“I Need An Old Priest, And A Young Priest.”
I am wondering what unclean spirit is handed down from one child to the next in my family. Sophia (age: 32 months) was the nightmare beast from the deep for the better part of the last few months, every time she had to go to bed. Once the stories were over, prayers were said, kisses were given, and she was tucked safely in…that was when the blood-curdling screaming began.
Ivan (age: 19 months), on the other hand, having been the beneficiary of wisdom gleaned from the Princess Who Would Not Sleep, was on a schedule from the minute we could get him on one. Bedtime came around, we plunked him down in his crib, and he would wait patiently for us to cover him while he drifted immediately to the land of little-boy dreams.
Then, approximately two weeks ago, Sophia conquered her fear of the night. She simply stopped being so upset, and would go to bed and to sleep with minimal fuss and virtually no crying, if any.
AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT, Ivan became emboldened by the spirit of the Prince of Terror, taking bedtime screaming to heights that Sophia could never have scaled in even her darkest furies. I’m talking larynx-busting, window-shattering, curse-your-damn-Catholic-openness-to-life inspiring noise from the pits of hell.
And it has gone on like that, each night, ever since. Naps have been curtailed. Schedules adjusted. Soothing attempted. We’ve even adopted the, “Oh just let him cry it out, as long as it takes, and once you do that he’ll be fine. ”
Nope. Not fine. We haven’t had a moment’s peace prior to 10PM in quite some time. And 10PM is pretty darn close to my bedtime, considering that I have a mighty commute to undergo in the morning.
What in the name of heaven is wrong with my children? It is probably good that they are insanely cute, or I might just be tempted to sell them to the U.S. Government to be used by interrogators. You think WATERBOARDING is torture? Put my kids at bedtime in with Osama Bin Laden himself, and he’ll crack in five minutes. Oh, he’ll crack like Humpty Dumpty.
And by the way, if you didn’t get the reference in the title, it’s probably because you’ve never seen this.
Filed under: Family, Uncategorized
Counter-intuitive, but it worked over here: Try putting them to bed earlier. Sometimes being too tired at bedtime can make it harder for them to go to bed happily.
Good luck!
Some kids are just like that.
I assume you’ve tries exorcised salt?
I say, be thankful…it could be worse. They could both be screaming bloody murder every night. And you could have a 5 year old and a newborn added into the mix. Though, when it gets to that point, it just becomes funny. Trust me.
Well, we have a method that has worked pretty well in our family. It’s kind of tough at first, but the pain is short-lived.
I usually start when they are around 18-24 months, or whenever they’re ready and able to respond to my … methods. Before that they go to bed whenever they go to sleep, and we just deal with it. Such is life with babies.
Here’s what you do:
1. Establish a daily routine: prayers, stories, bedtime. Routine is VERY important here.
2. Tell the child well in advance that “tomorrow night you’re going to bed by yourself, after stories, and you’re going to be quiet and you’re going to stay in bed”. Prepare the child with reminders throughout the day. He’ll usually agree to this.
3. Put the child in his bed after stories. Kiss him and give him your blessing and say goodnight. Turn out the light. Close the door.
4. Place the chair right outside the door. When the child cries and tries to get up, tell him he must stay in his bed. When he disobeys and gets up anyway, give him a spanking. When he disobeys and screams anyway, give him a spanking. Nothing too painful, but get the point across. Place him back in the bed.
5. Turn out the light, close the door, and sit in a chair IN the room until the child falls asleep. That’s right: sit in the room, in the dark, for as long as it takes. He takes comfort in knowing that you’re there, and he knows you’re gonna get him quick if he gets out of line. Do not talk to the child unless absolutely necessary. Tell him you won’t be talking to him. If you must talk, whisper.
6. Repeat discipline if needed. The point is that the child must lay down when you tell him to lay down, be quiet when you tell him to be quiet, etc. You can’t make him stop crying, nor should you try, but he should know that screaming and tantrums and disobedience earn an immediate spanking. If he must cry, he will cry quietly.
