Firstly, sorry about the 3-day pause. We’ve had computer problems that we’re still trying to solve. We can post now, but not photos. So here’s today’s post sans photo:

The name cards were arranged neatly on the conference table. We, the four participants, took our places solemnly.

On the agenda: “Problems at Bedtime.”

Maybe it was silly to call a family conference that involved a 2-yr-old and a 4-yr-old, but we were desperate. For months, my husband and I had endured marathon bedtime episodes that involved bath times that dragged for 20 minutes or more (”Time to get out.” “No! No! No!”), neverending book reading in the hopes they’d fall asleep (”Just One More Book! Yes! Yes!”) and finally, heartrending pleas to sit with them, stay with them, lie down with them (”Mommy, I’m scared!”) until our two little tyrants (cute, but still, tyrants) finally fell into exhausted slumber.

These bedtime extravaganzas sometimes lasted two hours, leaving my husband and I grumpy and too tired for much more than falling into bed ourselves. Not good.

I asked Tina Feigal, parenting coach and sometime Cribsheet guest blogger, what to do. Call a family conference, she said.

It took us half a year, but finally, there we were, sitting around the dining table on Sunday morning. What did we have to lose?

The two-year-old, sensing a threat to her lifestyle, tried to slip off her booster chair and escape. The promise of stickers afterwards brought her back.

Bedtime had not been good recently, we said. Did they know why?

It’s because we don’t behave, the 4-yr-old volunteered. (Oooh! Good Start!)

Encouraged, we continued: So what should we do at bedtime?

Behave, said the 4-yr-old. (We were making excellent progress!)

What else should we do?

Brush teeth.

Read a book.

Go to sleep.

In our Own Beds.

Slowly, we teased out the “suggestions” from the kids and wrote them down.

(It occured to me that running a family is like running a company. You need carrots and sticks and you also need to let people think they’re making their own decisions while making sure these are the decisions you want them to make.)

At that point, the little one got bored (or maybe the suggestions worked Too Well) and crawled upstairs to “go seep,” she said. She returned just in time for the summation.

Tina had suggested devising a bedtime ritual that signaled it was time to sleep - such as saying goodnight to the fish in the aquarium. Since we didn’t have an aquarium, we improvised. The signal would be a kiss - two smooches on each cheek. Kiss kiss, kiss kiss, sleep. Simple.

My husband made up a poster with the rules and the 4-yr-old put it up on a wall upstairs with sticky tape.

The first night, it worked with both kids! Kiss kiss, kiss kiss, sleep.

The second night, only the 2-yr-old stuck to the plan. The 4-yr-old bent the rules a little bit (but not too much), insisting on staying up to color for a little while.

We’ll let you know how it goes…..

What are your bedtime rituals? How consistent are you?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 10:08 am and is filed under Family Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.