Lots of parents play “Let’s Make a Deal” with their children at bedtime—and who can blame them? You are tired, and you know your child is tired. You all need to rest, and this is your only time to relax before another day begins. Adam Mansbach spoke for many of us when he wrote his bestselling satirical picture book for parents who are out of patience with wakeful, demanding children.
Here is the good news: no child, including yours, “needs” your help to sleep. The biological necessity of eating, toileting, and sleeping in order to live are about as basic as you can get. Therefore, no child really “needs” to be convinced, cajoled, persuaded, or bargained with to do any of these. There is no biological or psychological problem preventing a healthy child from sleeping.
All children have the task to learn how to quiet their own minds and relax their own bodies to prepare themselves for sleep. But their desire to gain your attention, concern, and special services may be even more attractive to them. If you find yourself jumping through hoop after hoop to get your child to sleep, they may be leading you on a merry dance every night. The only effective way the bedtime situation will improve is for you to turn off the music and leave the dance floor.
The best way to encourage a child to take care of his own business is to stay out of his business. So, treat him like a capable child, and let him know in a friendly and matter-of-fact way ahead of time that you have confidence in his ability and his good judgment to figure out how to get the good rest he needs to feel well and have fun tomorrow. You have given him a comfy bed, climate control, the ability to darken the room and a reasonably quiet house. The rest is up to him…
Naturally, he will want to test your new resolve and discover if you mean what you say and say what you mean. Please do.
Follow (or establish) a pleasant and reasonable bed-time routine with him (30 minutes is plenty, and 60 minutes is the absolute maximum) and then say “good night.” At that point, you have “punched the clock” so to speak, and your work as a responsible and loving parent is done for the day.
Let’s assume that he gets out of bed and starts to cavort around the house. Ignore him. And I do mean ignore. Do not make eye contact or speak to him directly; instead, treat him like a “ghost child.” This doesn’t mean being cold or unloving, but you are disinterested. If you say anything, look at the ceiling and describe the situation in a general kind of way, “the birds and the animals have gone to sleep, the children all over town are going to sleep, and before long, I’ll be going to sleep too.”
You can support your child as he trains himself to put himself to sleep by doing your part to be as absolutely boring as possible. Sit near a dim light and read a book. (No TV or computer games obviously.) Yawn a lot. Put on your pajamas and mention frequently how sleepy you are getting.
Obviously, this isn’t what you really want to be doing for the next hour or so before you go to bed, but it is the most effective use of your time while your child is recalibrating his plans for the evening. If there is no point in engaging you in a power struggle (which is what was going on when you were “trying to make him go to bed,”) then it will quickly become obvious to your child that he might as well check out too. He may end up trying to sit near you, and fall asleep on the floor, the sofa, the hallway, etc. Fine. Even that act of rebellion will lose its appeal if you don’t say a word about it, and the benefits of his soft, warm bed will become increasingly obvious when compared to a chilly spot on the sofa or the hard, dusty floor! Don’t give up, but do get out of your child’s playful bedtime power struggles so that even he will recognize that the pleasures of relaxing in his own bed and drifting off to sleep on his own are the most reasonable and sensible things for him to do at bedtime.
Sweet dreams!
