Basic Truths of Parenthood: Laying Down the Law
One of the less pleasant parts of caring for children involves making them do things that you know they need to do.
In our case, this means enforcing bedtimes. I remember being a little kid during the summer and feeling the inherent wrongness of being put to bed while it was still light. Now I have to do the same to my kids, and they definitely do not like the idea.
In late June, Abby realized that even though we've put her to bed she is still capable of getting out. After putting her back in bed several times on the first night, we just let her stay up till she fell asleep and hoped that it would be an isolated incident.
It wasn't.
After that, she decided she could do the same every night. This was not good. We knew we had to do something. To judge from her crankiness the next day, she definitely needs 10 hours of sleep.
A couple nights into this routine of trying to put her to bed, having her get up until we got sick of trying, and letting her set her own bedtime, I tried something different. I did more or less the same thing my wife and did when moving our kids out of our bed and into their own.
When Abby tried to get out, I put her back into bed immediately, not waiting for her to get all the way downstairs. When she had a massive, screaming tantrum, I picked her up, held her till she calmed down, then put her back in bed.
After doing this a few times, she had calmed down enough that I left the room and went into Kristen's and my room, watching out the door to make sure she stayed in bed.
She did.
I wish I could say that that was the end of the problem. It wasn't, but it's gotten better. Some nights she's clearly in the mood to test boundaries (or at any rate, she's not in the mood to sleep...) and I end up reading a book in my bedroom, watching for escapees out of the corner of my eye.
If she leaves her room and makes for the stairs, I catch her, insisting that she stays in her room even if she doesn't get into bed. It generally works. In a worst case scenario, it means that she stays up and looks at books in her bedroom for a couple hours. Typically, she falls asleep within 30 minutes.
I can't recommend this to everybody, but it works better than letting her make her own decisions about bedtime. Actually, come to think of it, it wouldn't hurt if someone did the same for me. I could use the sleep.