It’s ten pm and I just finished putting my children to bed. Now, this is not as bad as it sounds; they are out of school due to some type of teacher training, so they don’t have to get up early tomorrow. At least there’s that. Of course, who am I kidding: they won’t sleep in. Not much, at least, and not long enough to avoid a cranky mood.
Okay, wait; this is exactly as bad as it sounds. I admit it, and I don’t even feel bad about it. After all, I know there are millions of other parents out there, well meaning and sincere, who are equally bad at getting their kids to bed on time. Let’s face it; we, as parents, all come from a different place. We may or may not have college degrees, decent jobs, or nice houses; maybe we go to church or synagogue, or maybe we won’t be caught dead in any of those places, maybe we’re old fashioned, maybe we’re modern, Republican or Democrat, the one thing we all struggle with is convincing kids they should sleep. Some days, it simply can’t be done.
Why is that? Do children instinctively know that, most evenings, parents would like nothing better than a nice nap, and they want to rub our faces in the fact that they can sleep whenever, but choose not to? Are children that devious? Somehow, I don’t quite think that’s the answer, although I might talk differently when it’s eleven PM and there’s a child jumping up and down the stairs while singing at the top of his lungs. For once, my daughter Isabella is not the one causing problems. We put her on a bedtime routine early on; dinner, bath, story time, bed. She might not always like it, but she never refuses to go to bed. Had she remained our only child, we would have many a quiet evening at our house. Three-year-old Mendel is another story entirely; he doesn’t believe in sleeping, and what’s worse: he makes empty promises. “You’ll take a bath”, we’ll say, to which he readily agrees. “When we say you’re done, you come out of the bath. You will put on your jammies, and we’ll have story time. In bed.” He submits to all the steps, until story time. “I have to go downstairs”, he’ll announce, and why? “Because I want to sleep on the couch.” In the past, we let him get away with it. We were so desperate to get him to sleep, we’d basically allow him to pick his poison; sometimes we were rewarded by him actually falling asleep on the couch, after which we’d move him to his bed. Nowadays, it’s just an excuse to run around the living room singing and shouting while we pull out our hair.
What we ended up doing isn’t perfect, but we are starting to see results. We tag team our children; whoever has worked the hardest that day gets to put Isabella to bed, which is fast and easy. The other one gets into bed with Mendel, to read for a long time. Favorites are his huge animal atlas, and Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. It seems that the act of getting into bed with him makes it more attractive for him to cuddle up and settle down. Often, when children are tired they won’t admit it; if you can force them to stay in the same spot for half an hour (car seat!) they will actually get drowsy. When we get done talking about lions and tigers, we sing to him. I’ve found Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road particularly well suited. Every parent should know that song by heart. By the time I am humming “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright” his eyes close, and he’s off to dreamland.
Sure, it’s a time consuming process, but it works, and knowing you have a strategy that works is priceless. Even if it’s not successful before ten PM, and even if I can’t leave his bed before he is actually sleeping, I’ll take it. Watching him drift off is, I think, an added bonus, because never is my child more adorable than when he is asleep.
Even if he does wake back up at 2 AM to crawl into our bed and kick me during the rest of the night.
5 responses so far ↓
Carey // April 8, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I’ve had my struggles with children’s bedtime too. Most of the time that the kids aren’t in bed on time anymore is because I’ve been so busy with some project that I’ve not paid attention to the timeliness of bedtime. But, what I’ve found (5 kids later) is that if we’re having a battle of wills about bedtime consistently, it’s my fault. They don’t go to bed (ontime or otherwise) simply because I, the parent, don’t require it of them.
I pick the bedtime because it’s the best time for them - that’s my job as a Dad. They don’t get the option of saying, “Not now” either by stalling or by trying other tactics like your son’s couch thing. They go to bed, in their beds, when I say, or they are disciplined. End of story. It only takes a few weeks of doing this consistently until they KNOW you mean it and quit trying to get out of it. And amazingly… they fall asleep within 15 to 20 minutes of getting in the bed.
What do you know? Father really DID know best…
And by the way, it won’t damage their personality or oppress their spirit. Kids need boundaries and instinctively know that a person who gives them proper boundaries loves them.
frank coffey // April 9, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Reading the above accounts of battles fought successfully only further compounds my acute awareness of failure that comes to roost without fail, at 9:30 pm. I had been hoping for other stories of abysmal failure, if only to mitigate the angst of being the sole proprietor of this particular parental failing. The knowledge that it is not, of course, offers scant comfort. It has become onerous tolerating friends and peers when they offer the smug reproach to the effect of “we generally have the kids down by 7:30″. “Bulls***”, I think to myself, and never broach the subject anymore - at least with people who don’t live in my house. As for my wife, she has long since reconciled (rationalized) this lost battle vis a vis a mini DVD player as a bedtime bonus. Her efforts have paid such handsome dividends as my having to get up at 2:30 AM to stealthily silence Dora the explorer, who is excitedly screaming that she has found a gooey geyser. And if this particular black-op is not carried out successfully, the real screams of of a real 3 year old render the rantings of an excitable cartoon girl irrelevant. Our daughter will no longer even think about going to bed without the DVD player, and never before 11pm. And she insists on having it play all night. I have no idea how we created such a monster. Our monster gets no sugar after dinner, yet she is more charged up from 7 pm onward, than any other part of the day. I take some solace in the fact that she will actually want to sleep someday, but deep down I know that it will only morph into a whole new set of battles on the morning front. Yawn.
Annette // April 9, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Frank, on february 5 I posted a short essay titled “sleep is overrated” which you should read. It will make you feel less alone, I promise…
Hang in there! Someday they’ll be in college…
andrea // April 21, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Hah! I had an iron bedtime of 9 PM as a child, and most nights I was still awake through the evening news and to the end of the Tonight Show, just flopping around in bed thinking about things or reading. Some forty years later, I still have trouble getting to sleep, even when it’s after midnight and I have to be up at 6:00.
My kids are both night-owls, too. Some folks just can’t fall asleep early for nuffin’. Their dad on the other hand, is snoring just a few minutes after laying down, sometime between 9 and 10. I’ve NO idea how the hell he does it…
cbsmom // April 24, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Reading your post made me feel at ease that I am not the only person dealing with this. My monsters, 2 and 5 years old, have a set bedtime 7-7:30…the problem is they are not normally asleep until between 8-8:30…it is always “one more story, more chocolate milk or I have one more thing to tell mom.” Most of the time they comply, stay in the bed and are asleep no later than 8:00. I wish I had the answers, especially for those nights they are up until 9 or 10 and still wake up at 6:30am.
I have found that coffee and monster energy drinks are slowly replacing my blood as my life sustenance.
Good luck and lots of sleep to you!
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