The Friday night was interesting. It had rained ~ a slow, damp mizzling sort of rain ~ all day. It was cold & I was missing our fire & my cats, which would have been so much warmer & comforting & the Little Man hadn't slept much so everyone was hoping he would go down nicely that night because they were travelling the next day. Of course he didn't. His mummy went early leaving the lad with me & his daddy.
T1 tried @ the Little Man's regular bedtime to put him down. No go. He screamed so much His dad brought him back out to the t.v, where he raged. Tried again an hour later. Same deal. The 3rd time mum was up, dad was up & I got up again even though I had gone to bed too. I was pretty sure mum & dad were going to try the same unsuccessful strategies they have used in the past, even though we all know they don't work.
Now @ this point my DIL was saying: He only wants me ~ & while that sounds flattering it was patently untrue. What the Little Man wanted was his own way with everyone dancing attendance. So I said to my son: Would you like me to try?
Five kids & all my boys were lousy sleepers so I have learnt a trick or two. Actually ODD was perhaps worst of all but we had a different household, a different arrangement & a whole different relationship because of it. So I had T1 drag out the stroller. The little Man's eyes lit up like beacons when he realised he was going walkies & he began bobbing up & down with excitement. I plonked him in, well wrapped, all bug eyed & bushy tailed, sitting bolt upright with delight. I figured about then this was not going to be a quick & easy exercise but we headed off into the misty night, the street lights all haloed, & the smell of rain rich & pungent.
The thing is, he could have screamed his lungs out if he wanted, but neither of his parents would have heard him & become distressed ~ only he didn't. He was out in the night & it was interesting & exciting & wonderful. Every so often he swiveled around to give me a great beaming smile of delight. I grinned back because there is something about the regular motion of a moving vehicle that sooner or later mesmerizes sleepless children into a drugged state where they simply must lay their sleepy heads down. It is inevitable. Like the sun going down or the tide coming in.
After about 20 minutes I was nicely warmed up & the mist was making things damp so I took of my jacket & hung it over the front of the stroller, plunging the Little Man into darkness & within 10 minutes he was down for the count.
I turned for home [20 minutes away] & by the time we got in the door he'd been asleep for a good 20 minutes so I advised my son to let him sleep where he was because if he woke then it was going to be an all nighter.
Being me I would have done the stroller routine much, much earlier but the Little Man is not my child & he needs to live by mummy & daddy's rules. I don't want to be an interfering sort of Mother in Law ~ though I'm pretty sure everyone was relieved to get the Little Man back sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted.
NEVER, EVER worked for the Princess! She was a happy baby overall, but now and then she just could not sleep and was rather vocal about her unhappiness; most of that was during around 5-10 months. Her dad put her in the van to drive her to sleep once...and she was more awake than ever, smiling! I tried to tell my husband that I was the same way: I never slept when in things that were going places, just too many interesting things to see. At least she was not crying for the hour he tried that though. She would fall asleep in a stroller once in awhile, but that was rare also. The only thing we found that worked *most* of the time was a swing, probably because there is nothing new to see.
ReplyDeleteGlad it worked for Little Man and you passed on some of your wisdom. Maybe they will use it?