1 Mother 2 Another

A couple people asked me after
yesterday’s post to elaborate on our bedtime arrangement
– how the girls get to color in their room, etc.


So here it is.

We head upstairs at a pretty early hour;
during school it was 6:30 p.m., and now that school’s out
it’s 7:30 p.m. Maddie, in an ideal world, would still sleep
11 hours a night if we’d let her; the problem is, she
can’t fall asleep so early any more, even when she’d
get up at 6:45 for school. And Cora, well, Cora’s never been
as big of a sleeper as Maddie is. Alas for me.


Our bedtime routine takes about 20-30 minutes: pajamas, teeth, two
books read aloud, and prayers. So we’d wind things up by 7
p.m. And while I couldn’t force the girls to go to sleep at
that time, I knew letting them stay up later would make them want
to sleep even later – trust me, I tried.


So we came up with our current system. They each have a lap desk
with pockets in their rooms, filled with paper, crayons, pencils,
etc. Maddie’s desk has a crossword puzzle book, and Cora has
a picture search book. Maddie’s got a Doodle Loops book, and
Cora has another picture search book.


The point is, they’ve got low-tech stuff to do.


Once the girls are in their rooms, in a perfect world they’d
stay there until they awoke the next morning. In the real world, we
play Whack-A-Mole nearly every night: a head pops out, we pound it
on the head and it goes back in. Then another pops out, then the
first comes again, and so forth.


Tell me I’m not the only one.


But since we instituted the craft desks, the girls don’t come
out nearly as often. We used to get both of them, multiple times a
night, saying such things as “I’m bored,” or
“I just can’t get to sleep. And I’ve tried REALLY
hard.” Now, if that comes up, they’re sent back to
their activities.


On most nights, Cora will go through the nightly routine, then
settle in on her bed for her Creative Period. She’ll write
letters to family members, or do some sticker mosaics, or some
Wikki Stix, or simply look at a half dozen books. Then she’ll
hit a point where she’s ready to go to sleep and she’ll
turn out the light (after neatly cleaning up after herself, bless
her) and go to sleep.


Maddie, on the other hand, doesn’t often turn to her craft
desk. Since she can read (and loves it) she’ll usually read
herself into sleep, and many times I’ll come into her room,
reading light still on, her slumbering frame surrounded by open
books. Maddie needs more sleep, but is also my worrier, and
sometimes she can’t get her brain to turn off. So she reads
until she drops from exhaustion and finally falls asleep.


And as less-than-perfect as that may be, she’s found
something that works for her and I respect that.


Occasionally Maddie will have a specific worry, and she’ll
know she needs to get her brain turned off. On those nights
she’ll turn to Doodle Loops or a math workbook or her
crossword puzzle, and eventually (hopefully) that will segue into
books and sleep.


So there you’ve got it- that’s our system. Works pretty
well most nights, though not perfectly. We still get occasional
visits after bedtime, though less rather than more. On the whole,
though, the girls are content to have a small amount of autonomy in
their rooms and are learning to self-regulate and get themselves
wound down. And that’s pretty important.


Most importantly, though, Mommy and Daddy are finally able to start
squeezing a television show of their own in at night.


Most nights.