Completely crashed out in the middle of mama’s bed in the middle of the afternoon. The funny part about this is that she is the very one making us all so very tired. She refuses to sleep, this silly little one, and we’re really not sure why. She was always such a good sleeper and would often tell us when it was time to go to bed. Then she turned 4 and it was as if someone flipped a switch inside her mind. She is up within minutes of being tucked into bed, with excuses, questions, requests, and quite ridiculous stall tactics. She helped us create a new bedtime routine to ease the transition and still no success. Many nights she gets up no less than a dozen times before finally giving in to sleep. Leaving us all frustrated and exhausted.
She’s tired, there is no doubt about that but she simply won’t let herself be still long enough to sleep. It is a hard age to be sure. Old enough to think of yourself as quite big but still young enough to not know how to handle it. Afraid that she might miss some bit of excitement there are many nights that she tries every excuse she can think of just to delay bedtime even though she is up much later than her daddy and mama even want to be. Unfortunately I have to admit that we haven’t always handled these nights gracefully as our patience has worn thin and exhaustion has taken over.
We’ve tried bribery, consequences, rewards, reasoning…we’ve tried every trick in the book (in every book) and we are flat out of ideas. Right now we have a dry erase board that is showing a sad face reflecting how last nights bedtime battle went but that method will soon be disappearing. It certainly isn’t helping her stay in bed and it isn’t doing our spirits any favors either. It’s really quite depressing seeing that gloomy face staring at us in the morning. I certainly don’t want to bring the exhaustion and sleep deprived sadness of the previous night forward to start our new day off on the wrong foot.
We are headed back to the drawing board so to speak. Trying to find ways to show her how to hear when her body is telling her that it needs to rest and allowing her to figure that out on her own, while still honoring the need for rest that the remainder of the family is feeling so deeply right now. So for now we are laying low and trying not to be so hard on each other while we find our new rhythm.
I’m hoping that in my sleep deprived state I was able to make some sense within this post. But if not…try not to be too hard on me either.
