The worst sleep advice for parents is "just get more sleep."

You cannot schedule a baby. You cannot negotiate with a 2-year-old at 2:17am. And you cannot wait six months for everyone to "sleep through" before you start functioning again.

What actually wrecks you is not the waking. It is the 45 minutes after the waking — the phone, the planning, the replay of the day — that turns a 20-minute interruption into a ruined night.

If you only change one thing this week:

When they go back down, do not pick up your phone. Sit or lie down in the dark. Breathe out longer than you breathe in, ten times. Unclench your jaw. That is it.

You are not trying to feel sleepy. You are teaching your nervous system that the night is not an emergency.

Broken sleep is the job. The skill is returning to rest in the window you get — not waiting for a night that never comes.