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Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
http://www.jeffslife.com
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Monthly Column... |
by
Jeff Stimpson
The bed battle continues with Alex. We have been trying to get him to sleep in a bed for, what, 10 years now? That or a month. I forget which.
He's getting it. For the past three nights, we got him to lay down in his bed and fall asleep there, even as Ned chattered in the crib a few feet away. Coincidentally, they were both non-school nights. They give him a nap at school.
"Jeff, they have to," Jill says. "It's the only time when the teachers can eat their lunch."
Yeah yeah yeah. I'd like to eat, too, in front of "Seinfeld" come about 7:30 -- an hour when Alex has historically decided it's time for face-off at center ice. Still, over the last few nights, he's taken to Jill's lap for a story at this hour, while I've settled Ned. Getting Ned to sleep first was a reader suggestion. The Internet's the only place for advice in raising a kid.
"Suggestions for keeping a child in bed?" replied one reader. "Tape, ropes, electric fencing ... Actually I have never really had this problem, mostly because I would lay with him till he went to sleep till he was about 3. Now we have a good routine which consists of stories at bedtime and mommy reminding him that if he gets out of bed trouble is sure to follow."
"When our now four-year-old first got his big boy bed, we had an awful time getting him to stay in it," added one reader. (Thankful as I am to readers who contributed, by the way, I've lost all the names. I think Alex ate them while watching "Seinfeld.")
"Why don't you just bunk down in his bed with him for a few nights?" another suggested. "My biggest problem with my first two was sleeping through the night. It took me forever to get it down. I just brought them into my bed. I totally gave up the fight. I also finally got some sleep. It was not fun."
"Just confirming your experience that the big boy bed switch is a complete bear," said one reader. "Picture, if you will, my now three-and-a-half-year-old who wears size-5 (!) clothes and still has to be rocked part of the way to dreamland each and every night. The kid is sprawled all over me and can't get comfortable in the rocking chair because he is too big, but he'll be damned if he just crawls into his bed.
"Alex started climbing out of his crib at 18 months," this mom added, "so we turned it into a toddler bed shortly thereafter. I had to keep putting him back in there. I tried the repeated gently replacing; I also tried yelling, screaming, bringing his father into the room, taking blankey away, locking him in the room, etc. All to no avail. What did work, however, was for me to stand at the foot of the bed ... The short answer is, if you've got a kid who fights going to sleep, it's hard and it takes a long time. Even now we sometimes have trouble -- the last three nights have been perfectly awful, culminating last night with me chasing a naked Alex all over the house. Where is the valium?"
Which one of you gets the valium?
"Did your Official Parent Manual not mention the peanut butter and Sominex sandwiches for dinner?" wondered one reader. "Doesn't matter if the kids eat it, or you do. Either way you get some rest."
Another reader's mother suggested overturning a pack-n-play on top of the bed and securing it with a bungee cord under the mattress. "Tempting," this reader recalled, "but we felt it might be wrong somehow to crate train our child. One of the therapists made a little bed book: We took pictures of every step of the evening. The book has a sentence and a picture of him on each page ... Maybe the book helped a little. But what worked was the TV. We moved the small TV/VCR to the kids' room. Now we tuck the kids in (half an hour earlier: happy dance!) and turn on the video. Its a big treat since the TV is off from lunch till bedtime. Then we say, 'You can watch this quietly in your beds. If you get up the movie goes off.' The first week we had to turn it off six times. Ugly crying followed. The second week we turned it off twice."
Another reader also tried to get time on her side. "October: We announced that 4-year-olds must sleep in their own beds as they are now big boys. Kyle quickly decided that if that was the case, he would just stay a 3 year old. November: I introduced an award chart where Kyle would get a gold star for every night he slept in his bed. After ten stickers he would get a new toy of his choosing. After four gold stars in a row, my husband for some inexplicable reason asked Kyle, 'But wouldn't you rather sleep in bed with us?' Kyle didn't earn any more stickers after that and Hubby got a serious talking about thwarting new developments." Kyle's problem got worked out over a relative's Christmas visit and a cot. Hubby's problem probably continues.
Other readers' suggestions included reading stories "to in interested audience until they sort of get floppily cozy; singing songs until same occurs;" and becoming "a bit flexible about bed-time." We've done that, bumping it 15 minutes closer to "Seinfeld." We also set up the playpen after the boys are both asleep, theory being that we can place the floppily cozy Alex in there after he's done crooning "ABCD" in our bed, where he often wiggles around 4 a.m.
"My son Ethan began climbing out of his crib at age 2 so we had to quickly get him in to a bed before he hurt himself," another reader recalled. "We tried everything ... we finally just focused on keeping him in his room and didn't care if he was even in his bed! This didn't work because he could climb over every baby gate we had and the door didn't lock from the inside. The night I was holding his door shut while he was screaming 'Mommy let me out!' I realized we had to try a different strategy!" That included accentuating the positives for staying in bed. "I'd put him to bed and at the end of our bedtime routine, I'd tell him I had to run and get something quick and I'd be back in one minute and he needed to stay in bed. I was sure to come back after one minute and praise him if he stayed in bed. If he didn't, I didn't get upset. I just put him back to bed and tried for 30 seconds and then praised him if he stayed in bed. I'd gradually increase the time until he was asleep."
My personal guess is that this one will work with Alex.
Another reader's boy, also an Alex, climbed out of his playpen. "So we fixed a pallet on the floor and put a baby gate up at his bedroom door. Next we took the crib mattress and put it on the floor, and he stayed there and went to sleep. He favored sleeping on the floor, usually in the doorway of his bedroom, until a couple of years ago when he got a king-size waterbed (a hand-me-down from my brother)." Another reader borrowed a cot from a day care center, the kind the kids use to re-charge their batteries in the middle of the workday. "Worked like a charm. Ryan's crib folds to a bed, so once we took the bars off it was no turning back."
Copyright 2001 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
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