Sustainable Parenting | Raising Confident Kids with Positive Parenting Strategies

126. 5 Pillars for Peaceful Bedtimes | Matthew Wellington

• Flora McCormick, LCPC, Parenting Coach

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Does bedtime ever feel like the longest part of your day? You’re exhausted, ready for some peace, but your child suddenly transforms into a master negotiator—asking for just one more kiss, one more drink of water, or one more story. If you’ve ever felt torn between wanting to meet those sweet requests and desperately craving your own downtime, this Sustainable Parenting episode is for you.

In today’s conversation with Flora McCormick, LCPC and sleep expert Matthew Wellington, we unpack the 5 Pillars for Peaceful Bedtimes—practical, evidence-based strategies that help kids settle more smoothly and give you back your evenings. This is Sustainable Parenting at its best: kind and firm solutions that work in real life.

Matthew Wellington is a Registered Behaviour Analyst and Board Certified Behaviour Analyst based in Ontario, Canada. He is the founder of Sleep Behaviourally, a consultancy dedicated to helping families and busy professionals improve their sleep through evidence-based behavioural strategies. With a deep commitment to making science practical, Matthew empowers parents and individuals to implement simple, effective changes that lead to lasting rest and wellbeing. His work blends behavioural science with compassion, making him a trusted guide for anyone seeking better sleep and healthier daily routines.

✨ After listening to this episode, you’ll know:

  • How to set up the right sleep schedule so your child actually feels tired at bedtime.
  • Why a predictable routine matters—and how to use visuals to cut down on nagging and power struggles.
  • What environmental cues (light, sound, temperature) can make or break sleep success.
  • How to create calming pre-bed activities that cue “wind down” instead of “rev up.”
  • Simple ways to minimize those bedtime-stalling behaviors without guilt.

If you’ve been looking for Positive Parenting Strategies that truly help with Getting Kids to Listen, reduce tantrums, and support you in Raising Confident Kids, you’ll find this episode full of simple, sustainable answers to the nightly parenting challenges around bedtime.


Here are the resources by Matthew Wellington: https://sleepbehaviourally.com/resources/

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✨ Download the FREE pdf. on getting kids to listen, for strategies that take you out of the "gentle mom - monster mom" cycle, with effective positive parenting strategies.

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Flora McCormick:

There's this weirdness of that, something about the nighttime, the words the child use I want you, I need you, and they're not asking for a lollipop, they're asking for one more kiss and it's like oh yeah, it's easy to hug at that hot string. Oh, they're so good. I always say I swear kids go to acting school in utero.

Flora McCormick:

Like there is absolutely because they know just the thing to say, so that you're not having your wise mind cue. This is a behavioral trying to get attention. Yes, drag out bedtime. We can convince ourselves they're needing us, they wanting us. Why on earth would I refuse that? And then, on the reverse, though, we also are so annoyed that we're not just able to have our space and say goodnight and have a peaceful separation, like I love you and I need to have my time for the night. So I find parents really caught in that bind right.

Matthew Wellington:

Yeah, and it's difficult. Like I before I had kids, I I didn't necessarily appreciate a lot of those difficulties.

Flora McCormick:

I'm Flora McCormick, licensed therapist and parenting coach of almost 20 years, here to help you really be that calm, confident parent you've always wanted to be, and I'm so excited today to share with you this conversation with Matthew Wellington, registered behavior analyst and founder of Sleep Behaviorally, dedicated to helping families and busy professionals improve their night's sleep through evidence-based strategies. Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast. Let me tell you, friend, this place is different. We fill that gap between gentle parenting and harsh discipline that's really missing to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time and give you the exact steps to be able to parent in ways that are more realistic and effective and, for that reason, finally feel sustainable.

Flora McCormick:

Welcome, of course, if we're talking about like we hate yelling at our kids or we hate going in this like spiral or a bounce between gentle mom and then monster mom, a lot of it can be related to sleep. Like I'm so overtired I'm not going to sleep when I want to, to have connection with my partner or just recharge time myself, and sleep's just huge. It's so fundamental to our kids and us. So I'm so glad to have your insight today, matthew, to help us out.

Matthew Wellington:

I'm glad to be here, and it's you're absolutely right. Like I, have been working with families for almost a decade now and, and as a registered behavior analyst, as a BCBA, found it was such a common thread that if we saw child behavioral issues, most likely there were sleep issues as well.

Flora McCormick:

Yeah. What your consequences are, what? Your prompts are to getting them to pick up their shoes. What is sleep, food and tech exposure look like? Because those are the three vitals for confident and well-behaved kids, right?

