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All About Our Gentle Sleep Coach Training Program

Our Mission

Why We Continue to Train the Next Generation

of Gentle Sleep Coaches®

When I created the Gentle Sleep Coach® Certification back in 2010, it was the first program of its kind in the world.

Our mission was clear from the very beginning:

To ensure parents everywhere have access to quality, science-based, and compassionate sleep coaching.

By 2019, I brought the program to Spanish-speaking coaches so families in Latin America, Spain, and beyond could benefit from the same gold standard training.

The Changing Landscape

In the last five years, the number of certification programs has exploded. Unfortunately, many of these newer programs:

Are led by people with little training and personal experience
Offer minimal to no mentorship, live guidance, or case review
Focus more on marketing than on quality training
Teach mainly “cry-it-out” methods — even for newborns
Others claim to teach “15-30 different methods” (when in truth, there are only three: extinction, controlled crying or graduated extinction and parental fading)

Some even claim to teach my method… but apply it incorrectly in ways that can harm attachment and trust between parents and children.

The result? Families are getting poor advice, and coaches are graduating without the skills they need to succeed.

The Gentle Sleep Coach Certification Program

There’s a demand for high quality sleep training, but parents aren’t sure where to start. The parents of the world NEED well-trained sleep coaches that offer gentle sleep coaching methods so that they don’t have to feel like its CIO or suffer for months or even years. That's where we step in – our Gentle Sleep Coaching Program is the most thorough, evidence-based, and comprehensive sleep coach training available in the U.S. and around the world. Not only will you be a certified Gentle Sleep Coach, but our program is founded and led by Kim West, LCSW-C who is the co-founder of the International Association for Child Sleep Consultants, and a practicing licensed family therapist for more than 25 years. Our Gentle Sleep Program has the best practices, curriculums, faculty, and mentorship available.

Why the Gentle Sleep Coach Program Was Created

We felt that it was time for the sleep coaching field to become professionalized, so we created the Gentle Sleep Coaching program. Excellent sleep advice and coaching should be available for all parents everywhere. Created by Kim West, the Sleep Lady, the Gentle Sleep Coaching program follows her trademark sleep training method. There’s not enough Kim to go around, so she created this program so that families everywhere could benefit from a well-trained, certified Gentle Sleep Coach.

There are a lot of sleep coaches available who have little to no-training in the matter. We are passionate about making the world of sleep coaches credible and certified.

“The best career decision I have ever made.”

In 2012, I enrolled in Kim West's Gentle Sleep Consultant (GSC) certification program, and it was the best career decision I have ever made. Not only is the content in the program comprehensive, but the ongoing support is what makes all the difference.

—Jen V

Why We Haven’t Stopped

I’ll be honest — I seriously considered shutting down both my English and Spanish programs. Competition was fierce, and price-shopping was hurting my enrollment numbers.

But two things stopped me:

My Mission

I couldn’t walk away knowing the “lesser than” programs would be all that’s left for future coaches to choose from.

Our Future Vision

Many of our graduates will one day be ambassadors for a new parenting app I’m developing. I want those ambassadors to be well-trained, ethical, and deeply committed to supporting families.

Closing the program would mean leaving parents and future coaches without access to the gold standard in gentle sleep training. That’s not something I could live with.

Our Faculty Panel

Shoshana Bennett, Ph.D. (Dr. Shosh) has helped pioneer the field of maternal mental health in the U.S.

She founded and led national and international organizations, educating professionals and the public for the last three decades. She has helped over 20,000 women worldwide.

Lewis J. Kass, MD is a Yale-trained, board-certified pediatric pulmonologist and sleep medicine specialist specializing in pediatric respiratory medicine and sleep disorders.

