Episode Description
In the season 4 Finale of ABA Unfiltered Tim is joined by Emily Varon, BCBA to talk about the importance of sleep. Emily is an industry expert on the subject and works with clinicians and families to work on solving sleep issues. Emily joins the podcast to discuss the common issues she encounters as well as her approach to help solve them. Emily and Tim also discuss the importance of sleep for clinical teams and parents. Emily offers great advice and insight into in a must listen to episode!
Full transcript
0:08 Tim Crilly:
Hello, and welcome to the season finale of season four. Hard to imagine that we’ve we’ve been able to pull that off uh for four seasons now, but we have our our final episode of the season. And it happens to be, and I know they say this a lot, but it’s an old friend uh joining us. So um a couple weeks ago, um connect reconnected with um Emily Varon. She’s an old colleague from my days at Aces, and I’ve known her quite a long time and is pretty good friends with a lot of the Blue Sprig folks over here as well. So um Emily is a BCBA, uh, you know, did all the things that uh you expect the BCBA to do, but really found a passion um as it related to to sleep and the sort of the work around getting proper sleep and sleep routines and and and all those sorts of things. So um I’ll let Emily tell her story, but um, she has stepped out on her own and is now um sort of uh a one-man band, as it were, at Ready Set Sleep. And her whole mission is to go out and really work with both clinical teams and families around this topic. So Emily, uh I hope I did an okay job introducing that. But if you wouldn’t mind, uh just take us back a few years and and fill the audience in a little bit on who you are and how you ended up where you are.
1:28 Emily Varon:
Yeah, it was uh kind of a wild ride. So I’ve been in um the field of ABA for about 22 years. Um I started out mostly in schools working with uh school teams. And when I moved down to Orange County, we relocated from Los Angeles. I started at ACES and on my first overlap, actually, it was with your very own Andy Nicholson Brennan, Dr. Andy. Dr.
1:55 Tim Crilly:
Brennan, okay, uh Dr.
1:56 Emily Varon:
Brennan, um, where I had actually just um I just had my second child. And for both of my children, sleep was really important for me because I was always um that that that Jomo young adult, that joy of missing out, where I would be the one to say, Hey guys, I’ve had a lot of fun, but I’m going home to bed. So sleep has always been kind of on the forefront. And when I had my own children, that was the one thing I was I was really nervous about was the lack of sleep and um the sleep deprivation that I knew was coming. Um, so I read every single book, uh literally every book before I even had my first child. And so I was well prepared um to get as much sleep as I could as soon as I could. And what I noticed was that all the books were pretty much the same.
2:55 Emily Varon:
There was there wasn’t much nuisance that I was reading from book to book.
3:00 Emily Varon:
Most of it was extinction if you’re looking at sleep training. Most of it had to do with uh, you know, what what we know in the ABA world is setting events, but you know, uh schedules and arranging sleep environments and things like that. Um, and I realized very quickly that it was all ABA. I mean, it’s not, you know, just you know, just random people saying, oh, here’s how you sleep better. I mean, there are really behavioral roots in it. So when I started, um, when I started uh my journey at ACES and met with met Andy and overlapped with her, the three clients that we had that day all happen to just have sleep problems. And they were all different and they were all different ages. And I just kind of said, Hey, you know, I think I have some helpful advice here that falls in, you know, I didn’t say this at the time, but I knew at the time it falls into the do no harm category. You know, we’re not making any major changes, but hey, let’s try this. And some of it had to do with lighting, and some of it had to do with schedules, and some of it had to do with sensory issues. And I just kind of helped. And and Andy came to me a couple of weeks later and she’s like, Oh my gosh, Emily, my kids are sleeping. All the clients success are sleeping. And so, you know, shortly after that, there wasn’t a lot of research. There wasn’t a lot of um, besides the the typical sleep books that most parents know about, there really aren’t any autism-specific books on sleep or resources, resources on sleep. Most of them just mirror what’s already out there for the general population. In around 2000, let’s see, it was probably uh 2014, I think it was 2013 or 2014. I always forget. A B A uh Cal ABBA was down in San Diego and I took an extended class, an extended uh three-hour CEU with Gregory Hanley. And he turned my world upside down. I was, I just said, this is new. This is new. This people aren’t talking about some of these variables and some of these strategies, and this information is not available to everybody. You can’t just Google it. How sleep works, right? How sleep actually works in the brain. Um, people don’t understand that and how it applies to the general population as well as the the autism population. Uh just general things. And then when it does come to actually, let’s call it in big air quotes, sleep training, that it’s not all just extinction. That there are so many different ABA strategies, strategies that are rooted in applied behavior analysis that are not behavioral, uh not not uh behavioral, behavior evoking, I should say, where where you’re gonna work through all of these undesired maladaptive behaviors. There are what he calls in in his practice today with practical practical functional assessment, humane. Where we’re not putting the seven-year-old through the the tantrum or the families through the property destruction or the self-injury or things like that. There are other methods than just walking the child back and to bed a thousand times and having caregivers have to deal with these these big behaviors.
