We have a difficult time getting my youngest son to go to bed. He has no interest in anything to do with sleep. He would much rather play with his toys while watching a very age appropriate show like “Family Guy”. Judge all you want. I’ve already admitted that he watches this. AND, I’ve admitted that I’m into lazy parenting. So there. Sticks and stones.
Lately my husband and I have been getting him to fall asleep in his own bed, as opposed to falling asleep in our bed while watching said inappropriate t.v shows. It’s been kind of working. I say “kind of” very loosely. Because there is ALWAYS a tantrum for the first 15 minutes or so of bedtime. Right after he is thrown over my shoulder screaming very age inappropriate words, and tossed onto his bed. And when I say tossed, I mean very gently. And perhaps tossed isn’t a word that I should use but it’s late and I don’t feel like thinking up the right word. So, once again, judge away at my inappropriate, child tossing, lazy parenting. It’s OK. I’ll get over it. 😉 After he is “tossed” he claims, very dramatically might I add, that he will never, EVER go to sleep and will sit there forEVER and EVER.
The point of this post, seeing how far I’ve digressed before I even began…
Tonight we used a slight scare tactic. Because that’s what us lazy parents do, we scare, it’s faster than say, something like…reasoning. Which never works when you are dealing with MY 5 y/o. We told my son that too much television will shrink his brain into nothingness, smaller than a pea. We told him that the “good news” is reading will make his brain grow like those dollar store things you put in water and they grow to like 100 times its normal size.
It worked!! A miracle!! I was able to get him into his bed without breaking my back OR tossing him.
I was about to leave his room to go find a book that we hadn’t read in a while when he said to me…
“Mommy, if television makes your brain really itty bitty. And if reading makes your brain grow. Can I just watch television in your room for a little bit and before my brain gets too small, you can read to me and make it all fixed?”
I looked at him and realized I was a playah in my own game. So I firmly told him no.
And then…
He had a temper tantrum, tried to get out of his bed, I grabbed him, threw him over my should and tossed him back onto his bed.
Yeah.
Obviously, I’m going to have to come up with an even scarier scare tactic.
Just tell him there are monsters under his bed that will grab him by the ankles, drag him under, and devour him whole if he dares get out of bed for anything other than the bathroom and getting up in the morning.
I love you.. sorry..but this made me laugh out loud..
Clearly his brain has been growing from all that reading because that was pretty danged smart of him!!
roflmao.
here is what I’ve been doing…if you want to know.
My son, also five, would be rocked, like a baby. When he started kindergarten (actually a few weeks before kindergarten we started this) I would tuck him in and say, if you quietly stay in your bed for x minutes then you can come out and rock. Then I would set the timer…for x minutes. If he wasn’t asleep he could come rock. EACH night I’d add minutes sometimes WITH him knowing, but usually he didn’t know…soon, I was putting XX minutes on the timer and he was long asleep.
works for us…
don’t we always underestimate how smart those little ankle-biters are? I love it!
Oh, I’m trying the timer thing. DeBoy never wants to go to bed either. He doesn’t really throw tantrums (about that anyway), but he just doesn’t go to sleep. Last night I read books for an hour, then said I was too tired to read, and he could just go to sleep. He did try, but he tossed and turned. Then he got back in my lap in the chair and tossed and turned some more. Then he got back in the bed, back in my lap. He finally fell asleep sometime between 12:30 and 12:40. This is going to kill me.
I was told about the monsters under the bed, then I saw a scary movie, then I had to sleep with a night light for an embarrassing number of years. 🙁 ahhhhh so sad.
I wrote a post to reply because I really related to this topic so much I wanted it on my site also. http://www.juanitachronowski.com/jdcblog/?p=1866
And that was an ingenious thought that little boy of your had. Aren’t they cleaver.
Hi. I like lazy parents. A lot of what most people think is discipline actually makes things worse in the long run, particularly if their child is headstrong. My new book, Don’t Swear with Your Mouth Full! is a lazy parent’s dream because this new interpretation of behavioral research resulted in a new set of strategies that make it so that once you discipline your child, the need for future discipline of the same behavior is reduced or eliminated. Let me know if you want a review copy and I’ll send one off right away.
…if you send me your address tonight, I send it off tomorrow…