Going Through the Bad Parenting Decisions to Get to the Good Ones (and a stay in bed suggestion)

One of the problems with blogging is that you end up giving a slightly skewed vision of your parenting.  I often come across as much more serene and thoughtful than I actually am in reality.  I certainly do put a lot of thought into my parenting, but let's just say I do better thinking at my keyboard than I do standing in the middle of the living room with two tired / sick / hungry / all of the above children.

In an effort to redress this, let me relate the events of one evening a couple of weeks ago.  My husband was out, so I was putting the children to bed by myself.

The Bad Decisions

We actually have to back up a little for this story.  While we'd been away on holiday, my two year old daughter had been anxious about sleeping in a strange room, and so I'd sat in with her every night until she fell asleep.  I am actually in the habit of doing this with her at naptime anyway, but in the evenings, her brother's going to sleep too, so she had been fine with his company.  Not so when we were staying with our friends, and I figured it wasn't unreasonable for me to sit with her for twenty minutes every evening... so long as she didn't expect this to continue when we got home.

She did.

Anyway, on this night, the second since we'd got back, I was determined that I was not going to sit in with her.  We were going to go cold turkey on this, she and I.  So I started by putting her back to bed every time she got up.  At first I told her firmly that she was not allowed to get up.  After a few times, I switched to putting her back to bed in silence.

What didn't help was that her four year old brother didn't want to be left in the room by himself, so he got up too, and I would have to get them both back to bed.  I admit, I get a lot more impatient with him over this, because we've already been through this stage with him!

So it didn't take long before I started getting cross about this.  I tried ignoring them... when I heard them on the stairs, I paid no attention and carried on at the computer.  Naturally they came all the way up to me and gave me the big-eyed pout with a few whimpers thrown in.  I tried shutting the door on them, and that triggered full on sobs.

The Ugly Decisions

Finally, my temper got the better of me, and I hauled them back to bed with a good scolding. My son was subdued by the threat of no television the following day (a near foolproof strategy with him).  When my daughter got up again, I really let her have it.  I mentally justified my tirade with the thought that if I made myself thoroughly unlikable, then the bed would seem the better alternative.  Not so... my daughter will take even a screaming banshee of a mother over bed.

Following my theory to its illogical conclusion, I decided that the best thing to do would be to remove myself from the equation.  If my daughter could not find her mother, then she might as well go back to bed and go to sleep, right?  Right?  So the next time she got up, I hid myself.

Yes, I think you can all spot the cruel flaw in my logic there.  I'm in no way proud of that... but that's why I wanted to write it down, so I can't pretend it didn't happen.  This is what I'm capable of doing when I'm tired and stressed.

... and One Good Decision

Anyway, after I'd soothed my now traumatised daughter, I had a new problem: how do I convince her to stay in bed when I've already shaken her faith that I am still nearby, even if I'm not in the room? So I put her back to bed, and sat down at the top of the stairs a few feet from her door.  When she came running out of her room crying, I let her sit down next to me.  I didn't actively engage her, but I also didn't push her away or make any indication that she should go back to bed.  Gradually, she calmed down.

I decided that I would let her sit there until she chose to go back to bed of her own accord, no matter how long it took (by now my husband was home and somewhat confused about what had been going on, but he couldn't fill in for me; at night, my daughter is a Mum-only girl).  After twenty minutes, she was literally nodding off, but she stuck determinedly to her step, holding onto the rail for support--it was terribly cute and a very good way for me to regain my calm too. 

Eventually, when an hour had passed, I caved and asked if she wanted to go to bed. She groggily agreed, and I led her back to her bedroom and tucked her in.  I didn't wait, but I still think she was asleep before I left the room.

As horrendous as the evening was, it was worth it for that moment of inspiration: the top of the steps.  It's a neutral zone where she can reassure herself I'm still there, and I can wait quietly while she goes to sleep without being afraid to move or to leave too early. (It's really hard to tell when my daughter is asleep vs on the verge of sleep.)  It's also something I should be able to replicate in most places we stay.

I've repeated and refined it every night since.  At first, I would wait a suitable interval, and then ask my daughter if she wanted to go to bed (which always got an affirmative), but after a few days she started getting up herself when she was ready to go back to bed.  Initially, she would be crying when she came out of her room, but that also lasted only a few days. Aside from that first night, I was always able to put her down and leave her awake... sometimes she would get back up again, but whenever she did fall asleep, it was without me in the room.

The biggest issue we had was her brother, who was not impressed at her going out to sit with me.  Having him sit on the step as well proved to be too distracting as they'd inevitably start messing around with each other, so I had to enforce a double standard: she was allowed to get up and sit with me; he was not.  I tried to explain to him that she was younger than he was, and she was never going further than the top of the step. I also explained that she needed to learn to go to sleep without me while he needed to learn to go to sleep without anybody, but this went down like a lead balloon. 