6:22 Tim Crilly:
Behaviors, yeah. So, okay, let’s kind of start there. Um, I think you’ve already used up your word count.
6:28 Emily Varon:
So I know I could just, you know, someone once told me you’ve found you’ve found your your life’s purpose when you find something that you can talk about for hours on it. Whatever.
6:38 Tim Crilly:
Yeah. Um so how much how much of the work you’re you’re you’re doing or sort of like the people you’re communicating with, like, and I don’t want to call them bad habits, but how much of it is sort of not you know breaking or changing some of the sort of the the routine and and behavior people engage in because for back of a lack of a better term, it’s easier and you just sort of are able to push through and and get to the next thing you need to get to, even though you know you’re not, you know, you’re not living in a sustainable situation. How much of it is sort of that that sort of situation.
7:12 Emily Varon:
So I like that you threw out the word sustainable because that’s what I talk about. When I talk about habits, they’re not bad habits, they work a little bit. Um, they’re just not sustainable over time. So let’s say the parents who are laying down with their children to help them fall asleep, right? It might work to help them fall asleep, but the minute you leave the bedroom in the middle of the night, now you’re dealing with multiple night awakenings. So the thing that you thought helped with sleep actually is sabotaging sleep because of the way sleep works in the brain, right? So some of those things, so so some of those habits, you know, aren’t sustainable, but we can get out of those unsustainable habits quite easily by manipulating some of these environmental variables, these set setting events, such as finding the right schedule for your child, right? That’s not a bad habit. That’s just that just falls into the category of I had no idea. I had no idea my child could go to bed at 10 o’clock and still get the amount of sleep that they need. I that feels too late for, let’s say, you know, a an 11-year-old. Well, maybe not, depending on what time they wake up in the morning. You know, so sometimes it’s about just manipulating schedules, um, looking at things like screen time, looking at things like what are they doing leading up to sleep? Do they have good sleep hygiene? So your question is about kind of sleep hygiene, really, is when we’re talking about these unsustainable habits. Um, I would say 99.99999% of all of the clients I treat and um, you know, clinicians that I work with fall into that category of setting events getting in the way.
8:50 Tim Crilly:
Yeah.
8:51 Emily Varon:
And things that we can change, things that we can sometimes easily, sometimes not so easily, just depending on the behavior profile of the child, right?
9:00 Tim Crilly:
Sure. Now, how individualized is this? Or do you find that it’s a pretty there’s there’s common common situations that you run into that it’s it’s it’s not easy, but it’s sort of applicable that you can take, you know, approach A, B, and C and sort of use that over and over again. Or do you have to sort of take it all in and then go from there on an individual basis?
9:22 Emily Varon:
Um it dep it depends. So mostly I would say the larger majority fall into these major categories where we either have the wrong schedule down, we’re offering bedtime at the wrong time, or we have an older child who’s napping, which kind of messes up the whole schedule.
9:39 Tim Crilly:
Um we have an older child, like what would you define as an older child?
9:43 Emily Varon:
Over the age of four.
9:45 Tim Crilly:
Okay.
9:46 Tim Crilly:
So by four, the nap should sort of go away because that’s gonna interrupt your ability to sort of get to bed when you want to get to bed.
