Bedtime and Torn Books

The monsters were a smoke screen, as we'd suspected. I think that Ada subconsciously realized that she'd just lost a very big control lever (the toileting) and found something to replace it. I don't think this was a purposeful decision, but the time proximity between her starting to use the toilet and her belief that she can not sleep alone is just too much to ignore.

She will go to sleep if one of us is lying with her in bed. I refuse to do this, leaving it to Chris to coax her to sleep. But a few nights ago I thought I might give it a try. After ten minutes I was fuming, and got up. Ada immediately freaked out. She followed me downstairs, and Chris took her back up. He spent a good chunk of time trying to get her to stay in her room; she shrieked her opposition. It was horrifying. I sat on the couch not helping at all, but I don't know how I could have helped if I had tried.

I don't know what to do with Ada other than to meet her stubbornness with my own resolve not to let her take over. I was apparently not like this when I was a child. I was, to use my father's phrase, more "go along to get along" when I was Ada's age. When I talked to my parents about Ada's new-found refusal to sleep alone, my father also told me that I might have been taught not to wake up my parents by seeing what my tired, cranky father was like when he got up too early. So where does Ada get this stubbornness, and what makes me respond in kind?  

Compared to me, Chris is generally more practical about Ada-related matters, wanting mostly to get through a given crisis without permanent scars on any of the three of us. On this night he attempted to keep her in her room while she screamed and threw things. Just as I was starting to cry, the screaming stopped and Ada yelled: "I ripped a book." "Daddy, I'm ripping a book! Mommy, Mommy, I'm ripping a book"

Right, she's four. She knows ripping books is bad. In fact, we talked about it earlier this evening. So she does the worst thing she can think to do; she rips up her books.

When Chris let her out of her room, she told him, "Daddy, I ripped books. I was too mad!"

How can it be that I have absolutely no idea what to do with my maddeningly smart and stubborn 4 year old?

* ** *

We moved Ada's bedtime up a half hour based on the idea that if someone Chris has to lie down with her for a half hour until she falls asleep, we should start that process earlier in the evening. Also, it was a way of making things less fun for her in the hopes that she might decide not to do this "I can't sleep alone" crap much longer. Such a thought is, of course, foolishness. This should be clear to anyone who talked to me in the past two years in which Ada refused to have anything to do with a toilet, until she was ready. No amount of negative lifestyle impacts motivated Ada. So telling her that she can't watch movies, can't play with the ipod, can't play as long because she has to go to bed earlier, pretty much none of that is going to change her mind on this issue. And yet. Still I tell her these things. You'd think I would have learned by now.

The cake from Ada's "big girl party" - this party was something we suggested to Ada she could have once she started being a kid who peed and pooped on the potty. Our bribe did not actually motivate a behavior change, but once she accepted the toilet she called in this chip nonetheless. 

Chris lay down with Ada to get her to sleep tonight. Over an hour later, he came down, followed by Ada. When she comes down after bedtime we ignore her, and she is not allowed to play or read or to do anything.  We may not have figured out how to keep her in her room without a lock on the door, but we can deny her entertainment after bedtime. Within 10 minutes she'd fallen asleep. On past nights Chris has been able to carry her upstairs and put her in bed once she falls asleep like this. Cross your fingers that he can do it again.