What?! Your kids don't stay in bed!?

When my two oldest were still in diapers and cribs, I visited my sister Kamie. Often. But not often enough, in hindsight.. With no kids in school yet, I could throw some provisions in a couple Walmart bags, drive an hour to Kamie's house and stay for days! Aaahhh. I had no concept of how fleeting that kind of freedom would be. 8 years gone. Anyway.

One evening, while I was there, I was having a very selfish conversation with Kamie I'm sure, and the children (hers, not mine. mine were in their cages fast asleep) just kept coming out from their rooms and interrupting me. "The nerve of these children!" I would think, but not say, "Can't they see it's DARK OUT?" "Did not their mother put them in bed!??" I just couldn't fathom this brand of childhood license and parental helplessness.

Not many years later, when I was struggling with the very same nighttime problem myself (go figure!), I called Kamie. She suggested putting the kids on a stool. She had tried it herself recently and it seemed to make her son unhappy, which was the point.

(I'm not talking bar stool here, btw. Step stool! This is ours, before we used it.)

The idea behind the stool is many-fold. We don't just use it for bedtime troubles. It replaces the corner (I didn't have a single available corner in my house at the time we put this into practice, so that was a consideration) and there is nothing to lean against (compounding the misery). Also, we put it in the middle of the living room, so everyone can see the disgraced person as they pass through (added humiliation). 

We set a timer if it's a minor offense (age of the child- I round up because I'm mean! ;), but for something huge like getting out of bed, or not falling asleep and keeping your sister from doing so, we don't set the timer. I do dishes, laundry, vacuuming, and wait until the wrongdoer is tired. Really tired. Right around the time they start to get emotional, that's when I let them go to bed. When I'm feeling a little nicer, I let them decide when they're ready to go to sleep. As soon as they're ready, off they go. But if I hear another peep, back on the stool for an interminable amount of time. Begin with that approach, if you're a softie. :)

As I mentioned, the stool started out as a hindrance for nighttime antics, but it quickly became a favorite consequence and is multi-purpose now. Because it's awesome, and has been for 5+ years, I'm sure I'll refer to it again in other posts.

It's the most wonderful time... of the day.

You know the tune...



Unfortunately, the "wonderful time" doesn't actually begin at bedtime. Oh-ho-ho-no! Bedtime is when the most heinous parental torture begins and stretches into eternity! But if you start your routine at 7 (I don't know about you, but an intolerance for all-things-children takes hold of me around 7pm), the kids could potentially be asleep by 10. And at 10, you can enjoy 5 high-quality minutes/wonderful time with your husband to remind you both of why you love each other so much. Doing special things like, brushing your teeth, popping in your retainer and kissing your prince g'night because he has to get up in 6 hours for work.

I don't really like bedtime.

But! it has gotten better. I made "GO TO BED!" checklists a couple years ago once I was sure both girls could read well enough. I laminated them, punched holes, ran some ribbon through them, and made my girls wear their checklist necklaces until they checked off everything on the list with a dry erase marker (kids love dry erase markers).

After a few weeks, the girls knew what they needed to do. They didn't have to ask me so many obvious questions. They didn't have to give me a play-by-play. They just knew the drill and did it. So, once they were proficient, and after some shameless begging on their part, I let them go necklace-less through bedtime. But they still hang in their closet (the checklists, not the girls) as a reminder that I can and will use them if necessary.

Here's a poem:

Sometimes children go to bed.
But then they get up.
You send them back to bed.
And they get up again...
There's an app for that.
Just kidding! but I do have another method I use, called "THE STOOL"

(It looked like a poem :)