Bedtime Battles Are Over

You know those breakthroughs you have as a parent? The ones where you've been battling with your child and you think the madness is never going to end? The one where you know you have to be the winner of this battle but it seems that somehow, your 2 year old is smarter than you because they've managed to make you crazy and have managed to win this battle for quite some time now? Well, we finally won!!

Since birth, Brielle has been an amazing sleeper. By about the 6 month mark, she was sleeping long hours through the night and we never had an issue putting her to bed. She rarely cried and would basically just go to sleep. She never slept with us and always wanted to be in her own bed. She never had to be rocked to sleep and would only allow you to rock her for a few minutes before motioning (before she could talk) and telling us (when she started to talk) that she wanted in her own bed. When she was tired during the day or close to bedtime, she would bring herself up to her room and tell us she was ready to sleep. She was the model bedtime child.

Then "2" happened.

She started fussing more when it was time for naptime or bedtime. Fussing eventually led to crying. Crying eventually led to screaming and banging at the door. And so on. We tried every tactic we could think of to make it easier. We read every suggestion to try to make it easier. Nothing seemed to work. The demon seemed to be coming out of our child with each and every naptime and bedtime and we were ready to throw in the towel.

 A few nights ago we finally gave the "tell us when you're ready to go to bed" method. The outline suggests you put your child to bed at normal time with their light on, tell them they don't have to go to sleep but they do have to stay in their room reading books or playing with toys and when they are ready for lights out, they tell you and voila, you have a no-fail, easy bedtime routine. Dozens upon dozens of comments from other readers stated that it had also worked for their child. But, after 2 nights of attempts, we quickly realized this wasn't going to work for us. The demon still wanted to make an appearance. I had one last plan, but would it work?

When Brielle was born she got a purple hippo baby snuggly as a gift and she's been sleeping with it every night since. It's the only thing she is attached to, although hippos only purpose is to sleep with her. She's not allowed to drag him around the house and other than a plane ride, he never leaves her room. Hippo was our last chance.

In the hallway I set up a bed for hippo. His very own bed on an old baby blanket. During the day hippo sleeps in his own bed because it's quiet. We now realize that hippo needs quiet in order to sleep. So if Brielle would like to sleep with hippo during naptime or bedtime, she must be quiet. If she cries, screams or gets out of bed, hippo has to leave her bed and go back to his own. Since starting this new routine, Brielle has gone to sleep like the little angel we remember. It's amazing and why it works, I don't know? Do I care why? Absolutely not. We no longer hear a peep from Brielle because if she makes noise, hippo is gone. And without being prompted, she wakes up and puts hippo back into his own baby blanket bed in the hallway.

This is a huge win for mommies!!

My advice to parents out there who are struggling with any type of issues with your child, is to never give up and never quit trying things. You just never know what silly tactic might work!!