training guidelines suggest that all children need 12 hours of overnight sleep plus lengthy naps. However, these figures are often unrealistic and not supported by global research. In reality, sleep needs are highly individualized and influenced by factors such as age, culture, genetics, and overall health.
The key is to recognize that there is a range of normal sleep totals. For instance, while some children may thrive on 12 hours of sleep at night, others may only need 8 or 9 hours, especially when considering their naps during the day. Understanding this variability allows you to tailor your sleep coaching strategies to meet the specific needs of each child, rather than adhering to rigid standards that might not be appropriate.
By taking a holistic approach to assess a child’s sleep needs, you can ensure that the recommendations you provide are evidence-based and truly supportive of the child’s well-being.
How Big is the Variation in Sleep Needs?
It’s tempting to rely on one-size-fits-all sleep recommendations—they’re easy to remember and seem straightforward. However, following these rigid guidelines can set your clients up for frustration and failure. The truth is, sleep needs vary significantly from one child to another, and understanding this variation is key to effective sleep coaching.
Research underscores just how wide this range can be. For instance, a study by Hirshkowitz and colleagues suggests that newborns typically need between 14 and 17 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. As children grow, this range narrows, with 4- to 11-month-olds needing 12 to 15 hours, and children aged 1 to 3 years requiring 11 to 14 hours.
But even these averages don’t tell the full story. A more recent study by Paavonen et al. found that at just 3 months old, the range of total sleep in 24 hours could be as little as 6 hours or as much as 20 hours, with an average of 14.4 hours. Importantly, this included just 9 hours of overnight sleep on average. For 8-month-old children, the study revealed a normal range of 8 to 21 hours of total sleep, with an average of 13 hours.
These findings highlight the critical point: mainstream sleep media often promotes high sleep requirements as the standard, but the reality is far more complex. For example, if you’re working with a child who has lower sleep needs, aiming for 12 hours of overnight sleep plus naps totaling 15 hours might be not only unnecessary but counterproductive. Even for a child with average sleep needs, this target is often too high, as the average at 8 months is closer to 13 hours.
Recognizing this wide variation in sleep needs allows you to tailor your recommendations more precisely, ensuring that you meet the unique needs of each child without imposing unrealistic expectations.
What’s the Impact on Parents When Sleep Needs Are Misjudged?
Let’s consider an 8-month-old as an example. Imagine you’ve been taught that this age group needs 12 hours of overnight sleep, a 45-minute morning nap, and a 2-hour lunchtime nap—a total of nearly 15 hours of sleep. Now, compare that with the actual average: 13 hours in total, including just under 10 hours of overnight sleep. Studies also show that 1 to 3 night wakings are typical, so those 10 hours of sleep are not continuous but include some brief wake periods for feeds.
What happens when you push a child with lower sleep needs to fit into this unrealistic mold? Several frustrating outcomes are almost guaranteed:
- Long, Difficult Bedtimes: Trying to get the child to sleep when they aren’t tired enough can lead to drawn-out, stressful bedtimes.
- Early Evening Wakings: The child might fall asleep but wake up soon after, repeatedly waking up in the early evening.
- Split Nights: After initially sleeping well, the child could wake up in the small hours of the morning and stay awake for 2 hours.
- Frequent Night Wakings: Pushing for more sleep than needed can cause numerous wake-ups throughout the night.
- Early Morning Waking: The child may wake up at the crack of dawn, fully rested but far too early for the parents’ liking.
These issues are not just inconvenient; they have a deeper impact on the family’s well-being. Parents can experience stress, loss of confidence, and frustration, feeling as though they’re doing something wrong or that their child is somehow not normal. This disconnect between what parents are told and what their child actually needs leads to missed opportunities to foster attuned, responsive, and cue-based caregiving.
The truth is, these struggles are unnecessary and avoidable. By understanding and respecting each child’s unique sleep needs, you can help parents avoid these pitfalls, providing them with the confidence and skills they need to support their child’s healthy sleep patterns.
What to Do Instead?
So, what’s the alternative when it comes to managing a child’s sleep needs? The key is to start with an open mind and an understanding of the normal range of sleep requirements. Every child is unique, and rather than adhering to rigid sleep schedules, we need to observe and respond to the child in front of us.
