Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [39]
Brushing your teeth is basic hygiene that everyone should practice. Enough said?
Bedtime Battles
“It takes us about 3 hours to get the kids to bed. By the time we get through the requests for snacks, juice, water, a bedtime story, and tucking them in—only for them to pop out 10 minutes later and come downstairs—I’m so exhausted I wish I could go to bed too.”
“Aaron won’t go to sleep without my husband or me lying down next to him. The problem is, by the time one of us lies down long enough to get him to sleep, we fall asleep too. I don’t think we’ve had any ‘couple time’ for over a year!”
“I remember always seeing imaginary monsters at night when I was a kid, so I understand Anna’s fears and I’ve tried to be patient. But lately she’s been getting up so many times in the night, claiming to see monsters, that I’m starting to walk into walls. There has to be a better way.”
I’ll put it bluntly. As my pa used to say, “When it’s bedtime, it’s bedtime. Either you can walk under your own power or you can be ricocheted into bed.” All of us kids knew that once we were in bed, there was no getting out of bed. Dad was absolutely firm about that.
The point is, every child needs a set bedtime. But that bedtime can vary, depending on the age and nature of the child. For example, a 2-year-old needs a different bedtime than a 14-year-old because that 2-year-old requires more sleep. Some children require more sleep than a sibling of the same age. The only children in a family who typically go to bed at the same time are twins and triplets. Does this mean that a child can’t go to bed before her bedtime, if she’s tired? Of course not! But it can mean an awful lot to your oldest child to know that she could stay up 15 minutes later than the other kids if she wanted to—a sort of birthright.
For many families, bedtime becomes a battle zone of:
1. going through the child’s getting-ready-for-bed routines
2. getting the child into bed
3. getting the child back into bed when she pops out
4. making sure the child stays in bed
Children love routine, so here’s a caveat: pick your bedtime routine very carefully. Once chosen, it will be difficult to change. For example, if you have cereal as a snack or you read a bedtime story, your child, resembling a Philadelphia attorney, will always require that you do those two things before he can settle down to sleep. The more complicated the routine, the longer it will take.
Every child on the planet will push to lengthen that routine. My advice, from personal experience with 5 children, is to not let that happen. If you read “just one more story,” you’ll need to do that every night. The smart parent will make routines brief and simple. I remember taking Holly, our firstborn, to bed as a child. When she was 18 months old, she’d grunt and point at the things she wanted picked up. And I, like a trained monkey, was foolish enough to do it for her. After a while I had so much stuff in my arms that I could barely hold her. Was that nuts or what?
No matter what routine you come up with, when 9:00 (or whenever bedtime is) comes, once that child is tucked into bed, it’s important that she stays there. When Holly was a toddler, I made the mistake of always getting her a drink of water from the kitchen, which Holly claimed always tasted better than the water from the nearby bathroom faucet, before she went to bed. By the time we got to Lauren, our youngest, any requests for water came from the bathroom, which was closer (by then I was smart enough to not let on to where the water came from).
Children are adept at manipulating parents . . . especially once they are in bed. They can manipulate by “needing” water and a snack (“My tummy is so hungry it’s rubbing itself raw”), seeing imaginary monsters (“Mommy, I’m scared”), claiming