hi all....
we've been co-sleeping with our daughter for 3 1/2 yrs now, and dreading the time when we'd have to make her cry all night to sleep in her own bed. we love having her near us, but my husband and i would both like to get through a night without being kicked black and blue by the little girl between us. between her and the cat, there's hardly any space for me in the bed anymore!
anyway, we've been just dreading the whole process. i came up with an idea i thought would work. delia wants to go to build a bear workshop (babw), but i've always told her it's for big kids. so i decided to make that a goal for us....she will sleep in her own bed for a number of nights, and get a sticker on a chart for each night she does. then, when she's filled up the chart, she gets to go to babw. she picked the number of nights - eleven, her favorite number - and we talked about the plan for the whole month of april. not implementing it, but just talking about it.
then, eight days ago, she got a new toy....a boohbah. it's quite large, and has some hard plastic parts. she wanted to sleep in mommy's bed with this huge thing. i told her that the boohbah can't sleep in mommy's bed, only in deelee's bed. that was it, she went straight to her own bed and slept through the night. and she's done so every night for seven nights straight!!! no crying, no fussing, no nuthin'!!!
i don't know if this would work for every kid, or even any other kid, but i'm so thrilled that it worked for us!! she only has 4 nights left before we get to go to babw!! she's super excited, and so am i!
evi
we've been co-sleeping with our daughter for 3 1/2 yrs now, and dreading the time when we'd have to make her cry all night to sleep in her own bed. we love having her near us, but my husband and i would both like to get through a night without being kicked black and blue by the little girl between us. between her and the cat, there's hardly any space for me in the bed anymore!
anyway, we've been just dreading the whole process. i came up with an idea i thought would work. delia wants to go to build a bear workshop (babw), but i've always told her it's for big kids. so i decided to make that a goal for us....she will sleep in her own bed for a number of nights, and get a sticker on a chart for each night she does. then, when she's filled up the chart, she gets to go to babw. she picked the number of nights - eleven, her favorite number - and we talked about the plan for the whole month of april. not implementing it, but just talking about it.
then, eight days ago, she got a new toy....a boohbah. it's quite large, and has some hard plastic parts. she wanted to sleep in mommy's bed with this huge thing. i told her that the boohbah can't sleep in mommy's bed, only in deelee's bed. that was it, she went straight to her own bed and slept through the night. and she's done so every night for seven nights straight!!! no crying, no fussing, no nuthin'!!!
i don't know if this would work for every kid, or even any other kid, but i'm so thrilled that it worked for us!! she only has 4 nights left before we get to go to babw!! she's super excited, and so am i!
evi
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Portland
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it sounds like it worked out wonderfully.
but i wonder if it is totally okay to have kids doing stuff cuz it's big kid stuff and not cuz they are totally ready on their own?
i'm lost on this.
i remember being told that i could wear a certain dress when i gave up my bottle. and i remember feeling really pissed. the bottle was necessary for comfort and joy. the dress was lovely. who was it hurting for me to have both? that was my logic anyway. i was probably about 4, 4 and a half.
it's confusing for me.
i don't mean to rain on your brilliant and peacefully resolved parade, evi! it sounds like a great solution for your household!
just wondering....
is there anything in attachment parenting philsophy on this kind of question?
most of what i know about attachment parenting i've learned here.
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I have had that same question HP. I have a gut reaction that says "big girl" conditioning is not good but I don't know where mine comes from. I say to each their own but I plan on not using it. I don't want to hijack this thread so maybe I will start another post asking other parents how they feel about this.
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in my view, no bottle = pretty dress ( manipulative conditioning ) is totally different from no boobah in the family bed, but okay in big kid bed ( rules of the house )
that evi's girl chose to sleep w/ boobah in her big kid bed rather than without it in momma's bed is/was a choice offered and accepted by an independently thinking child. even before boobah appeared in her life, the plan for the build-a-bear trip was something that was anticipated, not dreaded.
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I agree with that steph, I just think that manipulating your child because "you're a big kid now" is not okay. There is logical reasoning behind "no boobah in the family bed." I just worry about it's over use and use in ways to manipulate kids to do the things we want them too and not think about it themselves. I am a huge advocate for the idea that kids may not always do what we want them to and that is okay because they are thinking. I am also an advocate for families working together with their children instead of mindlessly being an authoritative figure. Though in no way am I implying that that is what Evi did. I guess I'm just trying to figure out where the line is and develop a clearer understanding of why I feel the way I do about this so that I can thoughtful model for my own child. I'm not trying to say that anyone else's choices are wrong, just to be clear.
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I agree with Stephanie, there is a difference between saying you can't get a pretty dress because you have a bottle and simply enforcing reasonable rules about where a boobah can sleep. Especially if the boobah has hard parts that are uncomfortable for mom and dad to deal with, like Evi said. Around here we banned all hard toys from the bed a while ago because it was getting painful for us every time it got swung around and knocked us on the head or something. If at some later time Ewan decided he just had to sleep with one of those hard toys I wouldn't at all feel bad setting the condition that he could only have it in his own bed.
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i replied to the larger question on the other thread, but for the delia-specific part:
delia was totally ready to make this transition, as were my husband and i. this was what the whole family wanted, in order to sleep comfortably through the night. (what a concept!) we were working her up to the process slowly, and she took the final leap on her own, ahead of the "plan" we were implementing.
i agree that pushing a child to do something that he or she is not personally ready for just because other kids do it is not a good idea. but if a kid is ready to do something but scared and unsure it is the parents' job to show them how to make that step. using the "big kids do it" argument is just one way of helping out the process.
last night, she was watching "finding nemo" for the millionth time, and she turned off the player on her own and said she was sleepy and wanted to go to bed. sounds good to me!!
evi -
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evi, just want to say again it seemed like it DID work in your situation! i'm glad another thread was started. i thought about starting another one but didn't. b/c it does seem it was effective and happy for all in your situation -- but it's something i'm wondering about. i really hope i didn't offend you. i meant not judgment and am going over to the other thread to see what people have written. with greatest respect for every mama and papa's best thinking for his or her child.
HP
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