I ended up just using the no TV tomorrow threat with him on a regular basis (we had to carry through with this once) to make him stay in bed.  I did however come to a compromise where if he was upset, I would leave my daughter on the step and go in to him for a moment, and that seemed to help a lot. He still doesn't like it, but fortunately these days her time out of the room is very brief. 

We went through a few nights where she was coming out and just messing around, and when she did go back to bed, she got straight back up again, beaming at me.  So I started silently putting her back to bed as soon as she got up.  She hated that, and while I allowed her to sit down on the step if she got herself genuinely upset, we soon had a groundrule laid down that if I put her back to bed and told her it was time to go to sleep now, it would do her no good to ignore me.


It's done wonders for her sense of security though.  It's much easier dealing with overnight wake ups now, as she usually doesn't mind us leaving the room again.  At some point, I'll try doing it for her nap as well, though I haven't had the nerve to make that change yet.


In the past few days, I've been able to keep my time on the stairs very brief.  I put her to bed, she gets straight up, sits with me for a few minutes and then I suggest she goes back to bed.  Most of the time, she does not get up again (though I have heard her giggling and talking to her brother).  It's a simple, short part of the night-time routine and I could probably keep it up for years if necessary, though I'll likely reach a point where I push for her not to get up at all.

Right now though, I'm just relieved that I worked this issue out without further psychological scarring of my children.  Is it too much to hope that for our next problem I can achieve my goal of zero psychological scarring?

Figuring out Naps and Runaway Toddlers!

I'm sitting at my computer listening to hear if my son will come out of his bedroom again.  He's already lost his television time tomorrow, but his inability to sleep tonight that we need to re-think his afternoon nap again.

We thought he was ready to give up his afternoon nap, but after a few days without, it became apparent that he still needed it.  Actually, what he probably needs is a twenty minute power nap each day, but once he goes to sleep, he sleeps for ninety minutes to two hours.  Trying to wake him earlier than that is such a bad idea I wince to think about it. 

Waking is a big, near impossible transition for my son.  He's better these days than he used to be, but waking him before he's ready is a surefire recipe for a physical throw-down tantrum, the only time he has one.  I have resorted to googling this before now, trying to figure out the why of it, but all I've found are a few other mothers reporting similar issues and saying that their child outgrew it.

Anyway, to avoid the tantrum situation, we don't wake him if we can help it.  Instead, we're trying to figure out how often a week he needs a nap.  If he doesn't get enough sleep, his behaviour deteriorates.  If he gets too much, he can't sleep at night.  So far, we've established that twice a week is too little, every other day, too much.  Onto every three days then?  Obviously, the stimulation he receives during the day makes a difference too, but I think we're just going to be making this up as we go along for a few months until he's genuinely able to give up his nap.

One plus: I followed Confessions of a Montessori Mom's advice and started getting him dressed as soon as he got up in the morning, which has helped mitigate some of the behavioural issues as well as encouraging him to get control of himself when he first wakes up.  It took a few days, but now he is accustomed to it, and it's saved us a bunch of time in the morning (as opposed to getting him dressed right before he goes to school).

Meanwhile, my daughter's behaviour has improved markedly since she started walking.  She's too busy exploring her new horizons to misbehave.  With one notable exception: running away.  My son was never much of a runaway.  He did a bit of it, but mostly he was happy to stick close to me, and considering how clingy my daughter has been all her life, I fondly imagined that she would be the same way.

Yeah, not so much.  One of her favourite games now is to wait until I say: "This way!"  She then proceeds to give me a big beaming smile and run (well, toddle as fast as she can) in another direction.  The best part is apparently when I sprint after her and scoop her up, earning a delighted chuckle.

For now, it's not a problem, because she's still pretty easy to catch, but that won't always be the case, so I'm trying to nip this in the bud now.  Ignoring her is obviously not an issue, so I'm switching back to the consequences without anger style of discipline.  I restrict her movements, but I don't give her a big reaction.

One of the best places for doing this is actually the supermarket.  I've most often heard that shopping is best done without the kids on foot, but I have the luxury of being able to go, just me and my daughter, at midmorning when it's fairly quiet.  In a busy store, with me supervising both children, this isn't really feasible.

But this morning, I took my daughter grocery shopping letting her walk.  Every time she ignored my instructions, I said "No", and put her in the trolley.  After a minute or so, I let her out and we would try again.  One thing I did learn was that she was happier when she could carry something, like a jar of peanut butter, although eventually she'd lose interest and drop it.  I also learned that while I could remain impassive as I bore her back to the trolley, other shoppers would undermine my efforts by cooing over her.  Ah, well.  I can't really blame them when she is clearly the most adorable baby ever.

Anyway, a work in progress, but I'd hate to have to get reins for her.  One thing I am going to have to work on is being closer to her when I can tell she's going to make a break for it, so it doesn't turn into the chase that she loves so much.  I am also trying to dial the tolerance down to zero.  I want to give her the chance to comply, but this kind of thing is too big a risk to let her think she can push the limits.

