Look at that face — Could you possibly resist it if it were crying?

Because that’s precisely what pretty much every “parental guide”, other parents (including our own!), and advice column has advised us to do at night, when he wakes up. “Just let them cry it out,” they say, “they’ll get over it after a few nights.”

I just can’t do it though — we’ve tried it. For about 2 or 3 days, when he would wake up, I would callously make him wait before we went in. First wait-period was 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 — every time he wakes up (which is a bit of a mis-statement, as he never really goes back to sleep) the duration of the delay increases.

The problem is, it doesn’t work. One night he cried for 2 and a half hours solid. Seriously. He’s done this in the car too. The kid’s got lungs like the Three Tenors.

So we tried it for two or three nights straight and just decided to go with our instincts instead. My brain tells me to get him and calm him down when he cries at night — either rocking him back to sleep in the chair, laying with him on his toddler bed (yes, our 17-month-old is in a toddler bed…he was getting to the point where he could climb out of his crib), or just bringing him to bed with us to co-sleep.

Some people don’t get into co-sleeping, they like having that distance between parents-and-children. I like it — I like having Sullivan sleep with us (most of the time). I think I have a good relationship with my son — we play together, I read to him and put him to bed every night (even when Mel is away at class) and we shower together. We do a lot of bonding.

So it doesn’t make sense to me to try and push him away when he’s upset at night. What good does it do? Sure, I can selfishly do whatever I want to do and try to ignore him while he belts out a melancholy operatic, but he’s only going to be this age once, so why not foster our bond?

Mel and I don’t think he’s being manipulative - we talked with our Birth-to-Five coach about this as well; She thinks that while it’s more difficult for us now, we’ll reap the rewards when he’s older because we should have a closer relationship to him. (I expect he’ll still tell us he hates us when he’s 15 though) He just wakes up without us, is scared, and wants to be with us. Seems pretty fair. He’ll out-grow it when he’s ready to be more independent, and then we’ll probably wish he still wanted to co-sleep.

Another success story I have about sleeping is what we do when Sullivan wakes up and is footsy, and doesn’t want to go back to sleep. The first time this happened, I asked him “Do you want to sleep in your room?” and carried him to his room, where I laid him down. When he started crying and immediately climbed off, gesturing for me to pick him up, I carried him back to our room. He was still not wanting to lay down, so we repeated the above steps one or two more times; It worked — we laid back down and he cuddled up to me, laying on my chest, and fell asleep.

Now, all I have to do when he acts up at night is pick him up and say “Ok, let’s go to your bed,” and he’ll immediately settle down. (If he’s feeling especially rambunctious, sometimes I have to actually go through the motions of taking him to his bed, but it only takes once now.)

I had similar results with overcoming his reluctance to go to sleep. Normally, our nightly routine involves changing his diaper / getting PJ’s, brushing his teeth, saying goodnight to mommy, then reading books and going to bed - in that order. Sometimes when he says goodnight to Mel he doesn’t want to go with me to his room, so he kicks and screams and cries.

What I’ve been doing lately is saying “Sullivan, do you want to go to bed, or do you want to read books?” gesturing towards his bed and the bookcase, respectively. The first time, I had to ask him 3 or 4 times before he comprehended what I was saying - but now I just ask him once; He’ll immediately calm down, go to his bookcase and grab “Quack!” or “Cold little duck,duck,duck” or one of his other books, and we’ll read.

I value the bond my son and I have — he is an exuberant kid and most certainly difficult at times, but I think that’s part of his charm. I don’t want to break his spirit by pushing him away at night; He isn’t breaking any rules by wanting me to hold him, and I figure that it can’t possibly be harmful to bond with him more, so I’m going to say “thanks, but no thanks” to those guides, peers, and columns that tell me to let him “cry it out.”

Tags: parenting, sleep, sullivan
Categories: Ziggy aka Sullivan