9:52 Emily Varon:
Yeah, and as soon and as early as two and a half. So the nap kind of drops between two and a half and three and a half, which is where we get this major influx of sleep problems in our infant toddler programs, right? So we often see that, you know, children are kind of falling asleep at three or four o’clock. Well, that’s an indication that they can probably not nap and just opt for an earlier bedtime, let’s say, in that infant toddler population. If you have a two and a half year old, a three-year-old who is not really napping at 12 or one anymore, and they’re now napping at like three or four, that that’s kind of a red flag saying, okay, they don’t need the nap. They just need an earlier bedtime, let’s say. And some parents cringe when they’re like, oh my gosh, you’re telling me I need to put my child to bed at six. Yep. If they woke up at six, they’re gonna go to bed at six, and they’re and they’re likely to sleep through the night if if they’re sleeping independently. So, um, okay, so there there are most of most of the families fall into that kind of general category of scheduling or screen time or too much activity before bed, or mistimed naps, uh, daytime sleep. Most, most of our families fall into that category. There is another category of, and and we see this mostly in our older population. And now I’m talking about like 10 years old and older. Um, we do see these night awakenings where they’re up for three or four hours in the middle of the night, where now we’re dealing against, you know, we’re working maybe against or with some medication, um, perhaps some uh a reinforcement history of accessing tablet time or or video games or something like that in the middle of the night, uh, resistance to terminating screen time. Um so there are kind of new things that arise as kids get older. Um, and and we see those things even as early as six or seven years old sometimes. Uh puberty gets in the way sometimes, um, where the circadian rhythm actually uh changes. So what I see with those, with those cases where let’s say it’s a teenager and and parents don’t realize that the the this whole the whole weight sleep rhythm actually shifts in puberty to about you know 11 p.m. bed times, regardless of age and regardless of wake up time. What we what we see in the autism population is we see these older kids who are maybe pubescent, maybe even eking towards like post-pubescence or just or just reaching there, um, they still have very infant-like behaviors, right? So we might get a a 14-year-old who still plays with Elmo or still watches uh, you know, Thomas. Uh and so perhaps developmentally, cognitively, they still present as very young, childlike. And so for parents, it’s sometimes hard to understand that biologically they’ve they’ve progressed. 14, yes. Yes. And so they they still they still need like a 14-year-old amount of sleep, right? They’re not going to be able to fall asleep at eight o’clock. So what I see often in that population is this major what we call sleep latency, where parents are trying to get the kids to bed and they’re laying in bed with, let’s say, the teenager helping them fall asleep at 8:30, 9 o’clock, and then saying, Oh my gosh, it takes them two and a half, three hours to fall asleep. And I just say, and that’s an easy fix.
13:17 Tim Crilly:
Yeah, leave them alone.
13:18 Emily Varon:
That’s so easy. Hey, let’s figure out some activities that your older teen can do, even if it’s watching a little TV or something. Don’t even put them into bed until 11 o’clock.
13:27 Tim Crilly:
Yeah.
13:27 Emily Varon:
Boom. Fast falling asleep, you know, fixed, right?
13:32 Tim Crilly:
It’s funny because I have a 13 and he just turned 13 a couple of weeks ago.
13:35 Emily Varon:
Our kids are almost the same age.
13:37 Tim Crilly:
Yeah. He he went from like, you know, okay, go to bed, it’s 8.02, and he’d be asleep at 8.04. Um, to now it’s like, you know, he just you could just tell he’s he’s just up, and but he knows by 10, he’s like, I’m in bed and he’s asleep. You know, he kind of sort of self-regulates that, but it it just it didn’t really creep up, it just jumped from like that eight o’clock to 10 o’clock, like yeah, overnight, you know. I you know, you know, obviously, yeah, yeah, no, but it is funny that you say that because I had I just sort of noticed that about Luke a few few weeks ago, where it’s like all of a sudden he’s a you know night owl, um, you know, like his older brother.
14:16 Emily Varon:
And we joke in our house, like my my kids tuck me into bed. My kids are 12 and 14. Good night, children. Yeah, I mean, even just last night, last night, you know, we we got I was I was telling Andrew we got this new dog, and so the dog tends to be up at like 6:30 in the morning, which is not mommy’s time of day. Like, that’s not mommy’s time of day. So mommy has had to change her rhythm a little bit. But last night it was, you know, 9 30, creeping up on 10. I was in bed and the kids were, you know, hanging out on my bed and chatting to me. And I was like, okay, kids, good night, everybody out, tuck me in, turn off my lights.
