Don't let this cute face fool you! She is our only girl, thus problems can arise. The problem? Co-sleeping. Roger and I don't mind our children climbing into our beds in the middle of the night and sleeping with us, but by the age of five we are done with this child, since the next child is moving into our bed. Two children in our bed leads to restless sleep. Emma is the co-sleeper right now, and boy does she move and kick and smack. She is the most aggressive co-sleeper we have so far. She is so skinny her bony knees are edge up to your back that you wake up in the morning sore. You are dreaming away and all of a sudden you get a whack in the face from a flying arm out of no where. She loves to snuggle right next you, so you have no breathing room and you are constantly having a tug-a-war in the middle of the night with your husband on who gets to have Emma snuggle up to...I usually win:)
Now that Roger is gone, it is me that has to endure all the fists of fury. I have come up with a plan. I put a pillow between us so she can deal with the pillow instead of me. Last night I heard her pitter patter feet running upstairs and thump, thump, thump swan dives into my bed. (regardless where she lands) She now decides she is going to sleep on top of the pillow. Needless to say, my back is sore and I didn't get much sleep.
She is turning five next week so we will be discussing that she will need to sleep on her own bed. She will come up with her own reasons. The latest.....it is too cold for her to sleep by herself. We are is so much trouble. You are probably wondering why we don't put her to bed? Roger has tried many times. He will carry her downstairs to her room and as soon as he carefully lies her in bed, she wakes up and bolts upstairs to our room. It is a losing battle that neither one of us wants to fight at 2:00 in the morning. I am sure someone has had similar situations? I would love to hear them. (mom, you don't count, I was there:))
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a row she went. If she slept in her bed for five days in a row then came back to ours, then she had to start over at the beginning again. The positive reinforcement worked wonders for her, and we truly have never had a problem since (we were shocked at how well it worked). We had a big prize for her at the end of a month that she was really excited about, and that was enough to keep her motivated!
When she first was getting started we told her that if she still wanted to come to our room that she had to sleep on the floor, which she did for the first couple of weeks...but she soon realized that staying in her own bed was better than sleeping on our floor.
Anyway, good luck! (Call or email me if you want more details).
:)