Bedtime Battles

Our first child was and still is an angel at bedtime. Our second daughter we thought things were going in the same direction. I remember thinking in my head, "I feel bad for them parents who suffer from bedtime battles with their children. We must be blessed, or it's just a coincidence that both our daughters take naps and go to bed without a fight." Well, that lasted till I became pregnant with our third daughter, and had to move Vivian into Evalyn's bedroom. (We have a three bedroom home, so we wanted our two older daughters to share the bigger of the two smaller bedrooms.) We Bought Vivian a new big girl bed and comforter to go with it. She was excited! My husband and I were a little jealous that she now had the most comfortable mattress in the house. He he. Here we are thinking the transition is moving perfectly. We had them all set and sharing the bedroom two months before baby Helen arrived. I wanted them to get used to the transition also.      

This is when the bedtime battles started. She never fought us to go to bed. That was not the problem at all. It was the numerous times coming out of her bedroom. We figured okay, this will last only a week or two. From watching Nanny 911, we would just keep bringing her back into bed. That didn't really work for Vivian, and when I was 8-9 months pregnant, it was just not cutting it. It was hard enough for me to keep getting up from a sitting position. As time went on we resulted into letting her play on our IPhone in her bed till she would fall asleep. Well, sometimes she wouldn't fall asleep till 10:30 pm. We knew this was bad of us to do because, the following nights she would want our phones and so on. On other nights we would put her in our bed to fall asleep watching T.V. Horrible, I know. There would even be nights when her older sister would tell us to give in because shes tired of her crying. This is on school nights when Evalyn would want to fall asleep. About a year of this went on, jaw dropper huh?!

Just a couple months ago she stopped coming out of her bedroom. To be completely honest the only thing that worked was consistency and giving "choices". We finally said that's enough. No more phones to play with at bedtime and no more falling asleep in mommy and daddy's bedroom. We may have had to listen to her scream, cry and throw a fit for a couple nights. She finally understood we meant business and weren't backing down this time. After all she is our strong willed child. We do allow a couple minutes for them both to look at a book in their beds at bedtime. They really enjoy and respond well to that. I will admit, reading the book, "Parenting With Love and Logic" has helped tremendously.

For those parents out there who are fighting the bedtime battles right now' their is a light at the end!

Bedtime Tips for Toddlers

Stay consistent

Don't give up

Give them two choices(worked for us)

A bedtime routine helps (again along with consistency)