David is about 16 months old now and very verbal about what he wants and doesn't want. Bedtime he doesn't want. So my daughter has been putting him to bed very late and still he cries and screams. She thinks it's cruel and harmful to him to cry and scream that hard and after a few minutes of it she gives in to him and takes him out of his bed. Sometimes he doesn't get to bed till 2 or 3 in the morning.
She is tired and getting very upset with him. The other night I made her leave him to cry himself to sleep, she wanted to give in just to shut him up, but I told her he is manipulating her into letting him out and that it was a war she had to win. It took a while but he did eventually give up and quieted down. I proved this by telling her that as hard as he's crying, as soon as you take him out it stops and he is smiling.
We have a little bedtime ritual and he's changed and given a bottle of milk. The tears are a scam.
Here's the problem though, he wakes crying in the middle of the night. Usually if we quickly give him a bottle of water and lay him back down with his blanket on him and his favorite stuffed animal next to him, he'll go right back to sleep, but we find ourselves tiptoeing around the house after that afraid he'll wake. How do we handle this middle of the night crying?
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