How to pull off inception on your child

My wife Kim hadn’t had a full night's rest in over a year and a half. To be honest, neither had I, but mine is more self-inflicted pain because I have personal projects like this podcast (which I love by the way). But regardless, Kim needed to get some sleep.

The culprit was our absolutely wonderful little potato Kimbal, who is now 19 months. There’s no other way to say this -- at night, she wanted the boob, she wanted it bad. And nothing was going to stop her.

So to start weaning her off the boob, Kim and I hatched a plan. It was time for me to step up, take the lead, and put our little Kimbaluchis to sleep.

But we had a challenge -- Juniper, our now 4 year old, is used to me putting her to sleep. And you know this, kids don’t like change. If Juniper expects me to put her to sleep and all of a sudden I put Kimbal to sleep, there’s going to be some jealousy; there’s going to be some tears; there’s going to be some yelling. And we like to avoid those as much as possible. 

So we know what needed to be done -- I needed to put Kimbal to sleep. And we knew the challenge -- Juniper expected me to put her to sleep. So how can we get this done without causing shouting, tears, and tantrums?

On today's episode, we learn how to pull off the inception technique.

The key, as we'll find out, is encouraging and guiding, versus demanding and forcing.

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Book recommendation in this episode: Hunt, Gather, Parent. 

Thank you for joining me today on Dad Smarter Not Harder.

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