14:51 Emily Varon:
Mommy needs to go to sleep.
14:53 Tim Crilly:
That is a weird transition where suddenly you’re it’s a new season. Yeah, and we, you know, for us, it’s even worse because we’re we have a downstairs bedroom and theirs is above, so like we’re asleep and we can like hear them walking around. It’s like, wait, what is going on here?
15:07 Emily Varon:
It’s bizarre, it’s bizarre world.
15:09 Tim Crilly:
But you have to you have to suppress that impulse to just be like, go to bed, you know. And and it’s not to say that they don’t, you know, know their bodies, but yeah, um, you know, they they listen and and they do what they’re supposed to do. And you know, obviously, my 16-year-old spends the weekend getting caught up on what he missed during the week, which I know probably isn’t ideal.
15:32 Emily Varon:
Oh, we talked about that. No, we don’t need to. I’m not I don’t know if we should talk about that or not, though.
15:36 Tim Crilly:
I’m not poking that bear with him. Um, but you know, but he he just works so hard, he’s got skirts, and you can just tell he’s just like yeah, exhausted by the time the weekend comes around.
15:47 Emily Varon:
Right. And and our teenagers just aren’t getting enough sleep with the early school start times and you know, the late bedtimes that their bodies won’t regulate to that that bedtime of 11 o’clock-ish. Uh that that’s not going to regulate for some time, but you know, that early school start time, or sometimes these kids have zero periods.
16:05 Tim Crilly:
Sure. My 13-year-old has zero periods.
16:08 Emily Varon:
Yeah. And so now we’re just shortchanging their sleep. And and the idea is, and you’re not alone. I mean, there’s huge, there, there’s some progress being made, but huge efforts being made to change those high schools uh and middle school school start times um to to accommodate because it just really impacts learning, it impacts athletics, it impacts mental health, it makes it impacts everything. I mean, it really is just crazy that our kids have to start schools for it.
16:33 Tim Crilly:
I think for for next school year, they’ve eliminated the zero period, um junior high for us. Um and I think school will start at no later, no earlier than 8:30. So yeah, they did they did push it back in in some spots in California, which which is interesting. And I think the pandemic maybe have been one of those. I’m I’m making this up, but I think sort of the way they shifted that schedule, the school schedule, yeah, it kind of started a little later in the in the morning. And you know, obviously kids had to just sort of roll out of bed and look at their computer, um, made it a little easier. Um, but I think I I think they that they they took note of that extra hour that they can now of sort of afford.
17:15 Emily Varon:
Well, there’s three there’s three studies that I know of that actually um display the same results that once they increased or or pushed uh school start times between 8:30 and nine, that traffic accidents um in students between the ages of 16 and 18, so driving age in high school reduced by 60 percent.
17:37 Tim Crilly:
That’s pretty high.
17:38 Emily Varon:
60, just giving those kids an extra.
17:41 Tim Crilly:
Just because their eyes were open.
17:42 Emily Varon:
Just because they got eight hours of sleep, right? Just because they got that extra hour, hour and a half, even two hours sometimes of sleep.
17:49 Tim Crilly:
So yeah, I I Jack’s really excited about it, you know. Uh I would be sure. You know, and it’s weird because you know, I think less and less grown-ups work at the office anymore. And you know, so it’s like you’re doing school drop off and you’re heading right back to home. So I think you know, you you might see more grown-ups sleeping at a little bit more too, because there won’t be a it won’t be as big of a need to get up at you know 6 a.m. to to get kids ready for school and um all that.
18:17 Emily Varon:
We all need it. Almost zero people can get away with less than seven.
18:22 Tim Crilly:
Okay.
18:22 Emily Varon:
And most of us get less than seven. Okay. Yeah, happier place to live.
18:27 Tim Crilly:
What sort of advice do you give? So if if you’ve sort of had a success in in getting the the bedtime routine um in place and and kids are are are falling asleep, what about the waking up in the middle of the night and and sure that that process?