6. Do this for the next two or three nights.
7. When the child is ready, tell him you’re not going to sit in the room anymore. Tell him you’re going to close the door and sit just outside the door. Prepare him a day in advance. 8. Put him down and sit just outside the door. Repeat discipline if needed.
9. After a day or two of sitting outside the door, tell the child that you’re not going to sit there anymore, you’re going to sit in the living room and drink scotch and read Chesterton and listen to Bach cantatas.
10. Repeat discipline if needed.
This process lasts no more than a week. Make sure to play up every success during the day. One week of boot camp and the child is trained and you’re home free. Every time.
Every time I see a post like this, (and I see a lot) I think the same thing:
“thank God I never had children…thank you God!”
Probably the most enduring characteristic of my existence has been the quiet. An only child of a single mother who hated noise.
In the name of Jesus, I bind you Spirit of Night Terrors
and send you to the foot of the Cross to be judged by our Lord.
Repeat 3 times
Go to http://www.audiosancto.org to download one of their sermons on spiritual flyswatters…
http://www.audiosancto.org/auweb/20080224-Spiritual-Flyswatters.mp3
I read a news story today “torture” at Guantanamo. Apparently, they didn’t let this guy sleep for more than three hours at a single stretch for ~gasp!~ twenty one whole days!
Yeah. My kid’s 5. That’s one thousand eight hundred and twenty five days.
We always just let them sleep in our bed until they were 3 or so. Never a problem.
Danby -
Ditto with us. Wasn’t always fun having the kids in bed with us, but I do credit it for all three of our kids growing up to be so well-adjusted during the night.
Oh, heavens, no. I’d rather get three solid hours of sleep in my own bed with my husband than 8 hours with a child periodically kicking my back and smacking my face.
I just put all three kids in the same room with each other. How scary can the boogeyman be if your sister is right next to you? Granted, you have to break up 2-3 fights every night, but that beats hearing them scream for hours and/or having them in your own bed.
Thanks, everyone, for your comments. Interesting to see the different approaches here. I’m beginning to wonder if Ivan has something wrong with him or if this is just a phase…he’s always been good about going to bed before now, and always on a tight schedule. A month or two ago he had an ear infection in both ears that we didn’t know about because he never tugged on them or acted like he was sick. It did make him restless at night though…I wonder if it’s come back.
I’m with you Sarah - they wind up in my bed often enough at 3AM when they wake up crying and I am too tired to put them back to sleep.
Those nights are miserable. Last night Ivan wound up in bed with us all night and I am unbelievably exhausted, my back hurts, I woke up with a headache from sleeping weird…nope. Not worth it to me.
Small kids in our bed too. It’s not “sleeping weird” when it’s the usual. And the truth is, as Steve says, they end up there anyway. Might as well get a big bed and get used to it. Mine still wake up as often as any, but all they want is a cuddle.
There’s a big difference when you’re really exhausted, I suggest, between dealing with a crying baby that doesn’t want to go back to his own lonely bed, and dealing with an affectionate one that just wants a little hug.
Besides, single beds are a masonic plot.
In theory, my bed should be big enough. It’s a king. But ours have a habit of crawling under my back, or on my head, or kicking me in the throat or the solar plexus all night. So I wake up in a contorted position, or on the edge of the bed, or in agony.
I’m telling you, they need to be sent to guantanamo.
As for cuddling, last night Soph woke up at 3AM, and Jamie went to lay with her for a bit. Finally, she gave up and came back. Then I woke up because of the pathetic whimpering:
“Mom? Momma? Maaah? Mom? Mommy?”
I went to her room.
Soph: “I want Mom”
Me: “She can’t come right now.”
Soph: “I want Kiana”
Me: “Kiana is sleeping. Can I lay with you?”
Soph (reluctantly): “Oh-kaaaaay.”
(30 minutes elapse, and I am growing increasingly uncomfortable…)
Me: “I have to go back to my bed now.”
Soph: “OK.”
Me: “I love you.”
Soph: “I don’t love you.”
Me: “Ok. Goodnight.”
