by Kevin Leman
Every child on the planet will push to lengthen that routine. My advice, from personal experience with 5 children, is to not let that happen. If you read “just one more story,” you’ll need to do that every night. The smart parent will make routines brief and simple. I remember taking Holly, our firstborn, to bed as a child. When she was 18 months old, she’d grunt and point at the things she wanted picked up. And I, like a trained monkey, was foolish enough to do it for her. After a while I had so much stuff in my arms that I could barely hold her. Was that nuts or what?
No matter what routine you come up with, when 9:00 (or whenever bedtime is) comes, once that child is tucked into bed, it’s important that she stays there. When Holly was a toddler, I made the mistake of always getting her a drink of water from the kitchen, which Holly claimed always tasted better than the water from the nearby bathroom faucet, before she went to bed. By the time we got to Lauren, our youngest, any requests for water came from the bathroom, which was closer (by then I was smart enough to not let on to where the water came from).
Children are adept at manipulating parents . . . especially once they are in bed. They can manipulate by “needing” water and a snack (“My tummy is so hungry it’s rubbing itself raw”), seeing imaginary monsters (“Mommy, I’m scared”), claiming that they don’t feel good (“My stomach hurts”), or tattling on siblings (“Jason came into my room and scared me” or “Amanda won’t let me have my toy”). Children have a huge arsenal of things to pull out to delay bedtime and to needlessly involve their parents in sibling battles.
But what’s the purposive nature of the behavior? To get your attention. Is it working in your home? Probably, if you’re reading this! So what can you do?
Establish a bedtime routine if you don’t have one. The shorter and simpler, the better. Once that routine is established, follow it. Then, once the kids are in bed, insist firmly that’s the end. The kids need to stay in bed.
Warning: Your kids know how to play the bedtime game really well. Some kids will go to bed just fine, and you’ll heave a happy sigh. Then, a half hour later, you’ll see little eyes peering out at you from the stairway. The children will insist they need . . . well, something. If this sounds familiar, try this tactic: without even turning your head or acknowledging the child, simply say, “It’s bedtime. You need to go back to bed,” and return your attention to whatever you were doing. There will probably be a hesitation, perhaps even a request again for a snack, for water, or to take them back to bed, but ignore it. Simply go about your business. As far as you’re concerned, the bedtime routine is over. The bedtime job is done, and now you’re on to something else.
What about the child who shows up in your bedroom at night? If your child slithers into your bed on occasion in the middle of the night, that’s a molehill. If your kid slithers into your bed every night at 2 a.m., that’s a mountain. Why? Because your child doesn’t belong there.
With all respect to the advocates of the family bed, I believe wholeheartedly in the philosophy that every child needs a bedroom separate from their parents’. Children need a place to identify as their own space. And that’s true of a husband and wife too. How can you and your spouse develop a solid, lasting foundation—one that will continue after the children are gone—if you don’t have one place in the house where you can be with each other without interruption? How exactly can you get it on with two little bodies in bed between you?
If your child continually gets up in the middle of the night and crawls in with you, close and lock your door to keep the little disruption away. For those of you who are worriers, what’s the worse thing that can happen? You’ll wake up and find the little nipper curled up with her blankie or pillow outside your bedroom door.
Does that mean you should never comfort your child in the middle of the night? Certainly not. What I’m talking about is continual behavior, not the once-in-a-while behavior.
Thunderstorms will come and things will go bump in the night. Your child will get sick, wake up from a nightmare feeling scared, or be sad because of a real-life situation. As the parent, you are the psychological blankie for your child, and that child does need you sometimes. So here’s what I suggest for those times: keep a sleeping bag under your bed. If your child is scared and wants to feel close to you, let her know she can pull out the sleeping bag and lie down in it next to your bed without waking you up. That way your child gets the psychological closeness she craves, and you can still function the next day because you’ve had a good night’s sleep. You also retain your bed as your space in your child’s perspective.
For those of you with young children, do not climb into your kid’s bed to snuggle with her when you accompany her back to bed. If you do so, you’re reinforcing the attention-getting behavior. And you’re also violating the child’s individual space that she needs to be solely hers. If you violate her bedroom space, why would she not violate yours?
Also, moms (who are especially tempted with this one), do not take naps with your child in his bed, or he won’t be able to take naps without Mommy sleeping with him. Think about it this way: if you were little, would you rather go to sleep by yourself, watching that musical toy that goes around and around until you feel dizzy enough to fall asleep, or with Mommy, who has a warm body to snuggle up to?
Part of learning to grow up and be age-appropriately independent is having your own bed and your own little space. It’s important for psychological development. That’s why if siblings share a room, the room should be divided in some way that gives each child his own privacy and space.
Every child wakes up differently. Some children will wake up slowly, talk to themselves, and sing. They’ll happily look through books for two hours. They’ll relish time in their own “space.” That’s our Lauren. She was still in her crib at age 3 and would not have complained if she had still been there, reading books, until she was in seventh grade, when she was too old and too big for her crib. Other kids wake up ready to take on the world and insist (usually loudly) on getting out of their bed as soon as possible. That was our Holly, who pole-vaulted out of her crib when she was 18 months. She woke up with fire in her eyes. She was one determined little kid. Our family joke was always this:
“Lemey [one of my wife’s pet names for me], you better go wake up Holly.”