18:44 Emily Varon:
So what nobody teaches us when we birth our children is how what no one tells us how sleep works in the brain after four months. So for the parents that are listening, you’ll remember the murmurings of the four-month sleep regression. Well, nothing really regressed. Our our sleep cycle actually formed around that time, and it doesn’t change much between four months and you know, 99, let’s say, um, except for that waking window, bed times change. But how sleep works in the brain really doesn’t change much as far as being cyclical, right? We’ve we phase through cycles of sleep. So if you imagine an arc like a rainbow, right? And we’ve got, you know, the clouds on one side and the pot of gold on the other side. That’s not how sleep works. Sleep does not work where you fall asleep at bedtime and wake up in the morning. That is the biggest misnomer. And it it, if that’s the one takeaway people take away from this, that’s it. Because nobody wakes, uh, goes to sleep at night, wakes up in the morning. We go to sleep at night, and then we go into our deep phase of sleep, and then a light phase of sleep. And in that light phase of sleep, which is our REM sleep or dream phase of sleep, we all wake up just a tiny bit. Our eyes maybe blink open, or we switch positions, or maybe we stretch. Some of us get up and use the restroom. But we basically have this few-second window where we kind of wake up and put ourselves back to sleep. And we wake up and put ourselves back to sleep multiple times a night from the time we’re forming.
20:15 Tim Crilly:
We just don’t remember it.
20:16 Emily Varon:
We just don’t really remember it unless we had an intrusive dream, or you know, you had a leg cramp in the middle of the night, you’ll remember it, right? Um but for the most part, no, we we don’t really have much waking memory of these light, light awakenings. But what happens is when something changes in the environment between when we fall asleep and any of those littler wakings throughout the night, that’s cause for the brain to kind of become more alert and say, uh-oh, things have changed. And now we become more awake and we try to get it back. So, what does that mean? The most common situation is a parent laying down, a caregiver laying down with the child to help sleep onset, right? To help precipitate sleep. And then we kind of like tiptoe out of the room, child’s asleep, yay! And then the one question I always get is why don’t they stay asleep? And my answer is because nobody stays asleep, right? So when they get into their lighter phases of sleep, a few hours into sleep, so maybe let’s say three hours into sleep or so, when when our dense sleep kind of wanes and we’re in more of longer cycles of light phases of sleep, right? It becomes okay, every two hours, every one hour, every 30 minutes, you know, now the child is waking up all night long at the parent’s bedside or calling out for a parent or crying or something like that. All they’re really trying to do is recover the environment to the way they knew how to fall asleep at bedtime. And this applies to, let’s say, a bottle. So sometimes in the autism population, we have older children using bottles to fall asleep, which is, you know, fine, except. That we notice now that our five-year-olds need bottles replenished three or four times a night. Right. Something to that effect. Right. Or, or, you know, kiddo wants the lights on when they fall asleep. And then parents being, you know, smart parents not wanting to start fires overnight or, you know, not wanting to leave the light on all night long. They go in and they turn the lights off. And then the child wakes up and they’re like, oh, that’s not how I fell asleep. And then they become more awakened and they call out or they go turn on their lights. And now we see kids like turning on and off the lights all night long. Um, so anytime we change how the environment looks after the child falls asleep is a recipe for multiple night wakings.
22:41 Tim Crilly:
So the the the the takeaway here is is the front-end routine is what is is really important. And if you can create something that can be replicated throughout the night, you’re gonna have less less um sort of interruptive sleep.
22:57 Emily Varon:
Correct, correct. And so if I can talk to the to the BCBA population or the ABA implement implementation team, let’s say for a moment, what sometimes happens on the ABA side is the parents come to us with the complaint of multiple night awakenings. And then the ABA team comes in and says, Oh, what can we give as a reward for them staying in bed all night? Uh-oh. Whoops. Well, right. And so we we we’re doing our best efforts, but really, this is why I created the CEUs. This is why I created my business, this is why I come on podcasts, this is why I really try and target the ABA population because there are some ethical gray areas there. We’re trying to get a child to stay in bed who doesn’t know how to put themselves back to sleep because of how they fell asleep at bedtime, right? So, really, we’re trying to teach a skill where there is no skill deficit. We’re trying to have them just blindly stay in bed, but not actually teaching them how to fall asleep. So we’re missing the mark there a little bit in the ABA world. So we can do better. And that’s why that’s what I know that’s a really, it’s a really good point.
