Time for Some Tough Love

 

If you've spoken to me at all during the past decade or so, you know that I consider myself one of the most sleep-deprived people on the planet. It is hard to have a conversation with me without hearing how tired I am, how long it takes me to fall asleep, or--most recently--how little my children sleep at night. This week hit an all-time low as Janae has been up from 1-4 a.m., 12:30-4:45 a.m.--and not just up, but up and MAD. She wants to play, she wants to find daddy or Ben, she wants to leave her room, she wants to nurse 10 times, and when I say, "Time to sleep" or "Daddy's sleeping" or "Milk all gone," she says, "WAAAAAAAA!" But the past few nights she hasn't just screamed and cried and called out for Daddy or asked for milk, she has also HIT me, and finally--the last straw--BIT me when I said no.

So, I pulled out my parenting books again, and started to look for more answers. One of my favorite books (which I didn't actually like at first but now love) is called The Happiest Toddler on the Block. It's one of the few books that when I apply some of its advice the suggestions actually work. Anyway, I read again about why toddlers resist sleep and some options on how to help one-year-olds sleep.

 

One technique suggests comforting the child, then peeking back in after 3, then 5, then 10 minutes to say, "I love you. Go back to sleep." This continues until the child falls asleep (which the book warns might take up to an hour). We tried this with Ben and it DID NOT WORK. Ben screamed more and more, and I am convinced that he would still be screaming now if we hadn't actually gone in and picked him up. With Ben everything was so different. All we had to do was take him into our bed, and he would sleep all night (and that's still his night-time routine--I should write about that next time). But if we take Janae into our bed, she gets super-charged with hyperactivity . . . and for some reason Jason finds it hard to sleep while someone is playing with his face. So that option being out, I thought we'd try the "tough love" approach. This is how it went:

Janae woke up at 3:00 and Jason went into her room and said, "I love you. Go to sleep."

Three minutes later: MAMA . . . WAAAAAAAA . . . MAMA MAMA MAMA . . . WAAAAAA
Five minutes later: MAMA . . . WAAAAAAAAA . . . MAMA MAMA MAMA . . . WAAAAAA
Ten minutes later: MAMA . . . WAAAAAAAA . . . DADA DADA . . . MAMA . . . WAAAA
Ten minutes later: DADA . . . MAMA . . . WAAAAA . . . MILK . . . MILK

I could not bear hearing my baby screaming for milk, so I went downstairs and filled a sippy cup of water (or asked Jason to do it--I honestly can't remember). Then I waited 10 minutes, walked into Janae's room, put the sippy cup on the floor and said, "I love you. Go to sleep."

By the time ten more minutes had passed, Janae had stopped crying. I asked Jason to go check on her; when he opened her door she was sitting on her bed watching her Ocean Wonders bubbles, which she had turned on. I just about started crying myself when I heard that--the image of her sitting on her bed in the dark, staring at bubbles after being abandoned by both parents, with only a sippy cup of water for comfort--I could cry now at the thought of it!

 

But back to my point--it actually worked. We didn't hear from her again, and this morning she woke up HAPPY (she'd slept from about 3:30 to 7:30!). She wasn't angry with me for leaving her to sleep; she was WELL-RESTED, and--come to think of it--I was more well-rested than I'd been in quite a while.

So, how long will this have to go on? According to my book, tonight should be a lot like last night, and then it will be smooth sailing into dreamland. I wonder what it will be like. . . .