Lots of BCBAs want to help families with sleep, but they're afraid they'll make a mistake or won't know enough. They feel like they need to become sleep experts before they can say anything at all. Of course we always want to work within our scope, and there are certainly times when families need comprehensive sleep support, but there are also plenty of opportunities to support healthy sleep during your everyday ABA sessions. In fact, many of the skills we already teach have

As behavior analysts, we're always mindful of using reinforcement over punishment whenever possible. When it comes to spotting punishers, we usually think of the big ones, like yelling or time-out, but so many of the ways behavior can accidentally be punished are way more subtle than that. Sometimes it's just the way we talk about something, or small things in the environment, that end up being punishing without anyone even realizing it. This is definitely true for sleep, an

We use the word anxiety all the time, but what exactly does it mean? Anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension and worry, along with physical changes like an increase in blood pressure. Anxiety isn't bad at all. If we're in a stressful situation, we want our bodies to react so we can get out of there and stay safe. The problem comes when this feeling doesn't go away and becomes chronic and overwhelming, even when there's no longer an obvious threat. A recent

"Just 1 more book tonight?" can sound totally harmless, and sometimes it is, but for parents who chronically find themselves responding to "just 1 more" requests for an hour after bedtime, these bedtime negotiations can become unsustainable. One of the best ways to handle these post-bedtime requests is to set consistent boundaries up front. By outlining exactly what bedtime is going to look like and being consistent in responding to requests, kids will know what to expect and

When it comes to sleep, we love external measurement. Whether that’s looking at the clock and calculating just how many hours we got, or our sleep tracker telling us how well we slept and whether last night counted as a good one. And while those tools can be helpful in certain moments, they can also pull us further away from something we already have access to, which is our own body's ability to tell us what it needs. Today's blog is about five questions we can ask ourselves

We tend to think of good sleepers as people who never have a bad night. But that's not actually true. Even people who generally sleep very well have nights where they don't get enough sleep. Maybe they're traveling. Maybe their child is sick. Maybe they're stressed about an upcoming event. Or maybe their neighbors decide to throw a pool party that lasts until two o'clock in the morning. The difference isn't that good sleepers never have bad nights. It's that they don't let on