We have a problem. Poppy has been getting up every night at 2am and climbing into bed with us. This all started when she had a nightmare a few weeks ago, and Rockford told her that she could come into our room if she was scared. A few days later, I reiterated that promise. And now, I have a wiggly child next to me every single night.
I asked her two days ago why she was coming into our room every night. “Because I love you,” she said. It’s hard to argue with that, but that really isn’t why we started our open-door policy. I don’t think she’s had any more nightmares. I think she’s just waking up at 2 and deciding she’d like a change of scenery.
Last night I let her lay there for about an hour, and then I tried to pick her sleeping self up to carry her back to her room.
“Mommy!” she said so suddenly and clearly that I wonder whether she was asleep at all. “I don’t want to sleep in my bed. I don’t like to sleep all alone.”
I took her to her room anyway, and I laid down with her for a few minutes. Then I kissed her head, turned on her radio and told her to go to sleep.
When I woke up this morning, there she was next to me.
Now, Rockford was the first one to suggest she could come in to our room at night. But I’m pretty sure this is my fault anyway. I can’t sleep when Rockford’s out of town, so I scoop Poppy up and snuggle with her. Otherwise it’s 3am before I’m asleep. And I don’t function well on limited sleep.
But I think the first step is to stop scooping her up when he’s out of town. Other than that, though, I don’t have a clue as to how to keep her in her own room.
Do you?
Have you looked up the supernanny technique?
One thing that the parents of the little girl I babysit for have done is buy a digital clock for her. She knows that when the first number is a 7, its okay for her to come out of her room, other than to use the bathroom. If she does it without cause, they take her immediately back to her room and she loses privileges the next day. My understanding was it took a long time for her to believe her parents wouldn’t cave, but now she’s golden.
She also has had bad dreams, so they spray “good dream spray” (just lavendar scented spray) and talk about what she wants to dream about that night before she goes to bed.
I also saw the supernanny deal with this issue (I don’t normally watch the show I swear) and it involved going to her when she has a bad dream, sitting with her and comforting her for a while, but not letting her come into the parents’ bed. It looked so easy on TV, but practice is always a different situation.
.-= April´s last blog ..Wordless Wednesday: Sunglasses =-.
We go through spells with waking up in the middle of the night; in fact, we’re going through a spell presently. When he gets up, I immediately take him back to his room and sit with him for a few minutes until he either falls asleep or gets comforted.
Our spells seem to come with a change in schedule (like the end of preschool/beginning of summer break), holidays or growth spurts.
Tanner and I used to have a problem sleeping on our own too. Every night mom had to lay down with me (and later him, when I had gotten older and didn’t need that anymore) for 10-15 minutes. It always made me feel better. And as I got older, the time that she spent laying down with me got shorter (15 min, 10 min, 5 min) until she didn’t have to lay down with me anymore. She stopped laying down with me when I was about 8 years old.
Sleeping pills should do the trick.
i did the same thing, especially on saturday mornings. i have no idea how they solved it though, except that they complained about my cold feet and made me be very quiet, so i think eventually i lost interest…i need to call my mom! 😉
We’ve recently started the alarm clock thing in the morning, and it’s worked great for us (our issue was all of them coming and piling in our bed in the morning). At nighttime, we give them a “pass”. It’s just a little notecard that says “Pass” — they can use it to come out of their room one time in the night (this is typically for before they fall asleep) and once they’ve turned it in, they can’t come back out. Used to, for Caden, he could use it for anything he wanted — an extra hug, kiss, water, bathroom, song, etc. — now, we say they can only use it to go to the bathroom. I don’t know if you could do something similar…to tell her “you can’t come sleep in my bed any more, but you can have this pass and if you wake up in the night, you can bring it to me, and I’ll come tuck you in again.” But that’s only if you’re willing to tuck her in again. 🙂 Keep us updated!