24:06 Tim Crilly:
I mean, it’s like, you know, you get the kindergarten teacher that um sort of rewards um attention-seeking behavior with attention, you know, and it’s it’s just this because they don’t know any better, and it’s just like gotta be quiet, stop it, whatever. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:21 Emily Varon:
Exactly.
24:22 Tim Crilly:
That’s a that’s a really that’s a really good uh you know takeaway. And um, you know, we’re we’re recording this a week before um APBA, no ABAI, sorry, um out in Boston, um, where you will be, and you will apparently have a booth. So really this will come out on um, so if you’re listening to this and it’s Thursday, that means um Emily’s at um ABAI. So if you are there as well, you know, I have to assume maybe if you’re at ABAI, you’re not necessarily walking through the halls listening to a podcast. Or maybe maybe if you’re listening to it on the flight home or whatever, and you had run into Emily while you were there, you could say, Wow, I already know Emily. Um, or maybe, you know what, maybe I can talk to the powers that be. We can get this out on Wednesday. I don’t know.
25:10 Emily Varon:
Um starts on Friday, so you have it, you have a Friday. No, no, no, actually, it’s no, it’s I’m sorry, it’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Oh, Friday, Saturday.
25:19 Tim Crilly:
You got you got a two-day. We should probably know that if you’re like booking flights and stuff, you should probably like lock that down. Um, so um, you’ll have a booth and what are you hoping to accomplish there? Just make a lot of new friends?
25:32 Emily Varon:
Make a lot of new friends, raise awareness, um, book some uh either in-person or online CEU opportunities for you know companies like Blue Sprig, like you know, ACEs, any of these ABA companies that want to elevate the level of service they’re providing uh to the autism population. You know, the most recent in in 20, early 2020, I believe it was, or maybe it was even as recently as 2021. I have it written down somewhere. Um, the National Institute of Health reported in the autism population that reports of problematic sleep were upwards of 80%. That’s a huge number. Even if, even if it were the wrong number, even if it were 50%.
26:17 Tim Crilly:
Even half, yeah. Okay.
26:18 Emily Varon:
Right? Even if it were 50%, even if it were 40%, we still know. Well, it’s not 40%, because even in the the the let’s say the neurotypical population, the general population, pediatric sleep problems are over 65% right now. So we know in the autism population it’s higher, right? So with sleep problems being so pervasive, not just for the kiddos, right? For your practitioners, right? For the ABA team who are canceling because they’re sick, because they’re not getting good sleep hygiene, right? The revenue loss, the overall impact on an ABA company and the efficacy of ABA programs that we implement, right? If we’re having cancellations all the time because the the the ABA team are getting into accidents because they’re sleep deprived, or you know, you know, they’re not taking care of themselves, so they’re canceling because they’re sick all the time. This is a sleep problem, right? This is a sleep problem. And then we have the clients who are canceling or falling asleep during session or fell asleep right before session, and parents open the door and they, I’m sorry, they just fell asleep. We had a really bad night.
27:27 Tim Crilly:
Yeah.
27:28 Emily Varon:
Right. And so the loss of learning opportunities, the loss of revenue, of course, but moreover, the learning opportunities, the consistency, staff consistency, all of that. It all is really, really important for the ABA community. So I’m here to kind of spread that word.
27:45 Tim Crilly:
What’s your what’s your opinion, your take on um sort of some of the technology that exists now and like people’s ability to better track all of this stuff?
27:55 Emily Varon:
Oh, I think it’s great. I think it’s great. I think self-monitoring systems, I mean, we know just from the ABA community that self-monitoring systems are some of the best, most effective methods when you can actually receive your own feedback. Um, so I and it depends on the human, right? I I love it for kids so parents can see what what their child is offering up. They now have these aura rings, like a ring that you can wear. Yeah, it’s it’s great technology. I think knowing how much sleep your child is getting is really important, how much deep sleep, how much NREM or REM sleep, you know, those those two categories of sleep are really important for figuring out why your child um is having gut issues, why they can’t tolerate certain foods. A lot of that comes down to sleep, uh, allergies, you know, um mental health problems. I mean, they just declared a state of emergency for for mental health in our pediatric population. Well, let’s let’s get our kids some sleep. Sleep. Yeah.
