Last week, Murray decided that his bed was not as comfortable as ours. We let it slide when he climbed in at 5:00 am; after all, we only had one more hour to sleep (we've been getting a bit lazy regarding this situation). HUGE mistake. We quickly learned that that one extra hour was not worth the pain involved with Mur-Man in our bed. You would think we would have learned by now.
We changed tactics. We explained that he was a big boy and his big boy bed "wanted" him to sleep in it. This idea coaxed him to go to sleep, but sure enough, at 1:30am, little man was crying - make that screeching -to sleep in "mamadaddy" bed. We let him cry it out for three nights. Finally, I was so tired I resorted to bribery (Mama Stubborn + Daddy Stubborn + Murray Stubborn = Sleepless Nights) .
The next part of this story goes completely against my grain: On the fourth morning, I explained to Murray that if he went to his bed with "no crying, no whining and no getting up in the night", he could have a treat in the morning. Worked like a charm.
But (and a big but here), it worked for three nights. The first day, I didn't expect him to remember, so I didn't have a anything special on hand. At a very early hour, Murray was tapping me and asking for his "teet". We ended up letting him pick out something from the gas station (candy corn is his favorite) on the way to Lynsay's.
This brilliant bribe of mine worked until last night. Craig and Murray went grocery shopping and came home with a bag of dum-dums. The problem lies in this: Murray feels he should get a sucker every time he uses manners, washes his hands, or whatever he deems good behavior (in his world, that means a whole lot of things).
Last night we were back at square one. When Murray finally exhausted himself with the stomping/crying/screaming/begging routine, he fell asleep. But lo and behold, the witching hour arrived (midnight), and he woke up and demanded a sucker and TV.
So here we are: the TV is unplugged and the dum-dum supply is stashed.
We try so hard to raise our son with a firm hand, but I'm afraid that we are the "suckers". Who's the dum-dum? That would be us, too.
1 comment:
Don't worry- we've all been there! Try a sticker chart - he gets a sticker for going to bed in his bed and sleeping there all night. After he fills his chart (like 5-10 stickers) he gets a small prize or trip to a place of his choice. That's about the only thing that worked for O - potty training, bed sleeping, etc!
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