Ellen Flannery-Schroeder (left) and Chelsea Tucker authored a book on that persistent parenting problem—bedtime.

Is bedtime a struggle in your house? A URI psychology professor and former student tackle children’s sleep and anxiety in their new book.

In their work as licensed psychologists, Chelsea Tucker ’12, M.A. ’16, Ph.D. ’17, and URI psychology professor Ellen Flannery-Schroeder witnessed a major issue for parents: children unable to fall asleep independently.

Flannery-Schroeder, director of the clinical psychology doctoral program and the Child Anxiety Program at URI, says research shows we have become an anxious society, especially because the COVID pandemic exacerbated people’s feelings of loneliness. Many children are afraid to sleep alone, and parents lack strategies to foster healthy sleep patterns, Tucker and Flannery-Schroeder say. They saw this repeatedly in their psychology practice at the New England Center for Anxiety in Westerly, R.I., where Flannery-Schroeder is co-director and Tucker is a psychologist. So, they wrote their first book together and are creating a parenting course to help struggling families.

Published in June by Rowman & Littlefield, Banish Bedtime Battles: The Ultimate Six-Week Plan to Help Your School-Aged Child Sleep Independently, teaches customized strategies based on specific challenges, including how to create a better sleep routine and envi-ronment, how to build children’s coping skills, and parenting techniques for handling children’s anxiety.

“What sets our book apart from other parenting guides is that we help parents and their children team up and build skills together,” Tucker says. “For parents, it’s parenting skills, and for kids, those emotion regulation skills, which serve them beyond bedtime. They help at bedtime, but if you can apply those across the board, this book can really help parents and their children overcome anything.”

Tucker, who is also a part-time faculty member at URI, was Flannery-Schroeder’s student in the doctoral psychology program in 2015, learning how to treat childhood anxiety. She says she fell in love with the clinical work and was inspired by Flannery-Schroeder’s work with children and families. So, once Tucker graduated and began work at the center, she and Flannery-Schroeder launched a consultation business, High Performance Parenting, in 2020, and the book took shape. Their shared passions and clinical experience helped them recognize six common battles that families face at bedtime, including children who sleep with a parent next to them, or in the parents’ bed, and children who protest and resist going to bed. The book identifies these battles and offers specific plans for parents.

“We knew from our clinical experience that this was a big problem for many, many people,” Flannery-Schroeder says. Indeed, when they surveyed parents, 94% reported experiencing one or more of the six bedtime battles portrayed in the book; and 86% of parents who have an established bedtime routine for their child failed to follow it nightly, she says.

One of those parents, who prefers not to be identified, says he and his wife endured a two-hour ordeal each night when putting their 6-year-old daughter to bed. She had meltdowns and they felt trapped by her demands to stay with her until she fell asleep. His daughter’s controlling tendencies, he says, also affected her friendships and academics, her relationship with her younger brother, and the family’s overall home life.

“Dr. Tucker helped us learn how to parent, in addition to helping our daughter learn coping skills,” he says. “The methods we learned have given our daughter more sleep and improved our family relationships.”

—Annie Sherman

PHOTO: SETH JACOBSON

The Vittimberga Endowed Professorship in Psychology

Ellen Flannery-Schroeder is the inaugural Dr. Glenda L. Vittimberga ’88 Endowed Professor in Psychology. The endowed professorship was established at URI by the Vittimberga family in memory of their sister, a renowned child psychologist who left an outstanding legacy of teaching, research, and community service.

“The endowed professorship,” Flannery-Schroeder says, “enables me to honor and extend the work of Dr. Vittimberga in supporting children’s mental health and well-being.”