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Bedtime. At the end of the day, that word can mean many wonderful things. It can mean peace, alone time with the wife and even some late night television. But when it comes to a toddler, the word can take on a completely different meaning. Tears, screams and the fight to resist the temptation to grab your child and soothe him or her to sleep can disrupt many parents’ night. But those rough nights can be converted into a smooth transition with the implementation of a simple concept: the routine.
When it came time for my son to begin his stay in his own
room, I didn’t know what to expect, or really what to do. Luckily for me (and I
mean luckily) my wife had been through this before with my stepdaughter 14
years earlier.
As a new father having just come out of the infant stage, I’ve
often heard the horror stories from other parents of the difficulties involved in
getting children to sleep in a whole new set of circumstances and even a new
environment.
On our son’s first night (we waited until he was 16 months old
to move him out of our room, probably not the best way to start this phase of
sleep training) things went as badly as I had feared.
Things were great at the beginning. My son’s bedtime drew
closer and on my wife’s direction we implemented the routine. We gave him a
bath, gave him a drink, put his pajamas on and read him a story before leading
him upstairs.
But when he realized he was going upstairs, away from us and
into a foreign bed, that’s when the waterworks came. Two gut-wrenching hours
later, he finally exhausted his store of tears and screams and went to sleep.
His outcries continued for the next few nights until we
noticed that he became more accustomed to his new sleeping arrangement. During
the evenings he we would use up his energy and when we started on the routine,
he would calm down and even accept what was happening. Within a week he was
going to bed with only a few seconds of displeasure before going to sleep.
The routine had been a success and for me it was a godsend.
My wife works nights which leaves me to run the bedtime process and without the
steps we implemented, I might have been lost.
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