Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Waking At Night After 18mons

Waking at night happens with children. It happens with adults. Most big people can turn over and fall back to sleep, when we do this often we check the clock. A little person has no idea what time it is, that cannot judge, "Should I go back to sleep?"or "Should I get up and play?"
I first found the teach me time clock. When my son was 17 months he was waking at 3am and trying to play. I had no idea how to teach him that it was still night beside telling him it was night and showing him that it was dark out. A friend told me about this clock. I was not sure it would work because he was so young. I bought it anyway because I was desperate. I spent about a week pointing out every yellow and green thing that I could find to my son, until he knew these colors and began pointing them out to me. Then, I began telling him that green means, "Go!" or "Wake Up!" and yellow means, "Slow Down!" and "Go Back To Sleep!"
At this point I put the clock in my sons bedroom. When he woke at night and I went in, I would first ask him what color his clock was. And he would always tell me yellow. Then I asked what does yellow mean? He would tell me go slow and go back to sleep. Then I would say, you need to go back to sleep until your clock turns green and it means "Go Play!"
I soon had my son sleeping at night and not waking me until his clock turned green.
*REMEMBER BE REASONABLE ABOUT THE TIME YOU SET, ACCORDING TO YOUR WHEN YOUR CHILD SHOULD WAKE, NOT WHEN YOU WANT THEM TO WAKE!

After a year or so, my son began waking around 6:30am and was very capable of playing safely in his room for a little while. That's when I found the Good Nite Lite. This nite lite changes from a sun to a moon at the times you set it to. I currently have the nite lite changing from a moon to a sun at 6am, and if the sun is up on his nite lite he can play in his room. But he cannot come out of his room until the clock turns green. This is a little much, I realize. But my son is a very busy boy and he is quite smart. He has no problems following this system and I can always stay in bed until 7am. Very exciting!!!!

2 comments:

  1. I have never heard of this! I think I'll get one as quickly as google can find it.

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  2. There is a link on the side. Good Luck!

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