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The last would be me. I’m quite thoroughly phoning it in at the moment.
The next-to-last would be dudelet who actually slept until 6:50am this morning. Recently, he’s been sliding back to waking at six (or even earlier a day or two ago) and coming and waking me up. Then he’ll go back to his room and start talking loudly or thumping the door (or sawing up the furniture or tap dancing or singing or inventing megaphones). I’ll point out that dudelette and mummy are sleeping (whether dudelette is actually sleeping is another matter). Five minutes later, he’ll go to the toilet and want his bottom wiped. Then he’ll want me to read the label of something he’s just scavenged from the fridge (at least he’s learned to shut the fridge door). Then dudelette will go off like a fire alarm (or start cooing like a dove hooked up to a megawatt amplifer) and I’ll go and take her off supermum’s hands so of course, he has to come and say “Good Morning!” to his little sister, all of which would be very adorable if he’d actually got up even half an hour later.
Confusingly, none of this happened this morning, for a change.
Anyway, why is it a problem if he gets up early? Well, he doesn’t nap during the day so if he gets up before six (after going to sleep at around 7:45pm to 8pm, he’s utterly exhausted, stroppy and falling-over-his-own-feet clumsy with fatigue by 4:30 in the afternoon. So we’ve been trying for the last year to teach him to at least stay in his room and rest or play quietly to 7am with mixed results. When he’s tired and hyperactive, he gets tiring. When he gets tiring, he gets annoying. When he gets annoying, we all get bad-tempered. Not a great cycle for all concerned.
Meanwhile, we’ve moved dudelette to her own room (she’s now six months old) and that seems to be working well. She’ll still wake up at approx 10pm, 3am and 4 am and eventually end up sleeping with supermum but it’s a massive improvement on the hourly wake and continuous (and exhausting for supermum) sleep feeding that was going on. She does like to wake up early though.
Everything just seems to be grinding by day by day…
Filed under: children, family, parenting | Tagged: baby, children, family, parenting, sleeping
Ray is in bed by 6.30 PM and wakes up at 6.00 AM. He needs 12 hour sleep otherwise he is annoying too like he is today. He slept at 9.00 PM and woke up at 6.00 as usual.
Maybe D could sleep earlier than 8.00? Would that be possible?
Oh, I know this doesn’t help at all right now, but in just a few years’ time you will be begging them to get out of bed and get ready for school!
Any incentives you can give Dudelet? Something he really really wants? And put a photo of it on his door so he sees it before he leaves his room?
Is that yogamum or yogadad? But, yeah, we’ve been told that. And I’m just about aware enough of the headlong rush of time to not want it to speed up anymore than necessary.
We’re tried staying up later, going to bed earlier…Going to bed can work but is equally likely to end up with him getting up even earlier!
It’s a nightmare, I can empathize.
We have all manner of sleeping problems that Supernanny would no doubt go mental over, but we just struggle by best we can and that’s good enough for me.
We struggled for the longest time to just get our kids to stay quiet in their room for a while after they awoke each morning. They’re pretty good about it now.
We also officially ended naps after stopping daycare. I think bedtimes are going to be easier now, but I can’t really tell because my daughter has substituted full-on tantrums for bedtime wakefulness and silliness. It appears she’s too tired now instead of not tired enough!
I think Yogamum has a good idea about incentives. After we gave in and bought the LEGOs, our kids have been much quieter in the mornings :)
I wish I could be as laid back as Dan about it! Bedtimes…well, that’s another story. We do have an incentive system but dudelet’s worked out that he can just smugly ‘accept’ that he’s not going to get a sticker for staying quietly in his room until getting up time.
As I write, dudelette is at my feet trying to find her way noisily into a large plastic ‘fit-the-shapes-into-the-hole’ box. I think she’s been awake since five.
Honestly, the only way I can get Kiko to stay in bed at night and in the morning and to even attempt an afternoon sleep is because he’s still in his cot! He’ll be in that thing until he’s 21. His cot is now collapsing under his weight and he rips all the sheets off, even the mattress. It’s a bit of a worry. I suppose as soon as he works out how to climb out, we’ll have him into a bed like a shot (and put a big gate on his door). Then all sleep will stop for everyone. WAH!!!!! It’s like they just don’t understand about sleep. He refused to have an afternoon sleep today and as a result has been an absolute nightmare since 4.30pm and won’t sleep now it’s night time… because he’s overtired!
He likes taking books to bed with him and one day I went in and here he was, awake, but sitting “reading” a book and not yelling his head off – wow! I can’t wait until he’s old enough for Lego.
Dudelet will nod off if he’s in a buggy or car seat but otherwise, it’s the same – complete nightmare after 4:30.
It is so hard that just when you need to have it together to take care of a little one, you are robbed of one of the most important coping techniques. About weekly (during her pregnancy and since) I have reminded my new mom friend that things always seem much worse when you haven’t gotten sleep.