About 10 weeks ago, I shared ‘night one’ of our 4-year-olds sleep training journey, and wow, did it cause some controversy.
I had people saying I was ‘abusing’ my child because I wanted her to sleep on her own.
What a mad world!
Bedtime with our two daughters has always been a nightmare. Neither slept well as babies and throughout the toddler stage, neither would go to sleep without us cuddling them for hours on end.
Our entire evening pretty much comprised of me and my wife taking it turns to put them to sleep.
Great fun!
Every bedtime started with this delusional hope that tonight would be the night, where it would all change. Story, nice cuddle, and off you trot to dreamland.
This very, very rarely happened. Maybe on the odd occasion where they were absolutely exhausted.
And a few months ago, it got to the point where I thought, I can’t do this anymore. I never see my wife in the evenings; I was getting frustrated every night to the point of anger and it just wasn’t healthy for anyone involved.
So, I reached out to ‘Just Chill Mama’ who has a great reputation on social media, and we began the journey for our 4-year-old girl, Ruby. Luckily, our 8-year-old has somewhat grown out of it.
I am not going to sugar coat this, night one was fucking hard. We did the usual routine and explained to her that we weren’t staying in her room tonight, but we’ll be next door and we’ll be there if she needs us.
Well, that went down like a lead balloon.
She must have got up about 30 times and shed quite a lot of tears. I must stress, we never let her cry out - if we felt she needed reassuring, we went in. Nevertheless, first night was rough.
2nd night was marginally better and then by the end of the first week, it was much less traumatic. She still disliked it when we left, and it wasn’t straight forward, but she was adjusting.
Our strategy was simple: Keep the bedtime routine as similar as we could each night, story and a nice cuddle. Then we’d leave and stay upstairs in the next room. If she got up, we’d calmy put her back in, and if she got distressed, we’d reassure her we were there.
The next few weeks were certainly a bit up and down. Some nights we thought she had cracked it, and then the next night, we realised she hadn’t.
One week bedtime was a breeze, then the next, she had regressed a little.
But during this time, we stuck to it 100%.There were times when I have been tempted to lie with her, but I knew this would just leave us in this bedtime limbo for longer.
Fast forward 10 weeks and bedtimes have been a breeze for quite a while now and much more pleasant for everybody involved.
She’ll fall asleep on her own in about 10-20 minutes. The dread of bedtime is now completely gone, and I am 100% confident this will now be the future.
She really doesn’t give a crap that we leave (she even told me to leave the other day) and no, she’s not left ‘traumatized’.
She doesn’t have any attachment issues and we haven’t seen any difference in her behaviour or her affection towards us.
In our daily life, we show our kids an incredible amount of affection and love, so I don’t think a few nights of her upset whilst she gets used to falling asleep by herself is going to make any difference.
Parents who love lying with their kid night after night, that’s sweet. We personally didn’t and it was affecting my parenting and my relationship with my wife, so it’s something I am so glad we did.
I have had many parents write to me after this journey who are feeling how I did 10 weeks ago. I can assure you it will get better if you follow some simple techniques and stay consistent. I am amazed where we are with our Ruby compared to 10 weeks ago.
Good luck!