The Bed Rule
I'm known to bend a lot of rules here, but not this one.
Tonight being the first day of summer with it’s extremely long nights, means one thing:
The struggle for getting her to bed might have reached a new level tonight.
How bedtime has been working around here is we do the whole nighttime routine and because it now never gets dark she putzes around in her room drawing or coloring of whatever. Fine. She eventually gets tired and goes to bed.
But tonight, Oh tonight.
Tonight I come out of the shower and there’s no child in her bed.
BECAUSE SHE IS IN MY BED
We let a lot of things slide here - at least I do, because in the big picture it really doesn’t matter if we stay up another ten minutes or go to McDonald’s once in awhile even though BW says it’s bad for us.
Sometimes, you just have to live a little. We can behave tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow.
In short, I’m pretty lax with the parenting: look both ways, listen to your mother and brush your teeth and we’re pretty much good - let’s go get a Happy Meal.
Except for the Bed Rule.
The rule is pretty simple: No sleeping in Dad’s bed. Ever
Why? Because unless there’s a medical need there is no reason why the child should sleep with you. I know there’s some woo-woo mommy bloggers out there that encourage co-sleeping and well, good for them - they must not like to sleep.
The child has always, always slept in her own bed. Unless, she’s sick.
She can come into our bed in the morning and joke around and cuddle before we all get up and start the day but under no circumstances shall the child sleep in the bed.
I’m so adamant about this because for some reason, if you let the child sleep with you just once - the child will want to do it again the next night and so on. You will be so delirious due to the lack of sleep you will agree to anything to make it stop. “Sure, you can crawl in” you say - not understanding the true meaning of your words.
You have just given your child an 8 hour pass to steal all your covers, kick you too many times to count and have them flop over you and elbow you in places that elbows should never be. All because you caved.
Do not cave in their ways. They will whine and plead and fake being sick but when the morning comes you will thank me that you didn’t and wake well rested instead of feeling you have been up all night partying with a monkey.
When I found her in my bed tonight, my first thought was “oh no”. Then I called BW in to take over because I have been known to be off my guard late at night so I had to call in the reinforcements.
BW’s no-nonsense ways put a quick end to the sleeping in our bed and she reluctantly crawled over to her bed after a bit of protest and as I write this I think/hope she’s asleep
I feel so strongly about this that I think that all mattresses should have a warning label and it would be against the law if you cut the tag off:
This mattress is designed for adults only. Children sleeping in the bed beside you could cause sleepless nights, bruises and overall crankiness. If irritation occurs, discontinue sleeping privileges for child and call in sick to work so you can get some sleep.
That’s it for tonight. I’m going to bed.
Alone.
Until Next time,
TH and Co.
BW could not agree more with this post.