Mary is almost two and still has a difficult time sleeping through the night. Mind you, it isn't her fault. We as first time parents had no clue how to put a child to sleep. As a result she developed some poor habits to soothe herself to sleep, mainly US! Poor Mary and poor us! Now Murray and I have a newborn who wakes frequently in the night as newborns do and we can't take getting up with two children!
Our pediatricain gave us an article about bedtime resistance. We used their idea of a pass for older children and modified it for Miss Mary.
We moved the plan to action.
Murray introduced the idea of "The Pass" to Mary.
You get two passes in the night. They are good for two visits from Mommy or Daddy and you can have a hug, bottle, song or drink of water.
They made them together.
The passes were velcroed to the wall.
Success! Mary has slept through the night several times, without even using the passes. Yea Mary! We knew you could do it!
9 comments:
Great! I'm glad Miss Mary is sleeping better... but I'm a bit stumped as to how it works. Can you give me and Brian the details?
what a great idea! I hope it continues to work for you. You deserve it.
Glad they are working! Life is so much easier when they are sleeping through the night. :)
Oh, and one more thing...as the wife of a pediatric dentist I have to pass on the info...one of the main causes of cavities in toddlers is sleeping with a bottle. All the sugars from the milk or juice sit on the teeth all night long and cause major problems. So if she must have a bottle...do water to protect her teeth. :)
WOW... what a great dr! I'm glad its working for you! Hope it continues! In a few months.. well like a year.. you will have to teach me how it works!!
That is awesome - Mary is so smart, I'm sure she picked up on it so well!
My Sister-in-law uses this method. She used tongue depressors for her "tickets." Her sone now sleeps better and they use the "tickets" for the number of books he can have before bed, so they aren't reading the entire library (another postponing tactic, ha!)
Wow, very inventive! Glad it worked!!!
Oh I am so glad!! I seriously worried about you because I knew Mary wasn't too great at night, and I wondered how you'd do it with a newborn! You can coddle a child when you have just one, but as you add more they simply MUST sleep well at night or you'll go insane!!
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