Ever since the time change ten nights ago, Isaac has been getting less sleep -- he wakes up an hour earlier but we still put him to bed at the same old time. I think these short nights have made him so tired that he can't stay asleep all night -- twice he was awake for stretches lasting an hour and a half, which is grueling for everyone concerned. Even when he doesn't actually wake up enough to require our help, he cries out in his sleep, mostly terrified shrieks but sometimes things like, "No! No! I don't want to!" Just as bad as the night-time problems are his daytime mood and behavior, which have ranged from miserable to awful. (He also says, "No! No! I don't want to!" during the day.)
Yes, it could be his molars, or it could be that he's entering the terrible twos, but one thing's for sure -- he's overtired. And at least we can do something about that.
So we're going to give the book's advice a try, although it's a great deal more regimented than we're used to. The author suggests calculating a regular bedtime based on your child's natural wake-up time, which I'd never tried before -- I had just picked a bedtime that was convenient for us, and that would theoretically have gotten Isaac enough sleep (if he had actually fallen asleep at that time, I mean). The author also points out that to keep your child's schedule regular, you will need to enforce his wake-up time. Drat. I've always let Isaac wake up on his own, which meant the time ranged from 6:00 to 8:00 a.m. However, perhaps that wide variation contributed to his difficulty falling asleep, and also explained why he was falling asleep at times ranging from 7:45 to 10:15 p.m.
So here are the steps we followed:
(1) How much sleep does your child need in a 24 hour period?
We're going with 12 hours, slightly less than the national average for kids his age.
(2) At what time does your child naturally wake up?
Since the time change Isaac has been waking up between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m., so we'll say 6:30.
(3) How long does your child nap during the day?
When he's overtired Isaac will nap until we wake him up -- and boy is it tempting to just let him sleep! -- but he does best with a two-hour nap.
(4) How long will your child need to sleep at night? At what time will he need to fall asleep?
Ten hours, which gives him a fall-asleep time of 8:30 p.m.
(5) How long does your child usually take to fall asleep? At what time will you need to put him into bed?
Recently it has taken Isaac from five minutes to one hour to fall asleep, so let's split the difference at 30 minutes. This means he needs to be in bed at 8:00 p.m.
I'm serious about the new regime, although I'm not happy about it. We now have a schedule fastened to our refrigerator, and today I left a playdate 45 minutes early so we could get home in time for our newly scheduled lunchtime. You may have thought this would come naturally because we already use Trixie Tracker to record Isaac's sleep, but you would be wrong. There's a big difference between tracking the time that events happen and scheduling them to happen at a certain time. One is observing; the other is manipulating. (Despite my complaints, the new timetable isn't that different -- bedtime is half an hour earlier, but the main difference is that the nap is a whole hour earlier, which also makes our lunchtime strangely early.)
Is it working? It's only been two nights so far, but he slept ten hours for both of them, just like the schedule shows. (However, both nights he woke up in terror just after midnight and spent the rest of the night in our bed, where I could easily comfort him.)
Here's the new schedule, so you can follow along at home:
6:30 a.m. -- wake up
11:30 a.m. -- eat lunch
12:00 p.m. -- get ready for nap
12:30 p.m. -- fall asleep
2:30 p.m. -- wake up
3:00 p.m. -- eat snack
6:30 p.m. -- eat dinner
7:00 p.m. -- get ready for bed
8:00 p.m. -- lie down
8:30 p.m. -- fall asleep
No comments:
Post a Comment