Schedule by Day

Day 1 - Monday, Feb 5, 2024

From Pressure to Progress: Navigating Parenthood through Authenticity and Grace

By LaCresha Cunningham, LCSW

The primary goal of this presentation is to equip professionals in the field with effective strategies for supporting parents under pressure. By emphasizing meeting parents where they are, offering tailored support, and encouraging a growth mindset, the focused aim is to help professionals guide their clients through parenting challenges with resilience, authenticity, autonomy, grace, and adaptability. This presentation aims to provide a comprehensive framework for professionals working with parents, fostering a supportive and growth-oriented approach to parenting challenges. Through thoughtful exploration and practical guidance, I hope to empower professionals to make a lasting impact on the lives of the parents and the families they serve, thus encouraging multigenerational impact and transformation.

Live Q&A with LaCresha "Cree" Cunningham

Afternoon Engagement Session: Sleeposium Kick Off Mixer

Join us for some fun networking and community connection as we kick off Sleeposium2024

Day 2 - Tuesday, Feb 6, 2024

Deconstructing Colic: Detective Work to Identify the True Root Cause

By Dr. Cara Riek

Colic is a diagnosis of exclusion. Babies don't choose to be upset, but their limited ability to communicate puts the ownership on the practitioner and families to try to figure out the root cause diagnosis. Colic can be caused by reflux, food sensitivity, birth trauma, oral ties, fast milk flow from bottle or breast, poor latch, body tension, cranial nerve dysfunction, torticollis, and the list goes on. Having the correct tools to be able to decipher baby's cries can help to get to the root cause and true diagnosis. This talk gives the listener detective skills to try to put together the pieces of the puzzle to provide reasonable differential diagnoses that are contributing to colic symptoms.

Live Q&A with Dr. Cara Riek

Afternoon Engagement Session

Join us for daily experiential sessions focused on engagement, implementation, and fun.

Sweet Dreams for all Temperaments: Navigating Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences in Your Sleep Coaching Plan

By Irene Gouge

In this session we will dive into the considerations needed when it comes to children with more challenging temperaments, using learning styles and multiple intelligences to ensure that your sleep coaching approach is as unique as the families you're working with.

Learn the tools and strategies to help the parents you support communicate more effectively with their child and get sleep. Get equipped with the tools you need to help the families have “aha” moments, understand their parenting and learning style, be more compassionate, and take ownership in the sleep learning process with their child. Let's create personalized sleep solutions for every little dreamer and their family!

Day 3 - Wednesday, Feb 7, 2024

Start Here: What Every Sleep Consultant Needs to Know about Child Development

By Kimberley Hawley

The diversity of the sleep profession is a strength, and differing approaches and strategies allow families to find the right fit for their parenting style, values, and child. However, conflicting information around what’s normal creates a lot of stress and overwhelm for parents. This workshop is your primer on developmentally informed expectations so that you can ground your consults in a developmental foundation that’s evidence-based, regardless of your style of sleep coaching. Developmental norms help parents make informed and confident decisions rather than feeling like it’s something they have to do.

Objectives:

• Understand how the informed decision-making process relates to sleep decisions
• Identify the most common developmental features of infant sleep that are commonly misrepresented in sleep information
• Understand how developmental expectations can strengthen all sleep consults, regardless of your style of sleep coaching

Live Q&A with Kimberley Hawley

Afternoon Engagement Session

Join us for daily experiential sessions focused on engagement, implementation, and fun.

Nurturing Families Through Empathic Guidance and Strategies Focused on Sleep for Toddlers and Children

By Fahreen Jeshani

This session will discuss the topic of separation and how this often manifests into bedtime battles and stalling behaviours. It will focus on helping you as a sleep coach identify what need the child is expressing through the stalling behaviours. Practical strategies will be discussed to help coaches assess the impact of separation and collaboratively work with parents to create a plan to address the root of bedtime battles. Tried and true tested strategies will be shared that parents can implement and adjust to fit their families' needs. Considering and understanding the child's temperament and sensory needs is often a piece of the puzzle that is not addressed and can be a crucial piece for highly alert, sensitive, and strong-willed children.