“I’m not going to wake her up. You do it.”
“No, you.”
The back-and-forth continued. You see, if you were smart, you didn’t want to wake up Holly. Some kids wake up with a happy face. Some kids wake up hard.
Some kids go to bed easily. Some kids go to bed hard. And some kids naturally just don’t stay in bed. They want water or a snack, they don’t feel good, they’re scared, they want to sleep with you, or they’re feeling social—they simply want some friendly 3 a.m. conversation (ah, what a nice time to share your innermost thoughts and feelings).
Setting—and sticking with—a solid bedtime is a mountain, not a molehill. If you start bad habits in this area, everyone in the family will suffer. Everyone’s actions and emotions just seem to work a little better when you’ve all had a good night’s sleep. So be extra careful on this one.
Bed-Wetting
“I’ve tried everything—the buzzer, the bell and pad—but he sleeps through it all. Nothing works. Help!”
“Andrea’s been potty trained since she was 2. Then one day I got a call from the school to bring her a change of clothes. She’d wet her pants. I was stunned. Andrea’s in second grade. What’s up with that?”
“Jarrod’s still wetting the bed sometimes, and he’s 10. What am I doing wrong?”
Many parents go to the extreme on bed-wetting. They try all sorts of contraptions to stop their child from wetting the bed. There’s the buzzer that, upon the first sign of wetness, buzzes and wakes up the child. There are the bell and the pad—when the pad gets wet, the bell goes off and wakes up the child.
But let’s put things in perspective here. You can read a dozen books and try a
ll the techniques. You can make sure your child doesn’t drink a lot of fluids at dinnertime; you can have your child go potty before he goes to bed; you can talk about getting up to go to the potty immediately upon feeling a full bladder.
And your child will still wet the bed.
How does this make you, as the parent, feel? Many parents rack their psyches with angst. Oh my goodness! I must not be givinghim enough love and attention. I must be a terrible parent. He must be stressed in some way to cause him to do this. If any of his friends found out, he’d be so embarrassed. And what a mess! I hate cleaning those smelly sheets and changing the bed every morning . . . not to mention the mattresses he’s ruined.
But consider this: a research study indicated that children who wet the bed have deep-sleep patterns. The majority of children will eventually grow out of those patterns and stop wetting the bed.
So chill out! As the wise saying goes, “This too shall pass.” Bed-wetting will stop by high school. I guarantee it. In the meanwhile, just use rubber sheets and install gutters on the bed!
You might also need to do some things behaviorally. For example, if your 7-yearold wets the bed, you wouldn’t allow him to stay overnight at a friend’s house. You wouldn’t want to embarrass the child or inconvenience the friend’s parents. But how do you explain that to your son? Do so matter-of-factly, so the child knows the reason he can’t stay overnight at his friend’s house. There should be no warning or punitive tone in your voice. Simply say calmly, “Honey, when you get this under control, we can do things like that. But for now, we can’t.”
If your child has an accident at school, call it an accident. Don’t make a big deal about it. Bring your child a change of clothes. Do not, however, put an extra set of clothes in your child’s backpack in case your child has an accident. That would simply be reinforcing the behavior.
In bed-wetting it’s important to not embarrass your child—and to take the long-term view.
Bullying
“I was incensed when my child told me what had happened to him on the playground. How could the playground monitor not have seen what was going on? Now Daniel doesn’t even want to go back to school.”
“I was so embarrassed when I received a call from the school that Ricky had called a little girl names and then pushed her into the bushes and scratched up her face. How could I have raised a bully like that? I mean, I know Ricky can be aggressive, but I never thought he’d be mean. Especially to a girl.”
“Girls can be so mean. Seventh grade was an awful year for Crystal. In fact, so bad that we decided to switch schools midyear. A group of girls decided they didn’t like her because she couldn’t afford the right clothes and she wears glasses. They spent the first half of the year passing snotty notes about her, making rude comments about her body, and telling other girls that if they were friends with Crystal, they could never be part of their crowd. I must admit, I was more than a little tempted to smash those girls’ faces in myself. For a while I tried to let Crystal handle it herself, but it got too bad. She would cry every day after school.
“Finally I decided to talk to two of the girls’ mothers before I went to the principal. Sadly, their mothers are just like them. It seemed that everything was about being part of the popular crowd. One mom said she was late for an appointment with her personal trainer and didn’t have time to talk; another one said she didn’t see why her daughter should give ‘a girl like Crystal’ the time of day because she wasn’t part of her daughter’s group. . . . I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with the principal since those two mothers were big donors to the private school. So I gave up and switched Crystal to a different school. We both agreed that her crying every day after school wasn’t worth it.
“After we left that school, I heard that the group of girls had turned on Jeni, the newest member of the group, and now were making her life miserable. Although Jeni had made Crystal’s life miserable, Crystal still felt sorry for her . . . because she knew what it felt like to be picked on.”
