I need some Mommy advice. My current youngest, Jack, has developed a habit of waking up in the middle of the night like clockwork and coming to the side of my bed to tell me that he is scared. We then head back to his room, reset a soothing music CD (to keep him company), I rub his back for a minute, and then leave the room. Usually, this is enough to put him back to sleep.
It is so bizarre that when I was sick and sleeping on the couch, Ken was the one who received the 3 AM wake up call from Jack, and it went something like this:
Jack: Dad? Where's Mom?
Dad: She's probably downstairs Jack.
Jack: Oh. (pause) Dad?
Dad: Huh?
Jack: (loud yawn) I sure am tired.
Dad proceeds to put Jack back to bed.
On the surface, I can handle this small interruption in my sleep. But between a bathroom trip or two, Jack and an early alarm for Ken in the morning, it is becoming disruption after disruption in my sleep. I'm starting to really feel it. With the soon addition of Faith needing to be nursed in the middle of the night, I felt the need to develop a dream last night where I freaked out on my son about all of the wake ups.
I have no idea what is waking him up at 3:00 am, but it is pretty consistent. And he's not sleep walking. I can't remember the last time he slept straight through in the last few months. He goes right back to bed...the problem is Mom being able to settle back to bed as easily.
Any recommendations on how to break this cycle????
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4 comments:
S. said...
Since Jack didn't require the whole CD/back rubbing routine when your husband tended to him, maybe you could put Dad in charge of the night wakings from now on? It might not be worth it to Jack to get up if he only gets Daddy, not Mommy.
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Thanks S.
You could be on to something there. I decided yesterday to go the quick and desperate route of bribery and see just how much Jack might be able to control his desire to enter our room. He is promised 3 Starbursts if he can make it all the way until 7:00 am. Today we had a breakthrough...and he made it to 6:00 am before announcing monsters were in his room. So I gave in a little to keep him motivated and let him have 1 Starburst as a reward.
Obviously he can't be rewarded with Starbursts forever, but I'm hoping he may learn to talk himself through his fear in the short term.
S. said...
Ooooh, yes, rewards can work very well at modifying behavior as well. As you mentioned, though, the trick is stopping the rewards once the new behavior is engrained.
My daughter was having quite the problem with monsters invading her room a few months ago (and oddly enough I was very pregnant at the time, maybe this is how kids of a certain age express concerns about a new sibling on the way?). We made up a bottle of 'monster spray' for her. I got a cute little spray bottle for $1 at Target, filled it with tap water, and told her it was a special spray that keeps monsters away. We sprayed her room every night before she went to bed -- paying special attention to those places where monsters love to lurk, like under the bed and in the closet -- and then gave her the bottle to keep beside her bed so if she woke in the middle of the night scared of monsters she had her repellant right there. It worked like a dream.
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