Day 4 - Thursday, Feb 8, 2024

Helping Parents Worry Well: Neutralizing Caregiver Anxiety Through Mindful Awareness, Acceptance, and Purpose-Oriented Focus

By Adam Penny

Parents and other caregivers have a lot of legitimate reasons to worry; anxiety is a predictable and normal experience for them. In fact, anxiety can be helpful in keeping them alert and attentive as they care for their children and respond to their needs. Sometimes, though, anxiety escalates to the point where it undermines daily function, including sleep. When this happens, caregiving suffers, which can then amplify anxiety even more. Someone who is caught in an amplifying anxiety cycle becomes less able to receive and respond to support, paradoxically becoming less receptive when they need help the most.

As a caring, connected helper, you can provide needed support to help your clients neutralize their amplifying anxiety cycle. With simple, everyday interactions, you can help them get and stay grounded in the present, validate and accept their normal worry, unhook from unhelpful thoughts and feelings, and actively focus their attention and energy on the important effort of being the nurturing caregiver they want to be.

This workshop will help you understand what anxiety is, why we have it, how it helps, and how it hurts. With this as a background, we will explore how you can bring your existing compassion, empathy, and responsiveness to bear in helping your clients loosen the grip of anxiety to improve their lives and increase their ability to achieve the health outcomes that you are working with them on. We will also look at when to recommend additional professional mental health support to someone.

Everyone is going to worry. You can help your clients worry well.

Live Q&A with Adam Penny

Afternoon Engagement Session

Join us for daily experiential sessions focused on engagement, implementation, and fun.

Understanding the Research Behind Popular Parenting Advice on Sleep Training: Dissecting an Article from Popsugar

By Macall Gordon

Research is frequently cited in online parenting articles, blogs, and posts on sleep. The term “research-based” carries a lot of weight for parents. However, when it comes to translating research into mainstream media, inaccuracies and omissions can be common. Because of the proliferation of “experts” and “influencers” on social media, this issue has grown exponentially. It’s important to know what parents are being told about sleep in popular media. These sources influence parental expectations about sleep and also set a standard that parents can feel compelled to meet. It’s important to be able to think critically not only about research but about how that research is reported. Just because it’s “research-based” doesn’t mean it’s true for individual children and families.

This session will explore an example article from Popsugar about “research-based” sleep training strategies. We will examine each point and then look at the actual research upon which it is based. This session should give participants skills for critically evaluating what gets reported about research: what’s true and what’s not. Some basic information about how research is conducted will also be covered (no math required). Original Popsugar article.

Day 5 - Friday, Feb 9, 2024

Sleep Nutrition: How Nutrition Impacts Sleep and How Foods Can Improve Sleep

By Camera Lumumba

Learn about the connections between diet and sleep. In this informative presentation, Camera uses her background in nutrition and nursing to teach how to set infants and children up for successful sleep, starting in the kitchen with healthy eating habits. She will dive into necessary macro and micronutrients that support sleep. Camera will offer sample menu ideas for sleep-promoting meals and snacks and simplify healthy eating and sleep habits that can be used for the whole family.

Live Q&A with Camera Lumumba

Wrap-up Party & Prize Giveaways

Join us as we wrap up Sleeposium2024 with some fun games and prizes!

Day 6 - Saturday, Feb 10, 2024

It Starts with You: Emotionally and Developmentally Supporting Infants and Children

By Jennifer Hansen

During each phase of life, all humans face developmental challenges and growth and, no matter the situation or need, we look to trusted relationships for strength, guidance and assistance. Knowing and remembering that emotions shape lives, influence choices, and drive reactions is crucial for healthy development and growth not only for children, but for ourselves. Proactively, professionals and parents often ask, “In what ways can we be strong, supportive leaders and parents?” Or “How can we better care for babies, children and teens as they face growth and change?” Addressing these questions, this session provides a review and understanding of each developmental stage, with its needs, characteristics, strengths and challenges. Combining the foundational topics of human growth and development with basic human emotion, this presentation will provide education and information for those who coach and care for pediatrics and their families with research-based learning and practice-based tools. This session will inform leaders, coaches, and parents about the necessity of self-care, parental boundaries, clear communication with children and teens, and appropriate child-friendly emotional support, with the over-arching goal to build parent-child trust, and to empower pediatrics, caregivers, and ourselves.