Bedtime Battles

David and I know we've been spoiled. Even as a baby, when it was time for bed, we'd just put him in his crib and he'd go to sleep. So we've had three years of easy bedtimes and it makes the last two weeks seem that much worse. Thomas has decided to fight going to bed and does it quite well. It takes at least an hour to get him to sleep. It would probably go faster if we'd give in and lay with him until he went to sleep but we don't want to get into that habit. He wants "one more hug" and "please stay here just a couple more minutes." He'll grab fistfulls of my hair and say "I making you stay here." Of course, 10 "one more hugs" later he's still crying and wanting us to stay with him. He's even started coming out of his room and crying at the top of the stairs for us (another thing we've been spoiled by, for the last 6 months of him sleeping in a big boy bed, he's stayed in there and called us when he was ready to get up). We know, or I should say hope, it's just a phase but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with.

David worked late tonight and got home in the middle of Thomas screaming. He listened for a while and when he could tell I was losing patience, he asked Thomas if he could come up and lay with him. For 20 minutes Thomas had been at the top of the stairs screaming about wanting me to come lay with him and I was standing firm having given him his 4th "one last hug" but as soon as Daddy offered to come up, he said, "no" and went to bed by himself with no more crying. David and I laughed quietly saying he should have intervened earlier.

If our readers out there have any suggestions on how to get our boy to sleep without an hour of screaming and crying, we're open to suggestions. Just send us an email or post a comment to the site. When you've been spoiled as long as we have, you take it harder when he acts like a normal three year old.