Is your child the bully or the child being bullied?
There’s something very important to know about bullies. Bullies are insecure. They think that by putting others down (physically or emotionally), they’ll feel better about themselves. They’ll feel more powerful.
When I was growing up, bullies were those nasty boys who followed you home from school on their bikes and beat you up in the back alley.
When you got home, your dad would take one look at you and tell you not to back down next time. He’d give you some tips about where to hit ’em (out of your mother’s hearing, of course). When you came home a couple days later with a black eye but grinning ear to ear, he congratulated you because he knew that you’d faced the bully square on . . . and won.
But today’s bullies are different. They’re more aggressive, and, sadly, many have parents who are physically absent, are emotionally distant, or simply don’t care. You can no longer count on the Leave It to Beaver father and mother to carry out discipline in the lives of the bullies who are making your child’s life miserable.
Bullying can take many forms. An adopted kindergartener was told by a bully girl in her class, “Your parents bought you off a shelf in China because nobody wanted you. Nobody wanted girls.” The little girl had nightmares for months about being “purchased” and having a price tag on her arm. She kept wondering how much she was sold for. And she worried that if her adoptive parents could buy her, maybe someone else could buy her from them. When her mother approached the bully girl’s mom to talk through the situation, the bully girl’s mom just laughed and said, “Sometimes kids say the silliest things, don’t they?” Clearly she didn’t understand the impact of what had happened, nor was she willing to.
Another little girl had her arms squeezed so hard by a first grade classmate that she was terrified she couldn’t get away. He was much larger than her and actually left bruises on her arms. When the mom told the teacher about it, the teacher said, “Oh, he was just trying to be friendly.” But the mom pursued the issue with the principal of the school, since it was the third occasion on which the boy had squeezed her daughter. She was worried that the next time the boy would break her daughter’s arm.
A fourth grade boy was told he was a “girly boy” because he didn’t like to play football with the boys during lunch hour. The next day someone put a pink tutu in his locker and taped pink ballerina shoes and the word gay on the front of his locker. Ian was devastated. He’s now in seventh grade, but he’ll never forget that moment. He’s wondered ever since if he is gay.
A second grade girl spent her recess hiding from two boys who liked to “play catch” by flinging her back and forth between them.
Bullies who are not stopped in their tracks merely become older bullies who are more dangerous. In some locales, today’s bullies carry knives and guns, depending on the neighborhood and their age. (And not only gang members are bullies; bullies can be very clean-looking types too.) They’re the kids in the back alley behind the school who catch other kids walking out and try to force them to smoke or do other drugs. They’re the boys in the locker room who catch a boy who doesn’t have a big penis, strip him down to his jockstrap, and force him to walk into the hallway in front of the girl he has a crush on. They’re the girls who tell a new girl on the scene that to be cool, she has to have oral sex with one of the soccer players.
If such a thing happens to your child, go immediately to a teacher you trust. If you see no action from the teacher, go to the principal. Bullying is not anything to mess around with. It’s a mountain to tackle immediately, no matter which side of the coin you are on.
If your child is the one bullying other children, go for the jugular. Confront your child forcefully, when you are the only audience: “Are you really that insecure that you have to bully other kids?” This will cut to the chase because no child wants to admit he’s insecure. Or that he picked on someone younger and smaller just to feel better about himself. Ask your child why he
did what he did. Explain how the other child felt about what happened, how you feel about what happened, and what kind of behavior you expect out of your child from this point forward. Insist that your child apologize as soon as possible to the child he wronged. It helps to cement the lesson if you are present to make sure this happens. In order to have emotional restitution, the bully must say, “I’m sorry for hurting you. It won’t happen again.”
But here’s the important part. If your child is truly sorry, you need to allow him to move on. In other words, don’t be a bone digger. We parents have the tendency to go back and whack our kids over the head with something they’ve done earlier. We love to constantly remind them of their failure so they’ll be “good.”
As embarrassing as it is to be the parent of a bully, keep in mind that, as a parent, you’ll face lots of crises. Your job is to deal with them as best you can, then move on. Training children takes time. They’ll make mistakes. You’ll make mistakes. Remember the democratic society rule? “If you have a right to put me down, I have a right to put you down.” This can be a hard cycle to break if you continually bring up the wrong things your child has done. By addressing bullying behavior and demanding immediate emotional restitution, you and your child can move on with life.
If your child is the one being bullied, report the behavior immediately to the child’s teacher. If the teacher doesn’t give you specific feedback, such as, “Thank you for letting me know. I will be on top of this and watching for it. Let your child know to come immediately to me if she feels threatened,” then you haven’t been heard and the teacher doesn’t consider bullying behavior serious. The next step is to go to the principal. You cannot take bullying lightly, nor can you take the “wait and see” approach. Too many children get the tar beaten out of them by bullies. Although their physical wounds may heal, their emotions may not. Bullies don’t stop easily, so you have to be vigilant. You have to put safeguards in the system to stop bullying behavior. The playground monitor, the teacher, the principal, and both sets of parents must be aware of the behavior and that it must stop.
