Back in Control!

I'm happy to report that after months, possibly more than a year, we are now back in control of bedtimes in our house. Several weeks ago we introduced a "sticker chart" as I mentioned here.  Well it's doing the trick! 

We successfully solved the problem of daily potty accidents at school, so we moved on to the bedtime routine.  Around the time Drew turned two, we discovered he had a problem with sleeping in his crib.  He preferred our bed.  Part of that is because he kept getting sick right before his second birthday - and had fevers over 104 consistently, so we had him sleep with us so we could keep an eye on him.  But that created a monster, and we couldn't get him out of our bed and back into his crib.

That's when his doctor's mentioned putting his crib mattress on the floor until he got his big boy bed.  We did that, and voila!  It worked.  Then he turned 2 1/2 and he fell prey to night terrors.  And it wasn't until recently we learned why he was terrified - and I mean terrified of his bedroom at night.  It turns out he had a "purple hand" above his dresser that threatened to "get him".  I guess Drew's version of monsters in the closet/under the bed.

During this time he would fall asleep in our bed, and we would transfer him when it was time for us to sleep.  Often we would have to lay with him for 10 minutes - an hour (often then falling asleep ourselves).  Well this was getting out of control.

So we decided to add - "sleep in own bed" to the sticker chart (as well as Daddy beating up and breaking the fingers of the "purple hand").  He wants his "Old McDonalds" prize so it's worked.  We rarely need to do much more than read a story and tuck him in and say goodnight.  We're back to normal bedtimes - he'd stay awake in our bed watching Sprout on TV - and we get downtime in the evenings again.  Something we really haven't had since he was a baby!  We're back in control again!