Let Them Sleep In The Middle

Savvy Lessons: kids sleeping in own bed, kids sleep in own bed, getting kids to sleep in own bed, raising children, parenting tips, anxiety insomnia, toddler sleeping, children sleeping, toddler sleep in own bed, all night bag, all night book, ideas for kids, parenting ideas, all night long book video.

Mrs. Savvy Redhead  5/09

For those of you who have heard that song from Dirks Bentley where he says, “let them sleep in the middle…” it can pull at your heartstrings until it is 3 am in the morning and you wake up with a foot in your back, hand in your face and even the dog on your feet.  I remember thinking ,”this isn’t as precious as it sounds in the song!” or “I must have been on Vicadin when I signed up for this one!”  So how do you claim back your full half of the bed and get everyone a good night’s rest?  Well here is something that worked for us and got our kids to sleep in their beds all night long!

One day I was talking with a friend of mine who works with Autistic and special needs children as a speech pathologist and she told me that one of their techniques to teach those children simple day to day actions is to make a book of pictures that repeated on every page the action desired and the reward.  I put on my thinking cap and pulled out some positive reinforcement ideas from my parenting backpack and came up with a program that worked for us.  Don’t worry I am not going to give you an introduction and then ask you to pay $19.95 for the rest of the article you will get it all here for FREE!

The first thing that came to my mind was that it takes 21 days to create a habit, however Facebook has figured out how to shorten that time frame. Knowing the habit information, I knew this was going to take some time.  I also had the outlook of one day at a time.  So instead of spending lots of money on idea books for that one chapter I needed, I headed to the dollar store and spent the same money on some prizes; yes! bribery is part of the plan. To optimize, I would buy packages of multiple items- because, I have to still save money even at the dollar store!   I put them all in a large gift bag and called it “The all night long bag.”  I then took the book idea from my friend and began to write a story about sleeping in bed all night long. I went through everyone the family and some favorite toys and the routine we do before bed time all to help my daughter realize that sleeping in her bed all night long is part of the routine. (ADD A LINK FOR THE FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD) After writing the poem, I took pictures of family members sleeping in their beds.  I made a book with scrapbook paper and stickers. (ADD A LINK OR PICS OF THE BOOK)

Once the book and prizes were in order the process began.  We would do the bedtime routine outlined in the book to every detail, at bedtime I would read the book.  If multiple stories were read then the bedtime book was the last one read.  It was time to sleep!  If she slept in her bed all night long then in the morning she would get to pick a prize from the bag.  As the prizes dwindled, her father and I would praise her and say how proud we were of her.  In addition we made a “I have slept in my bed this many nights in a row” bedtime chart with stickers/stamps of the bedtime routine.  When the daily prizes ran out we moved to seven day reinforcement.  After seven straight days of sleeping in the bed, a special reward of either TV time, a special movie or craft project to do.  Soon we just moved to rewarding the sleeping with praise.  This process worked great but we did have set backs.  Occasionally, when she came into our room at night, I would just get up take her back to her room and put her back in her bed not saying much to her, not rubbing her back or singing- those would become rewards for getting up. If for some reason I slept like a log one night and didn’t feel her get in our bed until that foot in the face episode, the next morning, we would move the 7 day number back to zero to start the count over.  Soon we had our bed child free- now getting it dog free is the next move!  So good luck, get some prizes, make a fun book, say good night and come over to the good side of the Savvy side of life.