Cheyenne Floyd is calling in the experts when it comes to getting her 6-year-old daughter Ryder to sleep through the night. Floyd sits down with husband Zach Davis and Ryder’s dad, Cory Wharton, in a PopCulture.com exclusive sneak peek of Wednesday’s all-new episode of Teen Mom: The Next Chapter, as they meet with certified baby and toddler sleep expert Xan to try and get their nights back.
Asked about their “greatest pain points” with Ryder’s sleep as it is, Floyd points out that her daughter has always struggled with sleeping through the night, as when she was a baby, they had to wake her up every two hours to eat because of her VLCAD (very long chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency). Now that she’s six, Ryder “still wakes up at least four times a night on a good night,” which Davis points out “messes with our sleep.”
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“We rotate. If she gets in our bed, I end up in her bed,” he explains, as Floyd admits, “It’s like a rotating bed shuffling in our house.” It’s the same “hot mess” in Wharton’s house, which he shares with girlfriend Taylor Selfridge and their two younger daughters. Luckily, Xan has a solution for the exhausted parents, noting that it sounds like Ryder is simply “overtired,” which is the “number one trigger for night issues for all children.”
Xan advises the parents to make bedtime a little earlier to try and “channel that energy for her” and encourage her behavior to change. “After two years old, so many sleep issues start becoming more behavioral, and we can really help to change behaviors if we are nailing timing,” she continues. When Ryder gets overtired, her brain secretes cortisol, Xan explains, which causes her to “stay fluttering in that lighter stage of sleep.” A gradual light-emitting alarm clock can also serve as a “very clear visual for her about when it’s time to be quiet and in her bed and when it’s okay to be up and leaving her room, and everyone’s waking up and we’re starting the day.”
Xan also advises the parents to award Ryder immediately each morning to keep her feeling involved in and enthusiastic about the process. “We want this to feel good and exciting for Ryder, right?” the expert asks. “Make it feel like she’s part of it and sleep is awesome, and she is awesome, and she is gonna do a great job, and you’re her greatest cheerleader, which is so, so, so important.” She teases, “We don’t wanna be like, ‘Listen Ryder, we’re all exhausted. We are not functioning right now, and you need to get it together. … We want her to feel like, ‘Oh whoa, okay, yeah, I can do this and I’m gonna be awesome and so cool for making big sleeps all by myself.’” Floyd agrees, “I just think, I really feel like we should make it a fun meeting.” Teen Mom: The Next Chapter airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on MTV.
