That would be supernannying your almost 10 year old for bedtime. Michael, love him dearly, and he has improved SO much from even just a year ago, but we need to nip this bedtime battle in the bud. So, here is goes. I put him to bed an hour ago and his first time out I told him it was bedtime and took him right back to bed. His second time out I told him it was bedtime and took him right back to bed. His third time out I took him right back to bed. This then brought on a battle of how many times he could get out of bed to get me to talk to him. When that didn’t work 15 times, he resorted to crying about how his mom hates him. Ugh. That’s hard to push through because I wanted so much to explain that I do love him, but he has to get to bed. So, instead of talking, I hugged him and put him back to bed. However, that just got me about 5 more times of getting out of bed and crying about how his mom still hates him.
Chris is about crawling out of his skin. I really appreciate him trying to work through this and trust my reasons even though he may not agree it’s what we should do. Wish us luck!
Wow, you’re blogging again!
Sorry to hear bedtime is still such a struggle, but hey, I feel your pain! I’m looking forward to year 8 on the potty-training roller-coaster. Whee.
May the force be with you. Consistency will pay off in the end.
Agreed – consistency is the only thing that will work. He’ll get the idea.
The thing that works for us: “I love you too much to argue about this.”
I agree about the consistency thing. I don’t envy you the experience though. I’m not sure if it’s harder to go through when they are babies or older. When we did this with Eva she was still in a crib but I could hear her screaming and crying for us only a little ways away. The first night was horrible but it got way easier. Good luck with Michael. I advise not talking to him at all when you put him back. Then he’s not even getting negative attention from you. I think he’ll get used to it soon enough.
Again, good luck!