In a previous post, I mentioned that my 10-year-old son was sleeping on the floor of my bedroom. That was not the subject of the post, but I received many comments, texts, and DMs from readers telling me about their sons and their sleeping sagas. This was surprising and encouraging at the same time. I realized that maybe I wasn’t alone in my opinion of bedtime, and it got me thinking about why bedtime continues to drain so much of my energy.
I’ve always had a love and hate relationship with my children’s bedtime.
There have been tender moments here and there, but I’ve also endured many different stages of bedtime hell. When my daughter was an infant, she was colicky, and it felt like she never slept. My husband and I had “done our research” and tried many different “methods.” We played lullabies, tried a sound machine, ran a vacuum cleaner in her room, and even resorted to letting her sleep in her car seat on top of the dryer in our laundry room while the dryer was running. We. Were. Desperate.
When my daughter entered her toddler years, the bedtime routine did not improve. She would not go to sleep in her bed or our bed, and by this time, she had outgrown the dryer trick. I read more books and asked friends what was working for them. Nothing I tried would get her to sleep at night, and I was fixated on this issue like my life depended on it. These sleepless nights would literally become some of my darkest times as a mother.
Things hit rock bottom one night when I tried to wrangle her into her bed, and I ended up falling on the ground. I was crying. She was crying. And my husband said this just couldn’t happen anymore, so I was banned from bedtime. I was devastated. Why wouldn’t any of these methods work to put our child quickly and calmly to bed?
By the time my son came along three years later, I had a different perspective on things.
I’d failed once before, and I didn’t want to fail again. To “succeed” at bedtime this time around, I would stay with my son every night until he fell asleep, no matter how long it took. This, too, had several stages that were not necessarily all that pleasant. I started to develop routines with him that resembled an adult game of mousetrap. I would hold him in my arms while singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and walk around his room at a brisk pace. I had to walk a specific path a certain amount of times. He paid attention, and I had to start over if I took a misstep. I did this every single night.
For weeks, it went on and on. It tried my patience, and I found myself dreading it. I’ve always believed that bedtime has to be one of the most challenging times for us parents because we are often at our most tired and vulnerable, and our kids are sometimes the most engaging and endearing!
So where are we with bedtime these days?
My 13-year-old daughter puts herself to bed. She doesn’t even want to be tucked in, and the other night, I was shocked to find that she had closed her bedroom door! My son is currently sleeping on the floor of our room. He makes his “pallet” on my side of the bed every night. It usually takes a while for him to settle down, but this has turned into one of the best parts of my day. He talks to me about why he wants to buy chickens; he asks me questions about myself; he even tells me stories that involve his feelings. I’ve promised my husband that I’ll work on getting my son back to his room.
Here is the bottom line: I said that I have a love and hate relationship with bedtime, but what I have learned is that I love TO hate bedtime. I wasted so much time and energy viewing bedtime as my personal version of hell. If you just read this post, then you know that I am no bedtime expert, but my advice to any parent is to just enjoy this time with your kids and go with the flow.
Instead of imposing my will on bedtime, I should have enjoyed the extra time I spent with my kids. Laying down with your kids every night isn’t going cause them or you any permanent damage, and trust me, before you know it, they’ll be heading to bed without you even tucking them in.
We too, had a pallet son for years; he eventually worked his way to his own bed – but it was a gradual move . He would bring his own pillow/blanket and make his own “bed” on the floor next to me. My biggest challenge when this first started was not to step on him when I got up!