Free advice is worth exactly what?
Posted on May 9th, 2011
About once a week, P falls asleep in the afternoon and wakes up around 9. Then she stays up til midnight (or last week’s 01:30). It’s miserable. I hate it.
People say, “Why don’t you just wake her up?” and I laugh, because there is no waking this child until she’s ready. Even daycare had a hell of a time rousing her, and that was in a chaotic and crazy classroom.
Today, she fell asleep at 4. This wasn’t unexpected, since we didn’t sleep well last night and we were up early. In an effort to guarantee sleep tonight, I took her on not one, but two excursions. She almost melted down in front of the grocery store, but recovered, and then I walked her home. We were both grumpy, but OK.
So faced with the peacefully sleeping child, knowing the chances were good she’d be up at 1 AM, I then I compounded my error by doing something crazy stupid: I ignored my instincts and I tried to wake her up. I tickled. I played the recorder. I bribed with food.
All I succeeded in doing was rousing her long enough for her to throw a screaming, irrational, mostly wordless (except for shrieks of “Go away! Go away!”) tantrum (like those of the early months of 3-years-old), where she tried to kick me (and succeeded many times). And then I went in the other room (read: bathroom, the only room with a door) for a few minutes, and when I came out, she was asleep again – and I now had a migraine.
So. Today’s lesson is that free advice is worth what you pay for it. I know my kid better than that, and I shouldn’t have attempted it. It was a stupid move.
UPDATE: She woke me up at 2. And at 4. (When I confused her and made coffee – then went back to bed.) And 4:45. And 5:30. And 6. I’d gone to bed at 9:30-ish, so honestly, even though I’m struggling to keep my eyes open right now, all I can think is “it could have been so much worse.”
What’s her pediatrician say about her odd sleep habits?
My friend’s munchkin was a notorious insomniac. I once babysat for her overnight so she could go out to a late-night party, even though it was on a work night for me. This was when I was like 23, child free and often stayed out late at bars and went to work the next morning at 8 am. Yeah, her kid kicked my ass. When she got home at 3am, she found her kid (literally) jumping up and down on her bed and me curled into a defeated ball on the couch, half asleep and half in tears: “Your child does not sleep!” They ended up with a whole series of sleep studies and whatnot, and it was just something she had to grow out of. I was like, OMG chloroform, seriously.
I’ll probably ask her pediatrician when we go for the 4 year appointment (crazy – 4 years?!). I suspect it’s fairly normal for her – both M and I have regular wake/sleep cycles that occasionally go haywire (probably not once a week, but maybe once every two weeks?). Until I was in my 20s, I couldn’t easily be roused from sleep, either, and would have entire conversations with people, while asleep, where I apparently seemed rather lucid. I have no memory of them.
Ever since I read the “Parenting your Spirited Child” book I’ve realize how many of P’s (annoying) personality traits are actually traits both M and I have – and probably make us hard to live with, too. It’s made me a lot more sympathetic than I used to be.
There are those nights, though, where I really wish I could give her kiddie Ambien!
My mother’s one piece of parenting advice was, “Never wake a sleeping child, never kick a barking dog.” J had some pretty weird sleep rhythms when he was P’s age, but school helped to get them more regular. We still have the occasional all-nighter, but only once or twice a year.
I think of the rhyme from Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn, the sheep are in the meadow and the cows in the corn.
Shall I wake him? Noooo, not I. If you do, he’s sure to cry!!!