Bedtime Battles

When people talk about the "terrible twos", I used to be kind of skeptical. My general opinion was that it couldn't really be that bad, and that people were probally overreacting.

Steven is two now.

It's challenging.

Actually he began to insist on his autonomy a couple of months ago, but now he officially has the number of birthdays to match it. And boy is he trying our patience.

The primary source of frustration currently is bedtime. He just won't stay in bed, and now that he can open doors he won't stay in his room either. Trying to get him to stay in his room has become a struggle of epic proportions.

Up until recently our tactics in dealing with this have been rather haphazard. At first we generally tried being stern. "Go back to bed," we would tell him in a firm voice. That worked... the first couple times. Then he realized that even though we told him to go back to bed, nothing was forcing him to. We had to get continually more firm (and sometimes even angry), and after a while even that wouldn't work. Once when I told him to go back to bed and he smiled and continued walking right past me, I knew I had to try something different.

Next I tried sitting beside his bed. Then I could stop him from getting out in the first place. It did stop him from getting out of bed, but only if I stayed until he fell asleep. That would sometimes take hours. And I don't have hours of extra time in my day. If I was alone with the kids it was especially challenging. Sometimes the baby would start crying right as Steven was about to fall asleep or I'd have to leave to room for some other reason and then we would have to start all over again.

My next idea: Get him a new nightlight. I began to wonder if the old light we'd been leaving on for him was too bright and was encouraging him to stay awake. Also, we had gift card money from Christmas presents. So I got him a night light that shines stars on the ceiling. He absolutely loves it. The problem? He keeps coming out to get us so we can see the stars.

I think our main problem so far has been consistency - we kept trying different things. I'd do something, Jesse would do something else, I'd start one approach, then have to change mid-evening because Kenneth needed my attention. So this week we finally sat down and devised a plan. It is something that we can follow no matter who is home or whatever else is going on, so we should be able to be consistent with it. I have no idea if it will work, but we're going to stick with it for at least a week and see if any progress has been made.

Here's the plan: We go through his bedtime routine, which ends with us leaving him tucked into his bed with his star nightlight. The first time he comes out we take him back to bed, make sure he doesn't need anything, remind him that it's bedtime, and warn him that if he leaves his room again we will have to take the star nightlight away. The second time he comes out we take the star nightlight away, tuck him back in, and tell him it is time to go to sleep. Then every time he comes out after that we silently take his hand, walk him back to bed, and put a blanket over him, without giving him any attention or interaction. This happens again and again until he falls asleep. The theory is that eventually he will get the message that getting up really isn't exciting and won't get him more attention and he'll learn to just stay in bed and go to sleep.

The first night we tried this, he was in and out of bed for almost three hours. The second night it was two hours. That's where we are right now. It's tiring, but currently it's taking just as long as any of the other ways we were trying to get him to sleep, and it does let me do other things in my evening, even if what I'm doing is interrupted every minute or so to put him back to bed.

So we'll see what happens! He is pretty stubborn, so it may take a while, but Jesse and I are pretty stubborn too, and we're ready to give this a solid try. I'll let you know how it goes!