Matthew Wellington:

Absolutely, yeah, and really, in terms of sleep, I call it like the five pillars of a good night's sleep and that's really those are the five areas that we hit. So the first pillar is kind of personalizing that sleep routine and getting a schedule so that the child is getting enough sleep, but also at the right times. There are times where there's not enough what we'd call sleep pressure, and that's when your kid is really struggling to get to sleep, um, and they just seem to have too much energy or seem to be really upset. Sometimes it's that we haven't built enough of that sleep pressure. So really, if a kid is still having a nap, being able to adjust that nap, the timing of that nap.

Matthew Wellington:

So that's the first thing, kind of like thinking about that sleep schedule. The second is really thinking about that bedtime routine. How does the child get to sleep, whether that's feeding a bottle before bed, whether that is a whole bunch of attention or being rocked or any of these types of things. Being able to fall asleep independently is a really difficult thing that a child doesn't innately know. So that's something that we teach as well and that's one of those other pillars, and sometimes we'll supplement language with the use of visuals Mm-hmm. Yes, language with. With the use of visuals, um, and that's an, that's an, and an easier way to process and and understand information.

Flora McCormick:

They tend to be a lot more visual learners matthew, do you have any tools you could share with us that would help with that, because I'm I definitely always love to give a concrete visual, um pictures that help the child and you be on the same page of these types of sure I.

Matthew Wellington:

I actually have a a template visual schedule that we use often for bedtime routines. It could be customizable. So it is in a word document that is very easily customizable and, yeah, that that could be printed off and used for kids. It's just a much easier way to understand a sequence of events or routines.

Flora McCormick:

Yeah.

Matthew Wellington:

And is a way to communicate that without a lot of language, which we also don't want to do when it's close to bedtime as well.

Flora McCormick:

Absolutely yes, I feel always less is more. Absolutely yes, I feel always less is more. I like to call it, like the third party, bad guy too sometimes, because you know if it's someone on the autism or anxiety spectrum then having a visual, parents will say, oh, they know what has to happen, though. It's only like four things and you're like, but still, if you can just look at a chart, I mean, go in any elementary school and you'll see there's a reason, there's visuals these teachers understand.

Flora McCormick:

Visuals help kids hold the information in their own heads better, even if you think they should know it by heart. And secondly, it makes this third party bad guy. That's like if you need to make a subtle nudge or reminder, you're not using 75 words like come on, why haven't we done that thing? You know you're supposed to get your jammies on and you're always messing around and you haven't gotten your toothbrush, so then you're gonna have to get your jammies.

Flora McCormick:

You're gonna fight with me about the right exactly versus like pointing to the picture of the jammies and looking at them and having that be an indicator.

Matthew Wellington:

Hey, you're missing that, yeah, okay, okay. Pillar three is about the environment and optimizing conditions for optimal sleep. So having the temperature at the right not too hot, not too cold so the child is able to sleep. Evolutionarily speaking, at nighttime the temperatures cooled down, it got colder, the light kind of went down. So a lot of these biological triggers for sleep. So that's another thing that we look at as well, and sound as well, being able to have a nice, quiet, calm environment. And sometimes there needs to be something that indicates to the child hey, it is nighttime, it is bedtime right now, so we're going to sleep. Some of our families do that with, like, a white noise machine. Some families do it with different clocks that show different colors for different times. From a behavioral standpoint, it's about indicating to the body hey, it is time for sleep right now.

Matthew Wellington:

Yeah, like the right cues that give us that sense that it's wind down time exactly we're looking for, uh, the term we use in in behavioral science is behavioral quietude, um, but really being able to really settle down, like you said, doing those things that are very calm, um, very uh. This is where we'll turn down the lights, we'll start to read a book, we'll maybe have bath and then like a bottle bath and then start to wind down and have like a book time, reading time, time, um, maybe, and then we tend to avoid screens at this point because that that is going to kind of reignite some of those, um, internal cues that that we don't want to reignite um, and I have a question for you about that.

Flora McCormick:

I I had a lot of families that will have kids who struggle with that. They're saying we try and the kid seems like they have so much energy on that sort of runway towards, uh, bedtime and they think they should run out the energy like ramp it up, get it, quote, get it out. Yes, and my um suggestion is usually to go the opposite direction, like your kid we're trying to cue sleep.

Flora McCormick:

If we run it out, we're cuing, it's playtime, it's action time, and so, instead doing things like progressive muscle relaxation, reading with a very slow, deep voice that kind of thing, Absolutely, and because a child often wants to play right, and, and if a child hasn't got any opportunity to play, um, they might still be seeking that.

Matthew Wellington:

So what we tend to do is we like to start off that evening routine with 20 or 30 minutes of we can do whatever you want to do. We can play, we can do, we can have fun, we can chase, we could do all this. But at the end of those 30 minutes we're then going to start out bedtime routine it's this.

Flora McCormick:

There's this overlap clearly between your work of sleep and behavior. Not only does that consistency of routine help give what was the word you called it Quietude behavioral quietude.