29:00 Tim Crilly:
We need a national bedtime, I think is I think we need a national lights out, people. Yeah.
29:05 Emily Varon:
Right. So, so I think for children, for us to know uh is good. I think for us, for ourselves, you have to know yourselves because some people are gonna be so anxious about reading that readout in the morning that it’s gonna suppress their sleep. So you have to know your own, you have to know in your know your own tendencies. If if tracking your sleep is gonna make you more anxious about sleep, then don’t do it. Don’t do it until you change some things, get in a good sleep rhythm, and then say, hey, how did I do? And so for some people that might be taking a baseline, yeah, you know, using that technology to take a baseline, see how crappy your sleep is. Sorry, see how garbage, see how garbage your sleep is, and then maybe a couple weeks later make some changes and then take another little um probe, right? So we’ll we’ll probe our sleep to see if what we’re doing helped with sleep efficiency, um, you know, sleep quality, uh all of that. I mean, I think technology is is is where we need to go for this because people don’t don’t actually know how much sleep they’re getting or how sleep deprived they are. It uh I’m I just finished Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep, which was just like puts everyone else to sleep. Like people find it so boring. But I’m I just like I’m eating it up, like fascinated by every single page. I’m highlighting stuff, pages are turned down, like I’m earmarking everything. Um, but he um oh I just lost my train of thought. What was I just saying?
30:36 Tim Crilly:
Some guy’s book that was really good. No, oh uh setting baselines around technology and then getting in routines and and sort of revisiting.
30:46 Emily Varon:
Never mind, it’s gone.
30:47 Tim Crilly:
Okay. Well, all right, we’ll have to edit that part out. No, we won’t. We’ll decide. Andrew gets to decide that.
30:55 Emily Varon:
Andrew gets to decide. What was I just gonna say? That was very impressive. Just kidding.
31:00 Tim Crilly:
It was genius. That’s all we know.
31:02 Emily Varon:
It’s genius, but it was gonna be quoting someone else. So what’s that?
31:04 Tim Crilly:
Okay.
31:05 Emily Varon:
Oh, well, if it comes back to me, if it if it comes back to me, it’ll come back to me.
31:09 Tim Crilly:
Well, you know, I think I think everyone sort of knows this to be true. You know, you gotta sleep, sleep’s important. It’s just I think, you know, we just really do a poor job of.
31:23 Emily Varon:
Oh, I just remembered what it was.
31:25 Tim Crilly:
Okay.
31:28 Emily Varon:
Okay. So I just remembered. We were talking about um sleep quality and people under-reporting their exhaustion, right? Under reporting their sleep deprivation. He he quotes a study where people were, you know, systematically sleep deprived in a control environment, blah, blah. Um, but they took cognitive tests after their either long nights of sleep or short sleep or short nights of sleep. And cognitively, their cognitive tests, their their recall tests, showed a significant difference between their ability to output between a sleep full night and a sleepless night. But their self-report was exactly the same.
32:08 Tim Crilly:
Same.
32:09 Emily Varon:
They reported that they felt well rested. And so what he likens it to is no different than the drunk person saying I’m fine to drive.
32:18 Tim Crilly:
Sure. It’s that I’m gonna convince myself of something that I know not to be true.
32:24 Emily Varon:
Right. I’m gonna convince myself that oh, I just need five hours of sleep. I’m totally fine, I’m functional. When the actual testing shows something completely different. And then there’s obviously the health fallout from that too, thinking you’re fine, and then yeah, you know, suddenly we have health issues. So I’m glad I I remember that notion.
32:44 Tim Crilly:
Yes, it was good. Uh, you know, and whether or not uh we we clean that up, it’ll be it’ll be determined, and you know, but um I like I like when it’s like this, you know. This this whole podcast is meant to be a conversation. Um, it’s never supposed to be scripted or anything like that. Um, so you know, I I I think this is this is a great topic. I I really I I would really encourage people to to look Emily up. Uh, where can they find information about you? I I see you on on the the old social medias lately.
