Bedtime Battles.

I moved M from his crib to a toddler bed when he was about 18  months old, I know this is kind of young, but he could get out of the crib anyway, and I needed to free up the crib for P, who was due to arrive a month before M turned two. For the first week it worked ok. Then he started getting up and I could not get him to stay in bed. It became a nightly battle.

I tried everything. I tried spanking. I tried screaming. I tried taking him back to bed over and over. I tried sitting with him till he went to sleep. nothing worked. As soon as he was in bed he would pop out again. or he would stay on his bed and jump and yell and throw things at L on the other side of the room. This went on for a year. I was at my wits end. I hated bedtime and the battle it had become. I longed for the idyllic picture book bedtime where the mother tucks in the children and reads to them and kisses them goodnight and then they go to sleep.

One day I was talking to a friend about it, and something she said reminded me of how we deal with mealtime battles. When M rejects his food, I have a very simple strategy that works with him every time, with no fight. I just take away the food he does not want an set it on the other side of the table. He thinks about it for a minute or two and decides that he wants it after all. I had often wished I could apply this concept to bedtime, but I didn't know how. Now I had a seed of a plan.

When he refused to go to bed I did not force the issue. Instead I took away his bed, so to speak. I said, "If you do not want to go to bed, you can sit by the frige" and I put a chair there for him to sit in. He did not go to bed, so I sat him in the chair. There was still a battle, but the battle was no longer the bed. I made him stay in the chair, and he could escape this battle honorably by deciding to go to his bed. He fought valiantly for the first few nights, trying to sneak off the chair and run and play, but I stuck with it. After about a week, he decided that it was not worth the battle. Now most nights I do not even need to get the chair out, because he goes to bed on his own and actually stays there. I was prepared to give it two weeks before giving up if it didn't work, but it only took only one.

Will this work for your child? I couldn't say. What will work is to know your child. Study his ways. what does he respond to in other situations? Find a way to work with him, to make a way for you both to win.