Children are remarkably adept at communicating whether their sleep needs are being met. A child who isn’t getting enough sleep will make it abundantly clear—they’ll display obvious signs of tiredness, such as falling asleep too easily, being difficult to wake up, and showing crankiness or dysregulation during waking hours. They may fall asleep at inappropriate times, and their overall mood and behavior will often reflect their sleep deprivation. In short, they’ll be struggling, much like any of us would if we were severely sleep-deprived.
On the other hand, it’s far more common for a child to be getting enough sleep—or even too much sleep opportunity—yet still exhibit behaviors that parents misinterpret as signs of tiredness. This often stems from well-meaning but unrealistic sleep expectations. Parents might believe their child isn’t getting enough sleep simply because their sleep patterns don’t align with these expectations. However, it’s important to differentiate between a sleep pattern that is challenging for parents and one that indicates insufficient sleep for the child.
Understanding this distinction is crucial. Just because a child’s sleep routine is difficult for the family to manage doesn’t necessarily mean the child isn’t getting enough sleep. The real issue may lie in adjusting expectations and creating a sleep schedule that better fits the child’s actual needs, rather than forcing them into an unnecessary and counterproductive sleep routine.
By focusing on the individual child’s needs and cues, and by educating parents about the wide range of normal sleep behaviors, you can help create a more realistic and effective approach to sleep. This approach not only supports the child’s well-being but also reduces parental stress, leading to a more harmonious family dynamic.
Try My 5-Step Pathway
To effectively manage a child’s sleep needs, I’ve developed a straightforward 5-step pathway that you can follow:
- Assess the Total Sleep in 24 Hours
Begin by observing how much sleep the child is getting over a 24-hour period. Pay close attention to how the child is coping with the amount of sleep they’re getting. Are they generally well-rested, or are they showing signs of sleep deprivation, like crankiness or excessive sleepiness? - Evaluate the Sleep Pattern
Next, consider the distribution of sleep between daytime and nighttime. Are naps or nighttime sleep the primary concern? Is the sleep pattern sensible and aligned with the child’s age and needs? For instance, does the child fall asleep within 30 minutes of attempting a nap or bedtime? Evaluating these factors will help you identify whether there’s a balance or an imbalance that needs addressing. - Adjust Sleep Opportunities if Necessary
If you suspect that the child is getting too much sleep opportunity, it’s time to scale back to an age-appropriate amount. This could involve dropping a nap, resisting the urge to extend naps when the child wakes up, or even making bedtime slightly later. The goal is to match sleep opportunities with the child’s actual sleep needs, avoiding the pitfalls of over-scheduling sleep. - Refine Sleep Distribution
If the issue seems to be with how sleep is distributed rather than the total amount, consider tweaking the timing of naps. You might need to cut down on the number of naps, introduce short power naps, or adjust the timing of bedtime. Sometimes, simply making bedtime earlier or later can make a significant difference in the child’s overall sleep quality. - Trial and Re-Evaluate
Implement the changes and observe the results over the course of a week. Some adjustments may yield immediate improvements, while others, especially those tied to the child’s circadian rhythm, might take a bit longer to show results. After a reasonable period, re-evaluate the child’s sleep with the family, assessing whether further tweaks are needed.
By following this 5-step pathway, you can address and resolve sleep challenges effectively, all without resorting to non-responsive sleep techniques. This approach not only supports the child’s natural sleep patterns but also empowers parents to understand and meet their child’s unique sleep needs.
By understanding and mastering the principles of sleep biology, you can transform your sleep coaching practice and deliver outstanding results for the families you support. From accurately assessing sleep needs to optimizing sleep schedules, these five steps provide a solid foundation for holistic, responsive sleep coaching.
But remember, the journey doesn’t stop here. The field of sleep coaching is constantly evolving, and staying informed about the latest research and techniques is key to continued success. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your skills, applying these insights will empower you to make a meaningful difference in the lives of your clients.
If you’re ready to take your sleep coaching practice to the next level with a science-backed, holistic approach, I invite you to book a strategy session with our team. During this personalized session, we’ll discuss your goals, explore how our program can support your growth, and determine if we’re the right fit to help you achieve your vision.