33:18 Emily Varon:
Um ready set sleep.com. Super easy, ready set sleep.com. Um if you’re on Instagram, um I’m at ready set sleep with little underscore. Um I like to have fun over there. It feels like my living room. I just post funny things and ironic things, and it’s you know, hopefully helpful things that kind of change people’s view of sleep and and sleep importance and all of that.
33:41 Tim Crilly:
No, it’s cool. I mean, it’s I saw something and I, you know, it sparked my interest, and we had a nice phone call, and you know, it was really good to reconnect, but I think this is an important topic, and you know, we get so caught up with just sort of as a as an as a field, sort of just grinding out what we we need to to be doing on a daily basis, and we don’t always think about the things that are happening when we’re not there, uh, you know, and this is an important element to the overall program, the overall mental health of of the family and you know, sort of everyone involved. So I think it’s really important work and and and I hope I hope you have um I hope your voice is sore Monday morning when you’re coming back from uh the conference because you’ve talked to so many, so many new friends.
34:27 Emily Varon:
Uh I hope so too.
34:28 Tim Crilly:
Yeah, and you know, try to stay out a little bit later. Um, that’s kind of where you can meet people at conferences. You know, you don’t have to be in bed so early. You can break the rules a little bit. You know, you’re gonna be dealing with time zones anyway, so you’re gonna be all messed up.
34:44 Emily Varon:
So I’m gonna be all messed up. So I’m just gonna chalk it up to okay, maybe I’ll uh maybe I will let loose a little bit. Okay, just a little bit, one night. Have a little bit of fun.
34:53 Tim Crilly:
Yeah, the second night. Always try to shoot for the second night.
34:56 Emily Varon:
The second night, exactly.
34:57 Tim Crilly:
Yeah, that’s my advice. So well, Emma Emily, I I appreciate you coming on and and and sharing some of your insight. Um, this is this is an interesting topic that that I’d I’d love to continue the conversation down the road, or you know, if if you’re able to kind of come in and do some presentations for large groups and you know, see how we can facilitate those sorts of things as well.
35:17 Emily Varon:
Or or a part two for the adults, right? A part two, a part two for our own, for for our staff’s sleep, for our adults sleep, because you know, we’re we’re important too.
35:28 Tim Crilly:
Sure, and I think that’s a hot that’s a hot topic right now. Wellness is a hot topic. Yeah, burnout in our industry. And um, I think this probably plays a significant role in that huge role in burnout, huge.
35:42 Emily Varon:
I mean, I wish I had some statistics on it, but I don’t okay.
35:45 Tim Crilly:
Well, maybe in season five, maybe for next time we could do a panel, do a little bit of a burnout panel, and then have you on just to kind of talk about that element of it. That’d be cool.
35:54 Emily Varon:
I’d love that.
35:55 Tim Crilly:
Okay. Um, well, thanks. Um, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Um, it’s it’s hard to believe that we are closing out another season. And you know, obviously, I I can’t do it without um, you know, our producer Andrew and the amazing work that he does, not only behind the scenes, but sort of just keeps driving the the process um week in and week out for all the little things that need to get done. And uh, you know, Meredith um who does all of our social media and the and the graphics. So just uh, you know, a heartfelt thank you to you guys and the work you do. Um and uh to all the guests that we had. You know, we had a lot of great conversations this this um season. So I’m really excited about a little vacation. We’re gonna take a few few weeks off, but we’ll be back um you know, sort of mid-summer with with um some new episodes and a new season. So thank you again to everybody who has tuned in. Um, hopefully you enjoyed this this great conversation with Emily. So please share it, please, please subscribe and and you know look for look for Emily out there and and and bring her in to to chat with your your groups as well.
37:01 Emily Varon:
It’s always fun. It’s always I make it fun, not boring. I try to make nobody fall asleep during my seat.
37:06 Tim Crilly:
There you go. If that’s well, that if you can pull that off, that’s perfect. So thanks again and and tune in. Tune in next season, guys.
37:15 Emily Varon:
Thanks for having me, Tim.