To Sleep or Not to Sleep...

Our first Thanksgiving was spent with my husband's family.  We stayed with his sister, Becky.  At the time, Becky's six kids ranged in age from one to nine years old.  Let's let that sink in for a minute. Six kids all under ten years old.  That's a lotta kids.  I expected a bit of chaos, but the first night there I witnessed a scene like something out of an apocalypse movie.  There were tiny bodies strewn everywhere!  It looked like some type of mutant virus had gone through the house knocking unconscious everyone under four feet tall.  With each step I had to be vigilant to keep from tripping over a toddler sprawled out on blankets on the bedroom floor, the  hallway, the living room, the kitchen, and the closet (for those of you keeping count the sixth kid was missing at the time because he fell asleep out in the garage!).  As I walked through the house looking at all these little people asleep on the floor, I wondered what was wrong with Becky?  Why weren't these kids in beds?  And then to my eternal shame I uttered those famous last words, "When I'm a mom, my kids are never going to..."

Fast forward fifteen years and I can now clearly see Becky for the genius and saint that she was.  In my house, now that I'm a mom, my kids sleep on the floor all the time!  And they sleep in the hall, and in the closet, and in the pantry, and on the couch, two to a bed, three to a bed, and in just about every bed but their own!  I don't know why kids don't like to sleep in their own beds, but they don't.  I don't know why kids love to sleep in other people's beds, but they do.  Having five kids has opened my eyes to the wonderful realization that while it is important that kids sleep, it is not really important where kids sleep. 



For a while we resorted to buckling our son into
his car seat in order to keep him in his crib!

Just because your child has adjusted to their random sleep habits, however, doesn't always mean you have.  We all want to get a better nights sleep, and that usually means making efforts to keep your kids in their own beds (or at least out of yours!).  There is a sure fire way to make sure your kids stay in their beds all night, but duct taping your kids to their beds is a safety hazard so I cannot recommend that practice here.  Here is what I can recommend:

Rewards

If my preschoolers are having a particularly hard time being motivated to stay in their own beds, I usually resort to a sticker chart.  Put a chart by their beds, every time they stay in their own bed all night, they get a sticker.  When the chart is full, they get a prize.  Simple and effective.

 

 

 

Vigilance

Some kids who are too young to understand a reward system, or are simply unmotivated, may need to just be put back in their beds a hundred times a night until they get the hint.  This is really difficult for me.  I sleep pretty soundly, and I often wake up with a toddler in my arms and have no idea when or how they got there.  But if you are awake and have the opportunity, it's always a good idea to just put them right back where they came from.

Flexibility

Our kids would switch beds every night if we let them. They love to sleep in the same bed as their siblings, or to have a mini sleepover on the floor.  So to cut down on the asking "Can I sleep in their room tonight, just this once, please, pretty please?" we instituted sleep-wherever-you-want-night.  Every Friday night the kids are allowed to sleep in any room they want.  The other six nights a week we expect them to go to bed in their own beds.

 

 

Have a back up plan

Some kids are going to want to sleep in Mommy and Daddy's room no matter what.  And you may not have the will power or the energy in the middle of the night to pick them up and carry them back to their rooms. So have a back up plan to at least help keep them out of your bed.  We often keep an extra pillow and blanket by our bed so that if someone comes in the middle of the night, they can just lay down next to our bed and go to sleep without even waking us up.  At the moment we have a couch in our bedroom (it's a long story), so in theory if a child comes into our room in the middle of the night they can just go to sleep right on the couch.  The reality of it is that usually the child gets into our bed and crowds me out.  So I end up spending the night on the couch looking longingly back at my comfy bed.

 

 

Lock the door

Not their door, your door.  Occasionally my husband and I will lock our door at night.  After an hour or two we can hear little footsteps in the hall, the door knob jiggles, then jiggles some more, then silence.  A few minutes later we can safely open the door and find our child asleep on the floor just outside our door.  At that point we can either put them back into their beds or simply scoot them to the side of the hall out of the way.  Either way, they have given up before they were able to climb into our bed, and that is a victory for us.

Endure

When all else fails, accept it and endure it.  It won't last forever (are any of you still sleeping in your parents' bed?).  And although you are probably too tired to appreciate it, there is a certain degree of entertainment involved in these late night adventures.  One night my husband and I had left a giant exercise ball behind our bedroom door.  The sound of our door bouncing off the ball woke us up just in time to hear the sound of the door bouncing back and whacking our toddler in the face.  Boing! Smack! Whaaaa!!!!  That's priceless family comedy right there.

This year for my husband's birthday our five year old said, "My present to you is that I'm not going to sleep in your bed anymore!"  That night he amended his statement and decided that from now on he won't sleep on Daddy's side of the bed, but he can still sleep on Mommy's side of the bed.  Lucky me!  Sadly my birthday is still ten months away.

So if your efforts fail to keep your little ones in bed, at least know that you are not alone.  You are part of an elite team of nocturnal Olympians.  Every night when the lights go out we play a team sport called "Musical Beds."  The game starts the same, with everyone in their own bed.  At some point early in the night, child A gets lonely, crawls out of their bed, and slips quietly into bed with child B.  A short time later child B gets tired of child A kicking and thrashing like a beast in a net, so child B goes and crawls into child A's now empty bed.  An hour or two later, Daddy wakes up in the middle of the night to pee.  The sound wakes up child A who discovers that they are alone again.  Daddy returns from the bathroom to find child A taking up his spot in the bed next to Mommy.  Daddy knows he is outmatched and heads for the couch.  Daddy's discomfort causes him to snore which wakes up child C.  Child C can't sleep now and decides to climb in bed with child D.  At some point child A resumes the beast-like thrashing, and Mommy can no longer sleep.  Mommy staggers around the house looking for a place to sleep.  The couch is full, so she chooses between child B's bed and child C's bed.  It is a tough choice because bed B smells like stinky socks, but bed C is a top bunk.  Mommy chooses the bunk beds. Some time very early in the morning child A begins to cry, Mommy tries to get up to go get him, but she forgets she is on a bunk bed and falls hard into a pile of razor sharp LEGOs.  Mommy swears.  The noise wakes up the other kids.  Now everyone is awake, Mommy and Daddy are exhausted and have aching backs, and child E is officially declared the winner for having slept all night, alone, in her own bed.

Who's ready to play?

Marcia