Friday, May 22, 2009
A Little Thing
Samantha learned how to open doors this week. She's finally tall enough to get enough of a grip on the round doorknobs in our house to turn them and pull. This means two things: 1) She might come out of her room at night at any time. It hasn't happened yet and I have no idea how in the world we'll handle it when it does. Maybe we'll use the Supernanny method. But on the bright side, 2) she can now come out of her room in the morning on her own so we're one step closer to sleeping in again someday.
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We moved both of our older girls into toddler beds at around 16 to 18 months (the littlest one will be moving soon, too--he can already get a leg up over his crib railing). After the transition, both girls enjoyed their newfound freedom by visiting us during the night (we never locked them in their rooms--I was too worried they wouldn't be able to get us if they needed us). We simply walked them back to bed, told them it was still night-time, and rubbed their backs until they went back to sleep. The standard "no playtime" rules applied--no singing, no lights (except a nightlight), no talking, no books, etc. In a couple of weeks they were back to sleeping through the night.
ReplyDeleteI hope you guys don't have to worry about it at all!
Adam and I have been talking about it a little and we decided that we will do something like the Supernany technique, which is very similar to what you did, Kim, but not exactly the same. Here's the plan: First, we've already discussed with Sam what is bed time and that even if she can open the door, she needs to stay in her room until morning. We need to get her a digital alarm clock and decide when morning is over so that we can say, "it isn't morning until this number is a '7' or '8'." Then, the first time she comes out of her room, we'll bring her back saying, "It's bedtime, sweetie," and absolutely no other words. If she comes out a second time, it's, "Bedtime." And the third and subsequent times, it's no words at all - just leading her back to her bed. We wouldn't rub her back or anything because we've never done that. We've always left the room with her awake, even when she was an infant.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be kind of nice to leave the door cracked open a bit, but we've always shut the door (never locked it, of course) to keep the cat out. When she was an infant, this was necessary but now it's just convenient since he'd probably go in and howl to wake her up, knowing that that's about the only way to get Adam and me out of bed, which is his goal.
[...] since Samantha learned to open doors, I’ve been looking forward to, and dreading, her first foray into leaving her room on her own [...]
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