Help! Any tips out there from more experienced moms that me? Bed time is becoming a nightmare in our home....countless trips to go potty (and actually going each time), "one more hug," "I just want to give you a kiss," "I'm scared," "I forgot to help you vacuum!" jumping on beds, you name it. We've tried rewards if they stay in bed...nope. The lure of getting out of bed is more exciting. We've tried spanking...nope. We've tried yelling. We've tried talking about it before lights go out. We've emphasized NO GETTING OUT OF BED!!! Nothing is working!
Here's our bed time routine. After playing downstairs, at about 8:00 - 8:15 we start cleaning up time, bathroom time, jammy time, brush out teeth and one more potty trip. Upstairs for story time (two stories on Daddy's lap, two short devotionals on the floor with Mama), prayer time, hugs and kisses, tuck into bed, lights out (by about 9:00)....yelling/screaming starts, getting out of bed, etc. I've asked them both WHY they get out of bed and the answer is "we miss you, Mama. We just want to be with you." Luke will every once in awhile say he's scared and ask me to pray so he isn't scared, but that's a rare occasion now when he's scared.
Susanna still takes naps. She needs them and will fall asleep on the couch if she doesn't get one. Luke usually doesn't nap, but maybe once or twice a week he'll nap for 45-60 minutes. Naptime generally starts about 1:30, they're usually both downstairs again by 3:30 at the latest. They wake up each morning between 7:30-8:00.
Insight, anyone?
2 comments:
Did you try the ticket thing that we used with Stephen? He got four tickets every night. If he broke a rule, we took tickets away w/consequences.
First time - warning
Second time - we chose which train he couldn't play with the next day
Third time - lost all trains and tracks for the next day
Fourth time - no trains and a spank
If he had all tickets in the morning, he got to put a sticker on his chart and when he reached 20 stickers, he got a quarter to go put in one of the candy machines at the store. Not a big deal to us, but a HUGE one to him.
He's grown out of that stage now (the trains and the need for tickets/consequences/quarters for candy), but it did wonders for us. Use whatever they are the most fond of (even if it's TIME and not a toy) and slowly take that away from them. Now Stephen is into money so we have a deal w/pennies. There is one area that we are working on with him that causes him to lose pennies if he doesn't cooperate. He starts out with five pennies a day and he is allowed to keep whatever pennies he still has at the end of the day. This is working for us right now.
I hope you find a solution to your frustration!
thanks, Mar! Problem with Luke is he has been given so many toys from grandparents that even with most of them in storage, if whatever is his "favorite" at the moment is taken away, he'll just play with something else. But the money thing may work if we reward him a penny per ticket or figure something out like that. For Susanna, we have yet to figure out an incentive motivator yet (in rewarding or taking away) -- although "Princess dresses" worked for potty training (but isn't practical to waar every day).
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