It took many years, some unfortunate manipulation, a new pet and more than a few frustrating nights, but in the end, my son has adapted to a functional bedtime routine.
Although I hate offering unsolicited advice to my fellow fathers, in this case, I will make a notable exception, mostly because this issue has the potential to cause some major familial distress.
What begins as a cute idiosyncrasy quickly gathers the momentum of regularity and can easily turn into a life-altering problem for parents and children alike.
So take it from me, folks: get the kid in his own bed, post-haste!
And if I’m not authoritative enough, take it from a true, if not controversial, expert: Dr. Richard Ferber, a well-known pediatric sleep expert from the Children’s Hospital Boston. A good discussion on some of the issues surrounding his “Ferberizing” approach to get young children to sleep on their own is found here.
If his expertise doesn’t do it for you, perhaps the sharp yet insensitive feedback from my former family doctor will convince you of the error of my ways.
I mentioned to him in passing that we had been allowing our infant son to sleep with us.
“Are you nuts? You’ve gotta knock that off now. Like, tonight.”
Give the doc credit for being bang-on in principle, but I see why some of his less-than-flattering online doctor ratings referred specifically to his bedside manner, or lack thereof.
The co-sleeping issue came to a head for me and my son when he was about two years old. My wife was working an evening shift, so it was up to me to take care of the boy’s bedtime drill: bath time, bottle and gently leaving him alone to fall asleep.
I was motivated. I was pumped. I believed in the righteousness of my cause. I had read the Ferber testimonials and methodologies. I was prepared for resistance. I had a strategy.
I was taking back the night: he was going to fall asleep on his very own.
Now bear in mind that he had never known in his young life a solo send-off to slumber-time absent the close contact comfort of one of his parents. I’m sure from his perspective, it was only normal and expected to have an adult-sized teddy bear beside him each night. He knew no other way, right from the very get-go.
I mean, consider that I spent a lot of time preparing his room before he was born, only to have an unused crib and never-lit nightlight.
This wasn’t something that me and my wife agonized over, either. It just sort of happened and kept on happening. I’d imagine this is what it feels like to be a functional alcoholic until the first drunk-driving charge.
“Me? A co-sleeper? But it was just a few sleeps, officer! I was going to stop…nobody was getting hurt.”
On that critical night, all went well through the bottle and bedtime story. He was drifting off, head lolling through the last few sips of the bottle.
I said my goodnights and made for the door.
But he was wise to the ploy and was having NONE of it.
As soon as that bedroom door closed silently behind me, the shrieking began in earnest, complete with pleading and increasingly panicked toddler-isms:
“Nooooooooo, Daddy!! It’s durk in ‘ere! But I wuv youuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!”
We had created a monster and thy name is “stupid yet well-meaning parents.”
Brutal. Just painfully brutal.
He tried to open the door. I resisted.
I tried the rational approach, explaining gently from the other side of the door that it was HIS bedtime and that I was right downstairs. He was safe. He needed to get back into bed.
And then came the fingers under the door, searching for the contact that he was so used to.
My patience wore thin and my words became less gentle. What was I supposed to do? Squash those adorable little fingers like little uncooperative, non-sleeping bugs?
Ferber’s methodology predicts all of this, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. The episode went on for some time and, I hate to admit, I caved and released the door.
Ultimately, my wife came home from work and found us downstairs on opposite ends of the couch, locked into some sort of dysfunctional bedtime stare-down.
Child: 1. Parents: 0.
We could never have anticipated that the deal-breaker for our ill-fated co-sleeping experiment came in the form of a canine.
Buster the Puggle is really only trained to do one thing well, but it was and remains for our family the best trick to teach man’s best friend.
The pooch hears, “OK, Buster! Time for bedtime!” and he’s marching up those stairs to my son’s room, ready to do his nightly duty as a seeing-sleep dog. We’ve even got him to the point that he is snuggling up to the boy, practically spooning with him. The dog is also intuitive enough to wait until the boy’s breathing patterns slow down, indicating he is asleep. Only then will he emerge to take a peek down the stairs, asking with his body language if his work there is done.
Good boy!
So in the end, while it must be true that our parents were totally wrong in many of their parenting approaches (how could they dress me in a velour sweater-vest not once for grade-school pictures, but TWICE??), they certainly knew what they were doing when it came to bedtime.
The kids went to bed on their own at the same time, each and every night. If they cried, they eventually cried themselves out and crashed, exhausted but adapted to reality.
Constantly running to soothe each and every whimper might seem to bring interim relief to parents, yet it also raises the likelihood of problems down the road. Expect a lot of late-night phone calls from a re-considered sleepover party, or the summer overnight camp abandoned.
To my now-wide-open eyes, it’s better to raise children who have figured out through their own internal devices how to mock the demons in the closet rather than run away from them, hoping to be rescued by someone else.
Life just ain’t like that.
I still sometimes find an additional little body in my big-person bed in the morning. I can only tousle his hair and think back to the dreaded night of the Ferber Fingers.
