Brett P
Engineering leader, husband and father of two
Bedtime battles down to 90 seconds, and a son who now asks for him.
Where he was
Brett was working 12 to 14 hour days and missing family dinner three or four nights a week. He fell asleep exhausted at nine and woke up wired. “I could do calculus right now.” He came home through the garage still switched on, phone lit up, and every interruption at home felt like an obstacle. At bedtime his boys wanted their mum. “A few months ago, kids wanted nothing to do with me at bedtime.”
The moment he decided
Brett drew a hard line: he would leave work at 3.50pm. Anything truly urgent could wait for a short window after the boys were asleep. The evening stopped belonging to work.
What we built
A go-home ritual: he stops the car at the top of the hill near his house, takes a breath and decides one plan for the first ten minutes before he walks in. Calm instead of control at bedtime: he sits by the door, steadies himself and lets the wave pass. A speaking item at dinner, so only the person holding it talks. A weekly review that gets the to-do list out of his head, and a run-walk plan small enough to survive a hard week.
It didn’t take much. Two weeks of effort, and it’s a different game.
What changed
The bedtime tantrums shrank to about 90 seconds. Then one evening his son walked over holding a teddy bear and asked, “Dad, will you come snuggle me?” Brett’s sleep came back (“super good lately”) and he started waking naturally at 5am without an alarm.
The deeper shift
Brett stopped being the helper at home and became a co-leader with his wife, who now texts him for support instead of carrying everything herself. When she had to be away for four nights, he ran the house with both boys and came out of it saying, “Not a chance I could have done this four weeks ago.”
What’s next
Brett has since been promoted to a director role. The next chapter is leading at that level while protecting everything he built at home.