Bedtime Update

Last time you heard from me I was stealthily rolling across the floor and not so stealthily crashing into the furniture. Baby M has now been in his toddler bed a little over a week and I'm glad to report that things are looking up.

The first few nights were terrible. He'd get out of bed and pound on the door crying "Mommy, Mommy." Our brief foray into sleep training when Baby M was an infant was bad enough, now that he can ask for me by name it is unbearable. We consulted our sleep books and asked friends and family for suggestions. The overwhelming majority recommended that I go into his room periodically, put him back in the bed and then leave again. Do not give in to his demands that "Mommy lie down." In fact, many suggested that I not interact with him at all. Others allowed for a curt "It's time to sleep," and a few were generous enough to tack on a "Mommy loves you." But no way, under any circumstances, was I to remain in the room with him. That would teach him that he needed a crutch to sleep, or that he could manipulate me or some other equally negative lesson.

But here's the thing, we followed the Ferber/Graduated Extinction/Whatever-you-call-it method of checking and leaving and we ended up listening to Baby M cry for nearly 3 hours. All of us felt lousy by the end of the night. But what we discovered was that if I agreed to go sit on the couch, Baby M would patter happily over to his bed and lay down. He no longer demanded that I read him stories while he laid there. He didn't throw his blankets on the floor and cry for me to bring them back and he didn't need me to hold his hand. He just rolled over and was asleep in 20 minutes. So our new routine is to read him a story, put him to bed and then sit on the couch for the 20 minutes it takes for him to fall asleep.

And, really, what is so bad about that? So I spend 20 or 30 minutes sitting in a darkened room, reading, meditating, or just zoning out. How exactly is this detrimental to Baby M? Maybe he is trying to see if he can control me, or maybe he is afraid of the dark or maybe he just needs some extra affection right now.

Sometimes it is good just to sit. One of the overlooked benefits of children is that they force us to slow down and appreciate the moment. To stop and notice the leaf that looks like a butterfly, the jolt of surprise when a bubble pops on your cheek and the wonder of sitting quietly and watching your child sleep.