Bedtime Confessions

Ever since the beginning of the year Z has had trouble sleeping: going to bed at night, staying in bed at night, waking up during naps. It started before we switched to a toddler bed. In fact, it motivated us to switch to a toddler bed because I couldn't easily get Z back in bed, especially when I was 9 months pregnant. It started around the time when a dog barking woke him up and startled him. It took weeks to talk him down from that ledge. Every night he would talk about doggies barking and we started to cater to it and would check the door was locked, and turn on a fan. We even bought an air purifier (for white noise) and even started playing music. Eventually, I started to get worried about all of these props we were giving him for sleeping. We tried to emphasize what Z should do if he heard dogs barking (say: Hush, silly doggies!). Eventually the doggy fear fell by the wayside, but the waking up in the middle of the night didn't.

At first I chalked it up to the upcoming and then current change of having a new baby at home. When Harper started sleeping through the night and Z did also, I thought perhaps the baby had been disrupting his sleep. But it just keeps happening. Z wakes up in the middle of the night from one to three times. He cries and calls for Mama. Sometimes he gets out of bed and comes into our room. We put him back in bed, tuck his blanket in and he usually settles down again quickly. It's hard to know if he is legitimately upset or just fussy because he woke up and wants us to help him go back to sleep. In the middle of the night, we try to just get him in bed and tuck him in; no talking or extended interaction.

And it's happening during his naps, also. He'll wake up crying and upset and sometimes this goes into a full tantrum. At first I tried the middle of the night routine, but recently I've started to treat it more as a discipline issue. I tell him he needs to calm himself down and not throw a tantrum. If he doesn't want to get back in bed, I tell him he can do a time-out instead. So far, he picks bed. I also tell him he can't get up from a nap if he's grumpy. If he's whiny and wants up, I tell him to rest until he is happy, not grumpy. This has prompted him to declare, "Mama, Me happy!" when he gets up in the morning. (pretty cute!) These tactics have helped, but none of them "solved" the problem. Everyone tells me this is a phase and that it will get better. Z always has had trouble with the 45-minute intruder.

Besides the waking up from sleep, Z also started really putting up a fight going to bed at night. Now I realize how good we've had it for over a year, when the norm was to do the bedtime routine, leave and that was it. For six months or so, we've had to put him back in bed multiple times (crib and toddler bed). Just recently (maybe the last two months), it got a lot worse. We would spend about thirty minutes after putting him in bed putting him back in bed. We tried many tactics to motivate him to stay in bed: quality time before bed (see this post), rewards (George sticker and a treat), discipline (time out and spanking), repetition (putting him back over and over). Honestly, where we failed was to pick one method and stick with it. Between John and I and depending on the night, how we handled him getting out of bed varied a lot.

So, we (well, John really) finally decided it was time to stop. John started the Super Nanny approach of putting him back in bed without discussion. The difference was that now we told him we were not going to tuck him in. The "tuck" is a big motivator for Z. He loves getting tucked in and started to depend on it (or at least expect it) no matter how many times he got out of bed. Starting Monday, Z only got one tuck in. When he got out of bed, John put him back. Out. Back. Out Back. Out. BackOutBackOutBackOutBack...
Night One: 60 minutes pretty much continuous. A good portion of this was crying and screaming. If I had to guess, John (mostly) and I (a little) put him back in bed around 40 times.
Night Two: 60 minutes of putting him back over a 90 minute period. The rest of the time he played quietly. We didn't check up on him to see if he was in bed. I guess for now we are just waiting to see if he comes out of the bedroom.
Night Three: a little less than 60 minutes, but not as much hysteria. More time in between playing in his room.
Night Four (last night): 5 minutes. He got out of bed once. ONCE! Hallelujah!

During this whole thing we questioned our approach, we almost caved, I wanted to cry, John missed the ending a Laker game, I didn't get to eat cookies, and there was a questionable incident of an "accidental" tuck-in (it was purely accidental, I promise!). There's no way I could have done it alone. John has way more endurance and is not easily swayed by the emotion of it all. Although I'm not going to call the battle over just yet, at least we can see improvement. I'm sure it will come and go, as everything does with kids, but it feels so good to finally have decided on a strategy and be sticking to it. How many times will we have to re-learn that lesson?