self inflicted wounds

Its a sad and kind of embarrassing thing, but most of the time when one of our kids is having some kind of problem, I can trace the it back to myself.  For the first three years ALL of their misbehavior comes from the examples they see, after that they begin to make some of it up on their own, but very little.  It isn't until around school age that they start being able to deliberately misbehave. (Have I warned you about seven-year-olds?)  But even so, I can usually find the source, and it is always a little to close to home.

Like a couple of months back, we were having a problem with Lil' girl sleeping through the night in her own bed.  This hadn't been a problem for a while, but suddenly she was climbing into our bed at all hours of the night because she wanted to cuddle with mommy.  She'd fall back asleep pretty quickly - usually by lying on my face.  But if I tried to send her back to her bed too quickly she would scream and wake up her little sister.  This is a real problem for us.  We can have Sleepy Mommy or we can have Happy Mommy, also known as Nice Mommy, but we can't have both.

I had no idea what to do.  But the longer I thought about it (and prayed about it, always pray about it) I realized what had changed.

She was transitioning out of everyday naps.  I would put her in her bed for quiet and reading time and she was content to read for an hour or fall asleep - either one was fine with me as long as I got a few minutes to do the dishes, or sleep (usually sleep.)  But when it got to the point that she wasn't napping at all anymore, it kept the baby awake.  So I'd let her read books on my bed and I'd lay down by her.  After a few weeks of napping together she started getting into our bed every night.   Ah Ha!  Because sleeping with Mommy in the daytime was so much fun, sleeping with Mommy at night would be fun too.

Also, she was potty training and sleeping more lightly as she was learning how to wake herself up when she needed to use the bathroom.

Solution:  Quiet time on the couch with her books.  After about a week we were back to our regular sleeping routine and life is OK again.

It surprised me that I didn't realize that I had been creating this problem for myself.  But I think that most of my parenting "wounds" are self-inflicted.

Not long after this we were working on another problem.  The baby can talk a little.  She can say several words, and sign several more.  So every time she came to me and held out her arms to be picked up and screamed, I would remind her to talk.  "Say, UP.  UP.  Stop yelling, you can talk."  We were making a little progress - yelling goes down noticeably when talking gets you what you want faster.

Then one morning she woke up around 5am and was just babbling in her crib, happy as could be.  I lay in bed and thought "There is no way I am getting out of bed at 5:00 if she is content to stay in her crib."  She wasn't even being loud enough to wake her sister.  As I drifted back to sleep I realized that she was saying: "up up up up."  I knew that if I don't respond it would go against that whole "talk, don't scream" rule I'd been trying to make.

Whatever. At 5am I am not coming to get you unless you scream.  zzzzzzzzz