I have posted (complained) quite a bit about my bedtime and napping problems.  As I have said I want to share my successes and failures with you – the suffering must end for all of us!  While I know I said all that parenting advice out there is garbage, I think I may have found an absolute diamond in the rough.  On the advice of a friend I picked up 1-2-3 Magic, Effective Discipling for Children 2-12 by Thomas W. Phelan, Ph.D.  .  Let me just say that the bedtime advice alone has been a lifesaver – and it worked.  Ok, I know I am only one bedtime and one nap into following the advice, but when you can look in the index of a book and find “bedtime” and under it “staying in bed at”, read the page and a half reading, walk up to your child’s room and put it into action – and it works- well in the words of Lots-O-Huggin Bear “we found ourselves a keeper!”

In an effort to avoid any copyright infringement – etc, I’ll tell you briefly what we did.  My husband read the advice, picked up our main offender who likes to leave the room at nap and bedtime.  No explanation was given to her, he put her to bed, sat down in the rocking chair in their room  until they fell asleep, which only took about 5 minutes.  Today at nap time I picked up the offender – same child as last night – put her to bed (no words) and sat in a chair (actually their tiny IKEA stool) in the doorway.  Asleep in about 5-10 minutes.  Our normal bedtime and nap time routine was painful, long (over one hour), and frustrating.  I tried a chart reward system, “carrots” – if you go to bed we can do this tomorrow, removing special things like DVD’s etc.  None of that seemed to matter to our main offender.

I highly recommend this book – even though I have yet to finish it.  I am anxious to get to the “Start” advice getting your child to do something you want them to do.  The “Stop” advice has been great also – getting them to stop a behavior!  I am looking forward to putting it all into action when the opportunities arise.

Let me know how it works for you!