kids

"I asked Jo Frost how to get my child to sleep and she solved my problem in minutes."

Thousands of Australians have been asking global parenting expert, Jo Frost, for help and she’s almost here.

The Supernanny star says parents need her “sleeves rolled-up hands-on practical know-how” for dealing with children.

I am one of them and ahead of her Australian tour, I asked her the secret to getting children to sleep through the night.

“It’s a big puzzle piece,” said Frost.

“It’s as clean cut as everyone thinks, because the reality is every family’s unique, every family has their own story and every family has a different circumstance,” she added.

Jo Frost (L). My beautiful boy (R). Image supplied.

"When somebody says to me - ‘my child is not sleeping, how do I get them to sleep?’, there’s an elimination of questions I want to ask."

To figure out sleep problems the television star wants to know about the child's development, their routine and more to distinguish "the best advice and technique for individual families".

LISTEN: The Sleep Whisperer, Elizabeth Sloane, shares her newborn sleep secrets on our podcast for new parents. Post continues after. 

To come up with the answers for me and my son - in the middle of this interview - Frost started asking the questions.

"How long this has been going on for? What’s new? What hasn’t changed? What has changed? Do they share a room?" - that kind of thing.

We've suddenly been sidetracked into a personal consultation about my two-year-old who's just had a few bad sleep weeks. I'm all ears.

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The famous nanny has a go at solving my sleep deprivation problems in the short amount of time we have to talk.

She suggests that my son, Charlie, doesn't have the confidence he needs to be alone in his room.

Jo Frost says she's ready to help families in Australia. Image supplied.

The parenting expert says maybe Charlie could be doing things more independently during the day.

"If we could develop his self-esteem more and him being more confident with when he is around you, doing things on his own and not being so anxious to have you there at every step of the way," she said.

"Then what that will allow him to be is more confident with respect to when he is sleeping at nighttime, because he would have developed a little bit more emotional development."

Jo Frost is bang on. This nanny can spot a helicopter parent over the phone.

Charlie escaping his bed. Image supplied.

To try and steer us back on track, I am after a quick generic answer - for every parent.

Although Frost's approach is obviously individual, she says there are some universal truths about getting children to sleep that is tied up in the ritual of a bedtime routine.

"Ultimately every child wants to feel safe before they go off to bed," said Frost.

"Every child needs to feel safe before they go off to bed and to recognise that, what we do and how we behave in this special period of time, that we commit being present with our children before they go off to bed, is what gives us ultimately the result and success in allowing our child to get to that place of feeling confident and going off to sleep - without needing to come into our bedroom 1,000 times," she added.

"It’s probably only 10 times, but at two o’clock in the morning it feels like 1,000 times," she added.

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What's relative, she says, is figuring out if the child is being taught their parents will "cave-in" or if the child has given the emotional tools during the day to feel more confident during the night.

"I want families to learn why it is important when your child wakes up and comes to your bed at two in the morning that you do take them back [to their bed]," she said.

"I want them to learn the grey matter. Not just – you take them back – I want parents to learn why."

Frost says in Australia some 35 per cent of families are suffering from sleep deprivation.

"As adults, why do we stress ourselves to try and get so much into the hours that we have?" she asks.

"Why is it that we’re putting so much pressure on ourselves as parents that we’re breaking and we’re now expecting our children without the sleep that they need as well. It’s a big problem."

Her tour promises to cover the "most important topics" and allow parents to speak out about their experiences.

"We are not aiming for perfect – because no one is perfect," says Frost.

"What we do want is to become conscientious and mindful about the importance of our children eating healthy, our children developing healthy sleeping patterns, our children being kind and empathetic to others," she says.

"At the same time that we want to be conscientious and mindful of what we are teaching our children, we need the practical answers – we need to know how to actually do it."