As the field of behavioral sleep support continues to grow, I find myself having more conversations with BCBAs who have completed their training in sleep and are asking an important question: What comes next?

Summer has a way of exposing weaknesses in sleep systems that seemed perfectly manageable during the school year. A learner who was falling asleep predictably in May may suddenly begin resisting bedtime in June. A routine that felt solid becomes less effective. Sleep onset gets later, morning wake times drift, and families who thought they had finally “figured sleep out” find themselves back in a pattern of negotiation, frustration, and inconsistency.

One of the most common barriers to sleep progress is not a lack of effort.

It is inconsistency.

Not because caregivers do not care. Not because someone is “doing it wrong.” But because sleep is one of the few parts of parenting that often involves multiple adults with different schedules, different experiences, different tolerance levels, and different ideas about what bedtime should look like.

For many BCBAs, sleep enters the conversation almost by accident.

A family mentions that their child is awake multiple times a night. A learner arrives at sessions exhausted and dysregulated. Progress slows down. Daytime behavior becomes harder to support. Teachers report reduced attention. Parents are overwhelmed. Suddenly, sleep is no longer a side conversation, it is shaping nearly everything happening during the day.

And yet most behavior analysts were never formally trained to assess or support sleep.

One of the most common mistakes we make around sleep is assuming bedtime is simply a parenting preference.

Seven-thirty feels like a “good bedtime.” Eight o’clock seems reasonable. Maybe another family’s child goes to sleep at seven, so that becomes the goal. Bedtime starts to feel like a socially selected time rather than a biological one.

But biologically, sleep does not work that way.

We do not simply choose bedtimes. We calculate them.

When families are struggling with sleep, it is very easy for the conversation to drift into speculation.

Maybe the room is too humid. Maybe the blackout curtains are wrong. Maybe the mattress is uncomfortable. Maybe it is a growth spurt. Maybe it is this one tiny environmental detail that nobody has considered yet.

And while those things can matter in isolated cases, they are usually not the first place a BCBA should start.

As more BCBAs move into school-based service models, one of the biggest missed opportunities is also one of the most basic: sleep.

Not because schools should become sleep clinics. They should not. But because sleep disruption often arrives at school wearing a different label. A student looks inattentive. A teacher reports low frustration tolerance. A behavior plan feels less effective than expected. A learner who seemed capable yesterday looks unavailable today. In many cases, the team is trying to solve a daytime expression of a nighttime problem.

As more BCBAs work in schools, we need to consider a more practical conversation about sleep.

Not a conversation about running bedtime programs in classrooms. Not a conversation that assumes daily caregiver coaching is available. And not a conversation that treats every school problem as though it began and ended at school.

As more behavior analysts move into school-based service models, I have been noticing an interesting pattern emerge:

A student is struggling in the classroom, the team is under pressure to “fix” the behavior quickly, and because everyone is working within a system that allows very little contact with caregivers, FBAs are assigned as the “go-to” process via Amendment or Emergency IEP meetings.

Sleep can feel intimidating for BCBAs… not because it falls outside our problem-solving ability, but because so much of it seems to happen when we are not there. Families are at home. It is nighttime. The learner is tired. Everyone is operating with less bandwidth. And many clinicians assume that if a sleep plan is going to work, it has to depend on what happens in the middle of the night.

But that is not actually where the most important part of sleep programming begins.

Sleep problems in the autism community are not new. Most BCBAs have seen the downstream effects firsthand: a learner who struggles to attend, a family running on empty, a program that looks strong on paper but feels harder to implement in real life than it should.

What is still too often missed, however, is this: poor sleep does not just create “hard nights.” It changes the conditions under which learning, regulation, and family functioning happen the next day.

Each year, this week offers an opportunity to pause and reflect on something that quietly influences nearly every aspect of our lives: sleep.

While much of my work is focused on supporting BCBAs and the families they serve, this is one topic that truly applies to everyone. Whether you’re a clinician, caregiver, educator, or simply someone trying to function well during the day, sleep is one of the most powerful predictors of health, learning, and overall well-being.

If you work with families, you’ve likely heard it: “We know screens are bad before bed… but it’s the only thing that works.”

The conversation around blue light and sleep has become almost oversimplified. Screens get blamed. Melatonin gets mentioned. Families are told to “turn everything off an hour before bed.” And while there is real science behind light exposure and circadian rhythms, the solution is rarely that simple.

There’s a common belief in our field that specializing means narrowing your opportunities.

Many BCBAs hesitate to niche down because they worry it will limit their caseloads, reduce flexibility, or box them into a role they might outgrow. The pressure to be a “generalist who can handle anything” is strong, especially in systems where demand is high and resources are stretched thin.

But after years of working at the intersection of behavior analysis and sleep, I’ve seen the opposite play out again and again.

Burnout is one of the most common conversations in our field… and one of the most misunderstood.

BCBAs talk about exhaustion, emotional fatigue, and the sense that the work feels heavier than it used to. Many describe feeling stretched thin, disconnected from progress, or quietly questioning how long they can continue at this pace. And while workload and administrative demands are often blamed, those explanations rarely tell the full story.

Sleep is one of the most studied biological processes in human health. And yet, when it comes to how we assess sleep problems, especially in autistic learners, the research leaves clinicians with more questions than answers…

New families are like Forrest’s box of chocolates. We never know what we’re going to get.

Not because families are unpredictable in a negative way, but because every household comes with its own norms, values, routines, and definitions of what “normal” looks like. And when it comes to sleep, those differences become especially important.

If you’ve supported sleep at all as a BCBA, you’ve heard some version of this sentence:

“That’s not what I’ve heard…”

Sometimes it shows up gently, as a genuine question. Other times, it arrives with frustration behind it. A caregiver has read a blog, watched a video, joined a support group, or been given a recommendation from another provider and what they’ve heard doesn’t match what you’re suggesting.

As we step into a new year, it’s the perfect time for reflection. For me, 2025 reinforced something I have known for a long time: sleep remains one of the most powerful and most overlooked variables in behavior support. Despite the growing awareness of its importance, sleep is still too often treated as peripheral rather than foundational. And that reality creates both responsibility and opportunity as we move into 2026.

The holiday season has a way of bringing everyone together, sometimes under one roof, sometimes across many. Travel, overnight guests, shared childcare, and blended households become the norm. And while that can be meaningful and joyful, it’s also when sleep routines are most likely to unravel…