Surprisingly, our current sleeping dilemma has nothing to do with the almost 9 month old baby in our family. Nope, it's our rambunctious three year old that's causing the trouble.Here's the scene. Bedtime is announced, Matt proceeds to take Chloe and Clive upstairs. Usual bedtime rituals ensue including an oftimes very long story-reading with Matt. When it's lights out (usually 8 p.m.) Clive often stalls and gets out of bed multiple times receiving the necessary discipline for doing so.
Sometimes the whole thing borders on ridiculous. Tonight it was 9:30 before everything was finally quiet upstairs. Nine-thirty! That's WAY too late a bedtime for the under 5 set.
[I take that back. It's past 9:30 now and Clive is still crying and whining. I went to get Matt involved so I can finish this blog post and get to sleep myself!]
Anyways, that's not even our worst problem with sleeping. The worst problem is when Clive wakes up in the middle of the night from a *bad dream* -- a phrase he quickly picked up from his older sister. We then either bring him into bed with us or I go down to sleep with Clive on the living room couch.
I know, I know both of those are very bad solutions. But when it's 3 a.m. and I'm desperate for sleep and even more desperate to keep the sleeping baby asleep, I've made poor decisions.
What should we do? I suppose the best answer is to take a hard-line with Clive and just keep putting him back to bed when he wakes up. Any suggestions for making this go smoothly and maximizing sleep for us all?
5 comments:
Sorry, Alicia. I got nothing for you along the advice lines. But I'll pray for you guys!
Mary Ann -- thanks for commenting anyways! Always nice to know someone is reading out there in the bloggy world. And we can certainly use your prayers!
I'm definitely a softie on that one, so I don't know if you'll want my advice. =) I remember vividly even know having bad dreams and creeping into my parents room...sometimes to crawl into their bed or often to sleep right beside their bed on the floor. I am so thankful that let me be comforted by their presence, so that's our stance as well. We are sometimes a little cramped in our bed but we all end up with enough sleep somehow or another. I'll be praying for you to have wisdom in whatever you decide.
You described EXACTLY what we deal with with Owen. Sometimes bed time battles last a looong time. I have mostly taken to not putting him down for naps or only putting him down every other day so that he's really tired at bed time. When he gets up we comfort him, pray with him, etc. BUT . . . if he gets up again we do discipline. We have never allowed our kids to sleep with us. It's just not a habit I want to get into. As his mother I can tell when he's scared and I'm pretty sure he's not scared when he gets up. :)
Alicia, we are in the same boat with Emily. Ugh! Must be the age. I am also guilty at creating our little nighttime monster for the same reasons as you described. I'm absolutely exhausted and do not feel like battling in the middle of the night nor risk waking ANY of the kiddos! For about a week now, I've been forcing myself to take her back to bed. Can you believe most nights it is 5-7 times that she wakes me? It is taking a toll on me. I'll pray for grace and wisdom for you!
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