About The Possums Sleep Program

Hello and welcome!

It’s hard for others to understand just how desperate we might feel as parents when we have baby or toddler sleep problems. The exhaustion or sleep deprivation can be beyond belief.

Then there’s all the conflicting advice you receive - only because people care about you and want to help. How stressful conflicting advice can be, though! What can you believe, when you're simply wanting to do what's best for your little child?

Caring for a tiny person can be such a wonderful time for you and your family, full of joy and delight – and it can also be outrightly miserable. My aim is to help you grow the joy side of things, as well as to help you manage when the going is tough.

The Possums Sleep Program

• Helps with normal night waking

• Resolves excessive night waking

• Helps make daytime sleep and bedtimes easy and no-fuss.

It doesn't recommend that you

• Put off responding to your baby or toddler when she is fussing or crying

• Leave your little one alone when he is upset.

The Possums Sleep Program works on different principles altogether. But it does share with you new ways, step by step, to make sleep as easy (or as manageable) as possible for your family.

The Possums Sleep Program is intended for all parents, carers, and their babies and toddlers across our many human diversities and abilities. You are the expert on your own little one, so I’ll just be inviting you to try out some new ideas, to see what works for you and your unique child, in your own unique family. Experimenting is the key.

Research studies show what we know from the clinic: that The Possums Sleep Program works

At a time when the description 'evidence-based' has become a marketing tool, The Possums Sleep Program is authentically evidence-based. It's developed according to best practice implementation science, including from my 30 or so research publications in international journals. I've been teaching The Possums Sleep Program to health professionals since 2011 in a range of contexts. That's the same year I also started offering it to parents in the clinic.

These days, I teach health professionals how to deliver The Possums Sleep Program through The NDC Institute. Most of the families I and my NDC Accredited colleagues have worked with over the years using The Possums Sleep Program find everything settles down fairly quickly. In addition to the research publications which established the evidence-base, there are now four preliminary studies to show that The Possums Sleep Program (adapted as Sleep Baby and You in the UK) works.

If you've been experimenting for a couple of weeks or more, and find that your baby or toddler sleep challenges haven't improved, I recommend that you consult with an NDC Accredited Practitioner.

Acknowledgements

Quite a few of the images I've used throughout The Possums Sleep Program are purchased stock, and a few I took myself. A majority come from Unsplash and I am very grateful to the talented Unsplash creatives for their generosity in donating these images to the commons.