Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Baby Wise & A Big Girl Bed

So SD has been in a "big girl" bed now for almost two months. I thought we had been fairly successful in the transition and for the most part, we have. But....lately she has been getting out of her bed two or three times when we first put her down, I think she is just stalling. We would go back in there and put her back in her bed and she would get out one or two more times. BG and I talked about it and I said we should just leave her in there crying and if she ended up falling asleep on the floor, then so be it. That is what Baby Wise would tell you. Against my better judgement, I did not follow my own advice. I am an idiot, I know. So instead, we tried...

1. Going in there and putting her back in bed and telling her to stop
2. Spanking her when she got out of bed (which I did, but hated because it was the last thing I did before putting her to bed and it just broke my heart)

So, finally last night, I decided to listen to my smart self and let her cry it out! That is how we trained her, doing Baby Wise, to cry it out and self soothe and it worked, so why wouldn't it this time. The thing is, it is way easier said than done! So last night, I put her down and she got out of bed a couple of times. Twice I went in there and spanked her and put her back in bed. The last time, I let her cry it out. And cry she did. She was at her door, I swear to you with her mouth at the bottom, crying. Then just to twist the knife in my heart, she kept repeating, "Momma Coming." It just about killed me, the only thing that kept me from going in there was I was trying to finish something. So after about 15-20 minutes of it, she climbed back in her bed (I could hear her burying her head on her pillow and the muffled sound of her crying) and went to sleep. She woke up once in the middle of the night, but I don't think she was even awake. I told BG when we went to bed that I wanted to go check on her and make sure she was in her bed and covered up. I resisted, but when I went in there when she woke up she was still in her bed and covered up, her eyes weren't really even open.

So all of that to say that I hope it worked last night and we won't have to go through it again. She woke up chipper and happy this morning and didn't seem to hold it against me that I let her cry for 20 minutes. I hope and pray that she has learned her lesson and I won't have to do it again. On a side note, I don't think spanking works for her, it just doesn't seem to be an effective way to punish her. We will see though, putting her in her room for "time out" seems to work fairly well. The next step is a time-out chair in a very boring place in our house, the dining room!

1 comment:

Tess said...

My question is, how do you get them to STAY in a time-out chair? There is NO WAY AD would! And if you have to stay there with them, that defeats the purpose! What to do!