He is in private practice in Westchester NY and the Pediatric Sleep Medicine Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Lindsey Biel, OTR/L is a pediatric occupational therapist and co-author of the award-winning book- Raising a Sensory Smart Child: The Definitive Handbook for Helping Your Child with Sensory Processing Issues, and the author of Sensory Processing Challenges: Effective Clinical Work with Kids & Teens. She teaches workshops to parents, teachers, therapists, doctors, and other professionals across the country.

Anthony Loizides, MD completed his fellowship in pediatric gastroenterology at Harvard Medical School.

He has over 20 publications in original research as well as invited reviews, chapters, and editorials. He has been at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore since 2004.

Laura Possessky, Esq. is an attorney who focuses on entrepreneurship, branding, content and licensing, media and intellectual property law, and public interest.

She is also a DC Bar Leader.

Catherine Trebble MBA is Principal of Support Your Brilliance (SYB), a full-service website solutions provider.

She is an expert at designing and building websites that generate more clients for service providers.

Heather Gray A trained therapist with more than 20 years of experience, Heather Gray specializes in helping business owners prevent, manage and recover from burnout.

By prioritizing confident decision making, effective leadership, and clear communication, owners improve their mindset and feel more in control of their businesses.

Courtney Zentz, CLC

Founder of Tiny Transitions Sleep Consulting, Courtney is an award-winning speaker, author and Pediatric Sleep Expert. Courtney launched Sleep Coach Success Lab where she provides mentoring and business coaching to other sleep consultants looking to take their business to the next level.

Adding the Success Lab to the Tiny Transitions portfolio, has allowed Courtney to meld her passion for sleep coaching with her love of business into a program to help others successfully grow their businesses.

Nadia Posada is a PR and Communications specialist with experience working in an international environment with various industries.

She helps clients gain wins in top publications and podcasts. She offers her optimistic tips and tricks to GSC coaches for longterm growth and profitability.

Adapting to Continue

To keep the program alive — and to match the current economic realities — I’ve made important changes:

Lower Tuition — We’ve reduced the investment to make it more accessible, without lowering the quality.
3 Class Cohorts a Year — You’ll start with a group, build community, and have accountability.
Newborn Program (0–5 Months) — You’ll learn Baby-Led Sleep Shaping, with no cry-it-out and no “timed check-ins” for this age group — a feature no other program offers.
Streamlined Delivery — Live mentorship and Q&A calls remain, but some faculty expert lessons are recorded. This allows us to offer a lower price without losing depth.

Our Mission

We want excellent sleep advice and coaching to be readily available for all parents everywhere. Through our certified Gentle Sleep Coaches, we want to empower families and give them choices in how they sleep train.

The Heart of Our Work

I am still here because the families we serve– and the profession we’re building– need protection.

Everytime I see a program mislead parents with “fast fixes” or new coaches set up without proper training and mentorship, it reignites my commitment.

My mission is to:

Protecting families from harmful, one-size-fits-all advice
Upholding the highest ethical and professional standards in a currently unregulated field
Creating a global network of skilled, compassionate sleep coaches
Preserve the integrity of this profession for the next generation of families.

Meet the GSC program founder - Kim West The Sleep Lady

Kim West is a mother of two and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has been a practicing child and family therapist for more than 25 years.

She’s known as The Sleep Lady by her clients, she has personally helped tired parents all over the world learn to listen to their intuition, recognize their child’s important cues and behaviors and gently create changes that promote and preserve healthy sleep habits. She has authored a best selling book and is the host of a Gentle Parenting Podcast.

But, Kim can’t do it all alone, which is why she started training Gentle Sleep Coaches. All certified Gentle Sleep Coaches will learn directly from Kim. When Kim realized the massive lack of formal sleep coach training, she knew she had to step up to the plate. Consider these numbers - there are hundreds of thousands of babies born every day, and 1 in 4 of them will have some sort of sleep problem. Pediatricians get little training in sleep, but are asked to help parents every day. Kim’s Gentle Sleep Coaching method empowers sleep coaches to help families and parents get the sleep they need.