I think I am going to have to bite the bullet and figure out a way to teach 8 year old Monkey that night time is for sleeping.
It is killing me.
Right now it is Dad who is in with her - thank all that is holy - but even with that, I am feeling like she is sucking me completely dry.
She doesn't sleep at all most nights until after midnight.
The few times that she does go to sleep, I can't sleep because I keep waiting for her to show up at my door and stare at me.
A few minutes ago there she was, with the "my stomach hurts" routine...I suggested a sip of water and then go and lie down but let me know if it didn't get any better.
Not five minutes later she was back at the door - "it hurts even worse now!" she says accusingly, all the while staring at our older daughter who is cuddled on our bed.
Yeah, I know that she wants that same attention but she got the bulk of the attention already.
This afternoon I took her swimming and this evening was dedicated to her soccer game.
Enough.
Yet I feel like a bad guy.
Still I am going in and liberating Dad away if at all possible.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I cannot survive without adequate sleep. I'm afraid that I am just not a very good mother in the middle of the night.
Thank goodness they are older. I tend to mutter, "Do you think you need to go to the emergency room?" (a safe question with my brood). when they say no then I say, "Well then there isn't anything I can do that you can't do for yourself. Now let mommy sleep."
I'm a bad, bad mommy at night.
I mean really.
When the bioboys were babies and nursing Hubby used to get them, stand next to me with squalling infants and wake me enough so that he could get me to feed them.
"Danielle," for a while, had a really bad habit of dragging out going to bed. Some nights it was midnight before she was in bed and stayed in bed.
So we passed a rule. At 9:00 PM, "grownup time" starts. The kid has to be in her room, and we don't see her, or hear her until the next morning. For every minute past 9:00 PM that she's up goofing around, she has to pay us back with an equal amount of time doing unpleasant chores the next day.
Now, if she has a legitimate reason for not being in bed at the appointed hour (for example, we are on an outing and get back late) then she's not penalized. But, if she's not in her bed because her head hurts, or she needs to talk about a bad dream, or whatever, then she has to pay us back the next day.
It has really cut down on the amount of nightly dawdling that goes on.
I like the idea from fosterabba about time back... might be something to try.
thinking of you! I'm not good without sleep and my own time in the evenings...
Have you tried Benadryl? Simple 25mg doses were recommended by our psychiatrist because we didn't want to add more drugs to the list. That and melatonin really helps to adjust to the summer nights being later.
Post a Comment