Recently, my four-year-old has been struggling with sleep. She has trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. Her explanation: bad dreams. When I tell her to think happy thoughts she says, “I can’t find them in my brain.” And when she asks me, “why are the bad dreams always winning,” I want to crawl into bed with her and sleep there until she leaves for college or until her boyfriend Snake says, “Mam, this is sorta f*k up.”
And yes, up until now, my solution for the occasional bad dream was a quick snuggle in her bed (less quick if I fell asleep for an hour). Clearly, I set my self up. She calls, “I’m scurrd” at least three times before falling asleep, and then another two or three times at night. Sometimes four (consecutive hours of sleep can’t be that important, right? Brain cells, who needs ’em? I’m pretty sure I can get by on bile and wind). I’ve tried books, night-lights, rationalizations, visualizations, bribes and consequences. Nothing. After consulting my vast network of experts: my mommy Google group, my sister, my acupuncturist; it became clear there was one course of action left. Cry it out. That’s right, she’s four and we’re Ferberizing her.
The last time we did this she was three months old (and was spending 40 minutes crying herself to sleep in our arms anyway so…), it worked like a charm then. The question was, how do you do it with a big kid? The first night we went through the usual script, she was home, safe, cozy and had nothing to worry about, that we, thirty feet away, were in the next room listening. But then I added that I would come back and check on her in 15 minutes and not before. I showed her where on her clock the minute hand would be when I came back. I reminded her that since she knew exactly when I would be coming back, she didn’t need to call for me. There was a lot of positive language, a lot of reframing and reaffirming (“I will come in. You are getting what you want. The police would arrest someone before they could knock down our house with a wrecking ball.”) The tricky part was keeping her in bed, not playing or opening her door, for that I did have to resort to a consequence (no tv the following day. With this threat I can get her to do almost anything). She waited patiently in her room, quietly, but happily, repeating, “I’m scurrd, I scurrd.” After 15 minutes I went in, gave her a hug and kiss, tucked her in again and said I’d be back in 20 minutes. I went in a third time, saying I’d be back in half an hour. She was asleep before I went in again. The next night, I only had to go in once. What is interesting is that solving the issue at bedtime, seems to be helping with the nighttime wakefulness too. Apparently she feels more secure, so the “nightmares” are decreasing, or she’s coming out of this phase and it has nothing to do with me or any of my spectacular efforts. Either way, it’s a win. I’ve also realized that a hug and kiss is enough comfort, a full-blown snuggle leads to bad habits and, in the future, I wouldn’t want to make Snake uncomfortable.
Sarah Moriarty is a writer, editor and adjunct professor. Sarah’s writing has appeared in such hallowed places as her blog, her mother’s email inbox, the backs of Value Pack envelopes and a waist-high stack of mole skin journals. In addition, Sarah has contributed to F’Dinparkslope.com, WhattoExpect.com and edited fiction for Lost Magazine. An excerpt from Sarah’s novel, The Rusticators, is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Writers Space 2013/2014 anthology, The Reader. A resident of Brooklyn for the last eleven years, Sarah lives with her husband, daughter and a dwindling population of cats. Check out more of Sarah’s work at sarahmoriarty.com.