We are going through a really rough time with Noah right now. The kid refuses to sleep though the night and it is killing me very slowly and painfully. We have finally found a routine to get him down at bedtime without a fight. I will rub his back and then leave the door open and sit on the couch so he can see me. That way he will fall asleep on his own without the direct presence of Hunter or me. The problem is the little fiend will sleep for about 4 hours and then the fight begins.
If I stay in his room until he is asleep he will wake up every hour and come and get me (one habit we are trying to break). This means I am in his room waiting for him to fall asleep EVERY HOUR. Now, if I don't wait in his room for the heathen to fall back asleep, well, that is where the real problems begin.
Let's take last night, for example. Noah woke up at 3:00am and I went and sat with him for 5 minutes until I thought he was pretty close to sleep. Well, he wasn't. I spent the next 2 1/2 hours trying everything I could the get him back to sleep without me sleeping in his room (the other habit we are trying to break). Don't get me wrong. I know we were in a really bad routine and it will take a while to break it and start a new one, I just didn't think he would break ME on the first night. He refused to go back to his bed unless I took him and then refused to stay in bed unless I stayed there with him. So, to break down what I tried, I tried rocking him, rubbing his back, talking sweet, talking stern, ignoring him (he just walked around my bed and cried for an hour except when he wedged himself between my bed and night stand and fell asleep for 10 minutes. Boy was he mad when he woke up). I tried telling him either go to his bed or sleep on my floor, sleep on the couch or living room. I even tried shutting my door, but then had to spank him when he went into the backyard (TWICE!) when my door was shut. Finally at 5:30 am, I begged him to sleep on my floor on a pillow and promised him a blanket if he would just go to sleep. He did and then I cried myself to sleep.
OK, so what have I NOT thought of? Any suggestions or advice? We used to lock him in his room and he did well with that. When he became more verbal and “aware” of the other options we weaned him off locking him in and he still did really great for a long while. We can always go back to locking him in his room, but it just feels cruel now that he knows the difference and that he is older. I don’t really want to scar or scare him. I just want us all to finally get some sleep. Have you been thorough the same thing and something has worked for you?
2 comments:
I am the last person to give advice for sleeping arrangements! But it sounds like you have the hard part down though. Getting them to go to bed on their own, I think is the harder part. If you have that routine working for you... then that is huge! That is something to celebrate:) My 4 year old comes into my bed about every other night sometime between 3-6am. The good thing is that I rarely notice b/c I'm so tired. The even better thing is that my 6 year old comes in maybe once every two months and my 8 year old never comes in. So my 'brilliant' advice is that you can just let him sleep on the floor next to you if he comes in in the middle of the night, knowing that it doesn't last for too much longer! I feel bad even leaving this as a comment for fear of being judged by someone with a real plan but it just seems like I tried a lot with my older kids. I stressed myself out, yelled at them one too many times, definitely lost sleep and then one day - they just didn't want to come in anymore. Good luck!
Melanie -
Thanks for the advice and support. It does help to know that this will eventually not be a problem. You hit the nail on the head about yelling and stressing. It just is so unproductive and doesn't help at all. Everyone is tired and tempers are up. I just have felt like a really bad mom lately. I really like your idea/plan about him sleeping on the floor. Once I get him to accept being "locked" in i won't have a problem if he sleeps on the floor. He actually used to, but than I let him in the bed once and he refused to lay down on the floor from that point on. So, that is why we are back to step one.
Thanks again!!
PS- I love reading your blog. You kiddos are so adorable and getting so big.
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