Going With The Flow and Building A Dam

I really don't know how to "officially" describe my parenting style, but it pretty much boils down to listening to my kids, evaluating what they need, and doing what's right for us. That being said, if something doesn't work for the whole family then it doesn't work.

My boys, for the most part, have always been great sleepers. If I can get them to sleep in the first place. Bedtime has been a constant battle since Aedyn was born. A few months ago we restructured our lives into a system that worked and worked well, for awhile.

Aedyn had been pushing his naptime back and wasn't ready for bed when I thought they should go down, but then he slept in later. The sleeping in worked great since Jake closes the restaurant 3 nights a week and it made it easier for me to wait up for him and then we all could sleep in until around 10 or even 11am.

But in the past 3 weeks Aedyn pushed his 10pm bedtime back to midnight. If I tried to get him up int mornings or skip his nap and put him to bed earlier he'd sleep for 2 hours and then be up for 3-4 before he'd be ready to sleep again. Which meant 2am at the earliest. Not cool.

After thinking about it awhile I decided that I might have had a hand in that. Instead of taking him back to his room when he'd wake up after 2 hours I let him sit on the couch with me, mainly because I was to tired to deal with trying to keep him in bed, but I was also afraid he'd wake his brother up with his protestations.

So. We went with the flow. Now it's time to build a dam, because I refuse to stay up until 3am with my 3 year-old who then gets to sleep in while I have to get up and take care of his brother.

So far it's working well, we're having to actually get up in the morning...yuck. I probably won't be able to wait up for Jake anymore. And I'm having to deal with bedtime and naptime resistance. On the upside, attitudes are better and we can do stuff before lunchtime again, I'm hoping that this will work for a few months or years...we will see!



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