Where Have You Been Hiding?

For the last year, bedtime with Morgan has been extremely frustrating! We tried not giving him attention, taking him back to bed a million times, yelling, threatening, reward charts, special time with Mom and Dad, taking away priviledges and even "swats" (a gentler version of the spanking), but nothing worked. Finally, as I have mentioned before, we resorted to taking away his lights and locking his door to keep him in bed.

With the looming prospect of moving Chloe into Morgan's room (and a very unsuccessful attempt at doing so), we have been searching for guidance on how to make the transition go smoothly. As I was searching, I came across this book...

As I read about it, I was skeptical - I am not a big meditation/yoga enthusiast and the book taches kids relaxation, breathing and visualization to help them sleep. But in desparation, I reserved a copy at the library and started reading it. Once I realized that it really was more like a game than anything, I got excited to try it out.

Thursday was the day I planned to start the program and bedtime (6:30 pm at our house) arrived...dun dun dun. I made sure Morgan had his lights in his room, got Chloe into bed, put Brynn down for a nap and let Callie out to go potty. Morgan had seen me reading the book over the past couple of days and was excited to start the "game to help him sleep better". I read through "week 1 day 1". Morgan loved flopping his arms and body and was caught up in the vizualization story and by the time I finished, Morgan rolled onto his side and went right to sleep. I went down to his room at least 5 times to make sure his lights weren't on, and sure enough he had gone right to sleep at 7:00 am. I was ecstatic, but thought it might be too good to be true. But, sure enough, Friday night, Morgan rolled over to go to sleep before I even got to the visualization and he didn't even move when I kissed his forehead before leaving his room. (Even more impressive when you note that his aunts and uncles were upstairs playing Wii). Today, he asked to play the flop game when I put him down for a nap and I he stayed in his bed for about 30 minutes before getting out and playing quietly in his room. Then tonight, he had a lot of wiggles and pent-up energy from our day of errands and I could tell he was having a hard time relaxing his body as we were going through the relaxation segment. I figured he would get up and I would have to go back to locking his door tonight, but he only got up once and then we got out some wiggles, talked more about his visualization and he went right to sleep.

I am AMAZED that this is working and I could not be more excited about it. I just wonder how I didn't find this sooner!!! I hope it continues to work, and I am excited to try it out with Chloe (even though it is for kids 3 and older). It is so nice to flip on the light switch in Morgan's room and actually have lightbulbs there to turn on! :)