Sleep disruptions. Sigh. We haven’t had this problem on such a scale since the Mouse incidents of 2010.
Twig will not sleep in her room. Twig wants to sleep in OUR room, preferably in OUR bed. She will not stay in her room. She will not sleep. She will stubbornly stay awake until we are ready for bed and SNEAK into our room, if necessary. She has even professed a love for the Daily Show in an effort to con us into letting her stay up.
So we have resorted to one of us sleeping in HER room, to get her back on the path to NOT BEING IN OUR BED. This means that at a reasonable hour each night, one of us is camped out on Twig’s floor. Yay. As you can imagine, this is not conducive to many things, including playing WoW.
I’m looking forward to roflstomping the lands of fire this weekend. Obviously, because we are short healers, I have to go to the raids, so Gnoble will be on Twig duty for raid nights. I’m sad he won’t be able to go, but I won’t be sad when, after a nice, successful roflstomp, I’m curled up in BED and not ON FLOOR.
We just went through the exact same thing (which contributed to my time off WoW). It actually was a little worse. Ours insisted on sleeping in our bed, and we had to be touching her at all times or she would cry. Not just “snuggled up” either, but hand-on-the-shoulder type contact. On top of that, she would never really sleep, but instead would kick and flail all night.
We eventually put her in a big bed and one of us would sleep with her in that bed. We also had a futon in the room, so we moved on to her sleeping alone in one bed, and one of us sleeping in the other.
After that worked for a few days, we put a chair near the door and would sit in the chair reading until she fell asleep. That worked well, until she decided not to go to sleep. I read for 2.5 hours one night with no sleep from her. After that, however, we were able to put her down in her room without having to stay in there. She still gets out of bed a lot, but things are getting better.
Good luck.
Well, my first reaction was to just let her stay up and she’d get over it eventually (she hasn’t). Sometimes pretending not to care about an outcome can do wonders. Also, things kinda went to hell when we had 2 back-to-back grandparent visits…
Honestly, I’m not the sleep police and I don’t care what she’s doing at “bedtime” as long as she’s in her room. (Well, I’d let her watch TV but Gnoble thinks that’s a bad idea.)
Good grief, I’m glad Nomster’s still in her crib. With a crib tent keeping her in. We’re in no rush to get her to a big girl bed.
For a while after the crib, Twig was contained by her room (she couldn’t do doorknobs for the longest time.) NOW she wants to sleep with the door open AND can do doorknobs. Sigh.
You’ve probably looked at those stupid plastic things that prevent doorknob opening? I do love cheap baby confinement options, the crib tent was the best $40 I ever spent. Toddlers are so fun!
As a parent myself, I’ve been down this road; the trick is putting the foot down hard and early, and sticking by it. Giving in on things like this isn’t good for you or for the kiddo IMO. Bedtime is bedtime, and unless there’s an extenuating circumstance(sick/bad nightmare) bedtime occurs in the kiddo’s bedroom.
As for TV, none of mine have TVs in their rooms, and you’re honestly better off not having one anyway I think; the light makes it harder in general to get to sleep for most folks.
Nah the TV is in the living room. I just thought (and this is the way my parents were), she’d go to bed when she got tired. But nooooo, she’s stubborn like my HUSBAND.
I’m with Jason on this one. Put the foot down hard. As i’m sure you know, kids are always testing our limits. If they get away with something, they will try to get even more later.
When my daughter started doing the get out of bed/want to sleep with the parent routine (is there any kid who hasnt tried that? lol) we told her no and put her back in her bed. Of course, that didnt stop her. When she tried again, we sent her back with a warning that if she was to leave her room again after we put her to bed, we would put a fence at her door. And of course she did it again lol. So we sent her back to her room and use the stair fence (we had a fence thing we used to make sure kids dont fall off the stairs) to block her way out of her room.
She was NOT happy. She screamed and cried for a good 3 hours before falling asleep. The following day, we warned her right off the bat that if she left her room without good reason we would put the fence again. And thats what we did. The third day, we warned her again…her answered was “I know, no need to tell me every night!” and she never tried since.
Word of advice, if you try that, make sure she peed first
We specifically thought of and rejected the fence idea… Twig is very resourceful in finding stepstools. We were afraid she would climb on SOMETHING she shouldn’t and get hurt.
My parents did the same with me. I remember them being SUPER strict with bedtimes. When we were in bed, we were in bed. If I so much wanted a glass of water, I had to yell for them to get it for me. If I needed to use the washroom, I had to ask for permission if my parents were still up.
Under no circumstances was I to go into my parents room. Even if I was sick or had a nightmare, I’d yell and they’d come to me.
I remember hating being told no, but eventually realized that there wasn’t any point in resisting. It was the same for my brothers. Probably saved my family years of anguish.
It’s practically tradition for me to move both my sons (8 and 6) from my bed when I drag my ass upstairs for bed after raid (or TV/reading/out for the evening). They go to bed with their mom or start in their room and sneak into mine.
It’s getting harder to do because they’re getting taller and bigger. One sleeps on the top bunk too – that’s always exciting. I’ve explained this to them and they’ve been good this week. It probably helped that one of them had a rude awakening when I accidentally bumped his head on the door frame.
:$
As I’ve told others, my favorite letters are “N O”.
My perspective is we’re all imperfect, kids are so gosh-darned cute, and the grandparents are going to spoil them anyways. This gives them all kinds of experiences and joys with exceptions to the rules. So the majority of the time they will know the rules and they will obey them.