How can you get the best out of mothers' groups or parents' groups when you have toddler sleep problems?

Experiment with a a few different strategies when you're out looking for a mothers' or parents' group (or two) to join!

Joining groups with other mothers or parents has been shown in the research to really help our emotional and mental wellbeing when we're caring for a small child. Face-to-face groups are best (in no small part because of the sensory nourishment that getting out of the house provides for your toddler), but this discussion might also be useful for online groups.

It's quite common for women to tell me that they don’t like to go to parents’ groups because they feel judged. I suggest a multilateral approach!

One of the big problems primary carers encounter when they are using The Possums Sleep Program is that many parents have heard that sleep training is the natural response to sleep problems. Others might give you the idea (perhaps accidentally) that you’ve made ‘a rod for your own back’ by not sleep training. This is an out-of-date view, given what we know about sleep training, but it's still a common perception. It can mean that you might feel vulnerable and unsupported if you're the only one using this approach in your parent group.

You could try four different strategies. We could call this your Multilateral Engagement Strategy, as you bravely step out into the world, toddler in tow, to locate a bunch of other supportive women!

Courageous engagement strategy #1

If there's enough in the group that could be enjoyable, even though there is a parent or parents there whom you find more judgemental or difficult, would it be possible to go once or twice more and practice strategies of self-compassion and unhooking from difficult thoughts, to give it more of a chance?

Afterall, other humans (and life itself, frankly) are a lot messier and more imperfect than we like to believe. The older I get, the better I am at accepting how imperfect life is, how achingly, impossibly flawed we all are. (Even though we still need to set boundaries to protect ourselves from others' destructive behaviours at times.)

Courageous engagement strategy #2

It might help to expect that you'll encounter one or two people who are judgemental in a parent group. This says a lot, of course, about that person's own insecurity and fragility, since we only judge others when we have high levels of self-judgement inside ourselves.

You might even treat attending a group as an opportunity to practice being yourself in a way that feels somewhat lonely and different at that moment. I’ve had to practice this a lot in my own life, being fairly sensitive by nature, and have only lately become any good at it. But all of us actually do well to practice a certain aloneness in our own unique perspectives and choices, loving ourselves despite the uncomfortable or painful feelings that come up from not being validated or supported.

You could return a few times to actively seek out and connect with the interesting and non-judgemental women within the group, and see what happens.

Courageous engagement strategy #3

You could invite the group to reflect upon the group's culture.

• You could become an understated (or for that matter, if it's in your personality, an exuberant) leader in your parent group (even if others don’t recognise that’s what you are doing).

• You could explain that you'd like to be in a group where everyone feels accepted.

• You could gently suggest that everyone in the group makes a point of acknowledging that their own path through parenting is just their own path, not the ‘best’ path.

• You could explain that as soon as someone acts as if her path is best, then she is accidentally suggesting others might be failing as mothers or parents, by not pursuing the best path. (And we all know how active the "I'm a bad mother" voice is in almost everyone's heads, once we've had a baby!)

• You could quietly model how to interact with other parents with deep acceptance and empathy.

These are ways in which we can help create the kind of group we need. It becomes a kind of quiet contribution to a better world. ... But then again, sometimes we just don’t have the energy for that.

Courageous engagement strategy #4

Keep checking out new parent groups until you find one that feels a better fit. You deserve lots of loving support. It’s what we need, as humans, and it's especially what we deserve when we're caring for a small child.