Flora McCormick:

Behavioral quietude. So not only does it get the body cued for relaxation, but that consistency lets the child be likely to resist less, Because every time there's a possible new ask like out of nowhere and I've made this mistake in the middle of bedtime routine we go in the room and I'm like, oh my god, your room's a mess. Let's real quick clean up everything on the floor and then immediately usually I get the cue clearly from my child. This was the wrong moment to pick to throw something in there and they're like what?

Flora McCormick:

and they're tired and they had no, you know, previous idea. I was going to ask that to change in that moment. So the right that predictability of like, let's be really cautious about, you know, if we do it a little differently, not throwing things in the mix that are going to push the challenge button, because we're all running on the fumes of the end of the day, ourselves as much as the kids.

Flora McCormick:

So, um, I just think of the consistency, helping prime them with cues and, be likely, preventing the power struggles you can otherwise find yourself in absolutely yes, that's exactly it.

Matthew Wellington:

Um, yeah, and that last last bit is and and we kind of discussed this a little bit already but really minimizing some of those sleep-interfering behaviors. And that kind of goes back to what I have always done in my day job as a BCBA and behavior analyst some of those attention seeking behaviors or maybe some of those escape behaviors hey, I want to continue to play the. So I'm going to engage in a behavior to try and continue to play and escape that bedtime routine and being able to really understand why those behaviors might happen, the behaviors that interfere with sleep, and put in some strategies to kind of counteract that. Counteract that or in behavior analysis or ABA we would say, to put it on extinction, sometimes in a very gradual way, or maybe teach an alternative behavior. Especially with sleep, there is a certain time where it is time to sleep and we don't want those competing behaviors, so we are going to want to put those behaviors on extinction.

Flora McCormick:

Well, it's funny when you say it that way, matthew, like because I think parents get caught in a double-sided bind, that there's this weirdness of that, something about the nighttime. The words the child use I want you, I need you, and they're not asking for a lollipop, they're asking for one more kiss and it's like oh yeah, it's easy.

Matthew Wellington:

They talk at that heartstring.

Flora McCormick:

Oh, they're so good. I always say I swear kids go to acting school in utero.

Flora McCormick:

Like there is absolutely because they know just the thing to say, so that you're not having your wise mind cue. This is a behavioral trying to get attention. Yes, drag out bedtime. We can convince ourselves they're needing us, they wanting us. Why on earth would I refuse that? And then, on the reverse, though, we also are so annoyed that we're not just able to have our space and say good night and have a peaceful separation, like I love you and I need to have my time for the night. So I find parents really caught in that bind right.

Matthew Wellington:

Yeah, and it's difficult. Like I before I had kids, I I didn't necessarily appreciate a lot of those difficulties and in my day job it was. It was very much like well, this is the behavior, this is the function of that behavior, why it's happening. This is the strategy. You need to be consistent and I think having children and being at the other end of some of those behavioral contingencies has made me a better practitioner.

Flora McCormick:

Oh, my gosh, a thousand percent. I was teaching parenting classes eight years before I had my own kids and I mean the principles were all correct. But, like you say, my empathy for the challenge that comes in holding those principles was not there. I didn't really get it.

Matthew Wellington:

Yeah, I know that I get home with my daughter from daycare at gone five. I'm then cooking dinner or my wife is cooking dinner and we don't have a lot of time after dinner to actually spend time together. I want to spend time with her just as much as she wants to spend time with me, but I know that we both have to sleep to get to be ready the next day for it to all happen again. So minimizing that attention is an easy way with visuals.

Flora McCormick:

Yeah, and I like to reduce parents' guilt about that and remind them that one study that I learned about and when I was in graduate school for my counseling degree said they found they were measuring the difference between relationship and bonding of stay-at-home moms versus working moms and found it really came down to quality over quantity. And so if you're feeling that guilt of like, but I only have an hour and a half, maybe I should lay next to them for that extra half hour to hour or whatever. Please know the research is there quality over quantity. And so if that guilt is tempting you into bad habits, um, release it. It's not serving you or the child or your relationship.

Matthew Wellington:

I love that. I love that.

Flora McCormick:

Um well, thank you so much for all these great tips of these five pillars and answering some questions I've had for you along the way, matthew, in closing, what would you like people to know about how they could follow up with you or any other resources for following up on more sleep questions they may have?

Matthew Wellington:

Yeah, so I have a website called sleepbehaviorallycom. That's kind of the go-to of where to find me. There's a lot of blog articles on there as well for various different things targeting each of these five pillars, and then there's some resources on there as well for parents that would like to implement this themselves and kind of give this a go. But then I'm also available if parents want some help to implement this with a bespoke plan.

Flora McCormick:

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. I've learned some additional reminders for myself and really grateful for this conversation.

Matthew Wellington:

Thank you, it's been a pleasure.