You want to talk about Masonic plots? My kids are in on them.
Do you recognize the possibility that your kids cling especially to you on those occasions when they do sleep with you, possibly because they would prefer it all the time and that, possibly, if they were with you all the time, they’d lay the heck of a bit?
And no, I don’t want to talk about Masonic Plots at all but they’re everywhere.
oh. that didn’t work. the formatting on my last message was supposed to be different. To scary effect, like. As if with da da daaaaa mood music.
To get enough space for us and all the kids, we put a twin bed next to our king. It was like one huge bed, and it took up nearly all the floor space in our little farmhouse bedroom. I slept on the twin, and usually got a decent night’s sleep. The kids would sprawl all over the king with my wife. Surprisingly, it worked. As others have said, they’re going to end up there anyway. I should add that the family bed was NOT my idea…but I agreed to try it. May not be for everyone, but it turned out the be the right thing for our kids and our family.
I used much the same method as Jeff recommends above, but no longer. We also begin the transition process much sooner than 18-24 months.
We keep our children in bed with us (primarily for nursing reasons), and then move them to a soft mat on the floor — not a crib — before they can crawl. This way they become accustomed to being in their own sleeping space before they actually can leave it. When they do begin to be able to move around and try to get into bed with us — rather than spanking them for “disobeying” us — we repeadtedly return them to the mat, often lying with them until they develop the interior discipline to stay in their space. Our 18-month-old has her own toddler bed now. She does cry when we put her to bed, but not for long. She is completly comfortable there, and gets up when she needs to, i.e., after her naps or when she needs to eat or have her diaper changed. When we put her back down in the middle of the night she stays in her bed until the morning. To be sure, this is a more labor-intensive method, but it also find it a more humane one.
This is a big and jarring transition for most children, and I’ve come to believe it very wrong to treat them during this confusing time (as I had done previously) as if they’ve done something wrong. Expecting very young children to accept immediately a significant change to their lifestyle is ridiculous on our part. How well do we adults accept significant and inconvenient changes to our lifestyles? Unless we’re close to sainthood, not very well. Why should we expect that of our very young children — who cannot understand and cannot sin — when we, who know better, so frequently fail in the same regard?
Dear Suibhne,
Your system sounds fine to me. We’ve actually incorporated some of those elements. Our babies sleep in a crib very early, so the transition to a bed in their own room is not as traumatic as it might sound.
“This is a big and jarring transition for most children, and I’ve come to believe it very wrong to treat them during this confusing time (as I had done previously) as if they’ve done something wrong.”
It seems we do have a disagreement here. In my opinion it is best that children be taught obedience beginning at about 12 months, sometimes earlier. They are old enough at that age to understand simple commands, and they are old enough to comply. Spanking at that age is not “punishment”, it is training. If you start early and apply it consistently and lovingly, you will find that discipline is much less of a problem when they are older.
By the time our children were 18 months old they had already had a good bit of obedience training. That means there isn’t generally very much spanking in the 10-step process I described above. If an 18-24 month child is told to stay in bed - or indeed to stay anywhere, like off a busy street - he should be able to obey. It could save his life someday.
“Expecting very young children to accept immediately a significant change to their lifestyle is ridiculous on our part. How well do we adults accept significant and inconvenient changes to our lifestyles?”
Children are much more resilient than adults. Like I said, it takes about a week and then it is pretty much over. (One reason that some adults don’t accept inconvenience well is that they were not much inconvenienced in childhood.)
“Why should we expect that of our very young children — who cannot understand and cannot sin …”
They CAN understand. And they can certainly sin venially. As to how much, and how culpably, there is no substitute for really knowing your child.
” — when we, who know better, so frequently fail in the same regard?”
Because - to use a metaphor I found in a children’s book - a child is like a tree. When it is young it is pliable, bendable, resilient. When it is old it is hard, firm, unyielding. The child’s *formation* in the early years determines the shape, direction, and strength of his later years. That early experience with change, obedience, trust, etc., if managed properly, makes for adults who handle such things better.