Today I sat down with a lovely couple who came to me because they had reached a breaking point with sleep.

They have four children, all under eight. Their baby is still waking at night for bottles and needs help falling asleep. Their older children need Mom or Dad nearby to fall asleep and often make their way into their parents’ bed during the night. By the time we spoke, both parents were exhausted and ready for something to change.

But as we started talking, I realized that the sleep itself wasn’t the first thing I needed to address.

Mom was overwhelmed. There were so many moving pieces in her mind—bedtimes, bottles, meals, naps, activities, baths, four different children with four different sets of needs—that everything had become jumbled together. She knew things needed to change, but she couldn’t make sense of what needed to happen first.

And when everything feels important, it becomes very difficult to prioritize anything.

This is something I see often when families come to me at a breaking point. When we are exhausted and in survival mode, we become very zoomed in on whatever fire is burning in front of us.

The baby is crying. How do I make it stop?

My child is awake again. How do I just get them back to sleep?

Everyone is tired and dinner is late. How do I just get through bedtime tonight?

We solve the immediate problem because, in that moment, that is all we have capacity for. But when we are putting out one fire after another, it becomes much harder to step back and see the situation in context. And without that perspective, it can be difficult to identify the Need underneath what is happening.

In The GPS Within, the model I co-created with Rivka Klein, we call this ability to step back zooming out. Zooming out allows us to take in more than what we can see in the immediate moment. It gives us perspective. We can begin to look at what is happening without judgment, consider more than one point of view, and see the situation within the context of the larger family system.

That is what I needed to do for this mom.

I zoomed out and looked at the whole map: four children, their different ages and needs, the family’s evening rhythm, meals, naps, activities, sleep associations, connection, the parents’ needs—and, most importantly, where this family was now and where they wanted to go.

Once I could see the larger picture, I could begin to see the order.

But Mom didn’t need the whole map.

She needed to know what to do tonight.

So we zoomed back in.

Instead of giving her ten things to change, we identified the next smallest step. Something she could actually focus on and follow through with. Once that step begins to feel manageable, we can take the next one, and then the next.

This is an important part of the work I do with families. An individualized sleep plan isn't simply a list of things you “should” be doing. I look at where your family is right now, where you want to go, and then we figure out the path between those two points—one step at a time.

Because an overwhelmed parent usually doesn’t need more information. She needs clarity.

And she needs the opportunity to experience success again.

One doable change can become, Okay, I can do this. And from there, we have a little more capacity for the next change. Slowly, what once felt like an enormous, tangled problem begins to have an order to it.

Sometimes we can zoom out and find that perspective ourselves. And sometimes, especially when we are exhausted and deep inside the situation, having someone beside us who can see the whole map makes all the difference.

You don't have to figure out the entire road ahead today.

Sometimes you just need to know where you're going—and what your next smallest step is.

Want to stop second-guessing what to do next?

This October, I’m teaching Parenting Without Second-Guessing, a 4-day live parenting challenge designed to help you step out of the constant “Am I doing this right?” and begin to understand what your child needs, when to hold your decision, when to adjust, and how to stay connected through both.

If you find yourself putting out fires all day and wishing you had a clearer way to know what to do, I’d love to have you join me.

Join the Parenting Without Second-Guessing Challenge