My child is a hopelessly terrible sleeper. He stays up most nights until 1 or 2 in the morning. There’s nothing that puts this kid out. After too many months of being frustrated, I finally threw in the towel and said fine, stay up as late as you want. But you’ll do it in your room, and you’ll be quiet. This arrangement has been incredibly effective. I still don’t fall asleep before him, but at least I’m not torturing myself (and him) with hours of futile attempts to get him to sleep. He hops right up in bed when he’s ready and goes to sleep on his own.
Occasionally this arrangement doesn’t work out, for various reasons. Like last night he was terrified of his room and begged to come to my bed. I admit to being a little frustrated. I had plans, dangit. Put laundry away. Watch a show that’s inappropriate for children. Eat candy.
Instead we turned on Angry Birds. I answered a million questions. I reminded him to be quiet a billion times.
I watched him sit on the edge of the bed during the exciting parts. It was late and I was tired, but I was happy.
Equipment used:
- Canon Rebel T3i (discontinued, the T5i is the updated version)
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens (i luuuuurve my “nifty 50”)
- Edited with PicMonkey Royale because it’s fast and easy!
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I find that every child is different, Trish. Our daughter is such as bad sleeper. Ever since she was a baby, she would cry 15 mins after falling asleep. It will take us 40 minutes to pat her back to sleep. We thought it was our fault, we caused her bad habits. But then when our son arrived, he was such a good sleeper. We would just lay him down and he would just sleep. Now our daughter is turning 9 years old and our son six years old, its still the same. Our daughter still takes a long time to sleep. She has become passionate in reading. So we bought her a Kindle to read in bed. She reads till she gets tired, which is around 10.30pm (we send her upstairs around 9pm). But then she finishes books in 1 or 2 days, improving her reading levels tremendously. She has a reading age of 13+ now.
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