Schedule assessment

You may be wondering how the new schedule has been going. It's been almost two weeks (we've completed 13 nights), so it's time for an assessment.

Of the past 13 nights, most of them met the goal of Isaac sleeping for ten hours. (Two nights were an hour or more too short, and one night was 40 minutes too long.) The time that Isaac wakes up has been quite regular, usually within 15 minutes of the goal of 6:30 a.m. Perhaps because of this regularity, the goal of an 8:30 p.m. bedtime is also working out fairly well -- on ten nights he's fallen asleep before 9:00 p.m. His bedtime hasn't been so early since he was 16 months old!

That's fine, you may be saying, but what about the real goals, the reasons for making the schedule in the first place? How is his mood? How is his behavior? Is he falling asleep any easier? Is he still waking up at night in a panic?

Unfortunately, the answer to that last question is a definite "yes" -- he cries out multiple times every night, and on ten of the past 13 nights he's woken up enough to need help getting back to sleep. I'm hoping this will improve when his last two molars come in.

As far as his falling asleep, it isn't any "easier," but that's one benefit I get from the schedule: since I had to schedule time for it, I had to admit that it simply takes time for Isaac to fall asleep, and I can no longer delude myself that I can set him down at 8:25 p.m. and expect him to fall asleep in five minutes. In drawing up the schedule I gave him 30 minutes to fall asleep, and he's taken at least that long every night but one. So this has cured me of being upset that he's not going to get enough sleep because he's not falling asleep quickly enough -- it's up to me to put him to bed early enough, and it's up to him to fall asleep. It also helps me to not feel so frustrated that my evening is being consumed by his bedtime routine -- if I am committed to helping him fall asleep, and I am, then I need to be willing to help for the length of time he requires, rather than the length of time I wish it took.

The real measure of the schedule's success is Isaac's happiness. Now that he's well-rested again, the kid has been in a great mood, his behavior is once again that of a standard-issue two-year-old, and it's a true pleasure to be with him. Before we implemented the schedule, he was missing either lunch or dinner every few days because he couldn't control himself long enough to sit still and eat -- he was so tired that he would throw his meal to the floor and cry, and he'd have to be whisked off to bed immediately. The behavior change is impressive. He sometimes still throws his food on the floor, but at least it's because he chose to do so, not because he was too exhausted to eat it!