This evening, I grabbed her as she made a dash for the road, and that got me physically turning her face towards mine and talking seriously to her.  That is giving her a reaction, but I think it might be better to do so for that.  Instilling road safety is another difficult issue...  I've just got to find the balance.

Going Crib-free

Last night did not go well.  Something is clearly up with my daughter, poor thing.  I would guess another tooth, although that's always the easy excuse.

Since this blog was not intended to be a whine-fest, I won't relate the events of last night (nor the consequently bleary today).  It did, however, remind me that my daughter sleeps on a standard crib mattress on the floor, which is not what people usually expect.  So I thought I'd talk about how that's worked out for us.

The mattress on the floor is actually a Montessori practice.  The idea is that your child is encouraged to explore their child-safe, floor-accessible nursery at will.  I'd read about this concept before having my son, and thought it sounded nice enough but decided against it.  Firstly because I didn't know anybody else who had done it, and I wanted to stick with practices where I had readily available fonts of advice.  Secondly because it just seemed weird having your child sleep on the floor and having to explain that to people.

I'm not a big fan of nursery furniture to start with: it's expensive, of limited use and I don't appreciate the pictures of perfectly coordinated nurseries that Toys R Us sends us.  The crib (and mattress) was the only item I bought new for my son's nursery, and that was because I was too wary of SIDS to risk a second-hand one. 

Unfortunately, we bought a dropside crib.  By the time I was pregnant again, dropside cribs had been banned as dangerous and were on no account to be used, even with a kit to fix the dropside.  I did not appreciate the irony.

So more or less in a fit of pique, I declared to my husband that we were done with cribs, and the new baby could sleep on the floor.  At least that couldn't be recalled!

To be fair, we didn't do that from the start.  Both my son and my daughter spent their first six months sleeping in an Arm's Reach co-sleeper.  I'm too light a sleeper (my daughter takes after me) to co-sleep fully, but my afore-mentioned SIDS paranoia welcomed the opportunity to co-sleep without bed-sharing.

But at six months old, my daughter was graduated to her mattress.  Because she was six months, I wasn't hugely panicked about safety issues (I'd also become somewhat jaded after letting my son sleep for a year in a deathtrap).  I knew she could raise and turn her own head in her sleep, and I also knew that she was heavy enough that if she slid between her mattress and (e.g.) the wall, her own weight would push the mattress away, so she wouldn't smother.

To be absolutely certain, I kept the mattress towards the middle of the room for the first few months.  Otherwise, I used all the standard precautions... no blankets or pillows, and the room was babyproofed.

She wasn't mobile at this point, but she could roll.  The first few weeks of the experiment had me going in multiple times a night to put her back on her bed.  This was the only time I considered giving up and using the pack and play or something.  But gradually she learned to stay on the bed or at least not to wake up fully when she rolled onto the carpet.

Once she did get mobile, her bed became her focal point whenever we were in her room.  She would crawl onto it, and occasionally lie down and suck her thumb for a few minutes before heading elsewhere.  It took longer for her to crawl off it when I put her down for naps, although these days, even when groggy, she's able to lurch off the mattress and haul herself to the door (sleepsack and all) once she's woken up (whereupon she starts banging on it to be let out).

Somewhat to my surprise, it's very rare for her to crawl off the mattress when I put her down to sleep.  She'll usually give at least a short wail of protest, but she'll almost always roll onto her side and suck her thumb in an attempt to get to sleep.  It's only recently that she's started crawling straight off the mattress to argue the point, and even then, that only happens when she's really opposed to her nap.  Most of the time, she'll still try for sleep first.

I expect that this will become more frequent as she gets older, but it's a case of crossing that bridge when we get to it.

All that is straightforward enough... but what I've really liked about the floor mattress, is how accessible it is for me.  When she has difficulty sleeping, our usual tactic is to lie down on the floor next to her, head on the mattress.  She gets the physical contact she craves, and we are fairly comfortable (compare with dangling your arm over the edge of a crib for twenty minutes).  Extricating myself once she seems deeply asleep enough is a tedious process, but having her hand pat my face as she settles is lovely (although can also get old if she still doesn't go to sleep).

It's also good not having to worry about when to do the transfer from the crib, something that I fretted over with my son (and something that ended up not being a big deal at all).  These days, her mattress rests against the twin bed that we keep in there; there's a stepstool against the foot of the bed for when she's able to climb up.  My guess is that at some point she'll want to sleep in the big bed, just like her brother, at which point, the set-up will remain the same but the mattress will become a crashpad for when she falls out of bed.

But mostly it's been such a simple exercise that I forget that there's a different way of doing things.  Cribs have their uses, but I'm glad I didn't fork out the cash for another one.  Floor-sleeping has worked out just fine for us this time around.