Not too long before my son Luke turned 3, he discovered he could leave him bedroom at any given moment. He has been in a 'big boy bed' since a little after he turned 1, so considering how long it took for him to figure this out...we SHOULD count our blessings.
NOW, the occurrences of getting out of bed have increased to an epic magnitude. He was getting up as many as 15+ times in a night (all within an hour or two period before he finally would fall asleep). We were frazzled. We tried the "Super Nanny" advice of no talking and putting him back in bed. We did this for 3 weeks. Initially the instances dwindled, but soon came back in full force.
We tried threatening, explaining, lighting up the room (so he would no longer be frightened of the dark), cajoling...NOTHING seemed to be working.
My older sister, Cherie, recommended giving him a 'special book time' before bed. He gets to look at special books, in his bed, for 15 minutes before lights out. Once the alarm goes off and the 15 minutes is up, it's lights out.
At the same time we eliminated nap time as we were discovering that he wasn't really tired at bedtime due to his long nap in the afternoon. I started a 'quiet time' (which has had it's own folly if you read here). This seemed to ensure he is at least not WIDE awake come bed time.
Night #1 - He only got up 1 time that night! YAY!
Night #2 - He got up twice...still an improvement so...YAY!
Night #3 (last night) - He got up three times (is anyone else seeing a pattern here?). I had to remind him that only BIG boys get special book time and if he keeps getting up, he will be acting like a baby and will no longer be able to have the privilege. It seemed to work.
I DO have to admit I am nervous about tonight though...if we keep climbing one occurrence per night we will soon be right back to where we started.
Any suggestions, empathy, stories???
HELP!!!
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3 weeks ago
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2 comments:
I hope it isn't 4 times tonight...good luck! With Quinn, we sat outside his door and when he would open it to sneak out, we would scare the crap out of him by yelling at him to get back in bed. The idea was to scare him into not getting up. It was mean (and he will definitely need counseling), but it worked!!! Yay! Ashton is whole other ball of wax...hehehe.
We used to put up a baby gate at Christopher's door... and ignored him, if he climbed the gate he got a spanking... We always took the gate down before we went to bed and he was sound to sleep... This worked for naptime/quiet time too...
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