Do all other parents feel like they've been fighting children's sleep from day 1 and that this struggle lasts years? (Fighting sleep battles is, by far, the most frustrating part of parenting for me and something about which I seem to obsess about constantly). The drama has continued in our house (mainly for 3.5-year-old Iver. Niall [almost 6 months] has been sleeping very well, in my opinion, going down easily and often doing a 6- or 7-hour stretch with one [or two] wakings, and eating only once or twice after 2 a.m. [sometimes he wakes around 11 p.m. or midnight, but we let him fuss and he puts himself back to sleep, usually by rolling to his stomach]. Naps are a different story, but the consistency of allowing him to self-soothe to sleep during the day is not enforceable yet, so we may have to wait on this aspect until next month).
Iver, who could probably drop his nap altogether (except that he still
naps at school), is on about his fifth consecutive month (?150 days?!)
of stalling/fighting at bedtime ("I don't want to sleep, I hate my room,
I need to pee, I'm really, really scared...") and we frequently have to
follow through with locking him in via the door monkey if he keeps
escaping or won't stop screaming. We have the same
shower-books-hugs-stories-last "goodnight," routine and despite ignoring
him subsequently, it hasn't extinguished his behavior.
From Facebook: When it's bedtime... (my child on the left).
We also have tried to incentivize good bedtime behavior by giving him "cards" in the morning if he goes down without a fight, which he can redeem for fun things. It sometimes (but not always) gets him to comply (I really don't understand how such a bright little guy chooses to be purposely defiant with no payoff). Recently, he has been wanting to camp out in the back yard, which we told him required five cards, so he tried really hard last week, and bought himself a Saturday night camping date with Papa. He got to use this children's sleeping bag that Danny gave him when he was a baby!
Here's the afternoon set-up
pretending to nap (he could not be convinced to nap in the tent)
Gleeful!
as it got dark...
Kelvin reported that he didn't sleep that well in the tent-- he heard Niall crying at 11, then a plane flying over them later, then had some insomnia, but that Iver slept through the night very well! Let's see if he can get five more cards this week... or maybe he can have the tent be his new bedroom (the screaming will sound less loud from out there...).
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