Waiting until the Seven Dot Dot (or how we trained our kids to sleep)
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My good friends know me as the “sleep Nazi.” Ever since Sassy Pants was a baby, I’ve painstakingly focused on nap times, sleep lengths, mental leaps. In the long run, this has paid off. Our kids (the older ones, at least) have been trained to sleep at and until certain times of the day.
With Sassy Pants, I was way more rigid than I am now with Diva. I’ve even been known to let Diva skip a nap (to both her and my great dismay) due to a family function. But the basics of our schedule are still there.
When Sassy Pants was about three, she started coming out of her room to see me. It was 5 am, and that was way too early. A friend of mine suggested using a cue for her to let her know it was ok to wake up and come out of the room. This friend used a lamp in the hallway for her girls, and it worked well. I didn’t really have the set up for a lamp, so I went on the search for something that would be similar.
Simple Solution
While shopping one day, I found a digital clock that had different colors for each number. I trained Sassy Pants to only come out of her room when the “six was green.” It worked…most of the time.
When the Animal got to the age where he could really recognize numbers and understand the concept of waiting until a specific time to emerge, we gave him a digital clock. This one didn’t have fancy multiple colors, so we taught him to wait until the “seven dot dot.” His math-and-order brain took to this very quickly, and it wasn’t long before he was giving us the beautiful pleasure of “sleeping in” until 7 on the weekends.
Now we have another three year old. Flash is a little different in that he will find any and every reason to do the opposite of what he’s told. At first, when we gave him the clock, he was outstanding. He looked forward to being praised for waiting until the “seven dot dot.”
But one Saturday, for whatever reason, even the Animal wasn’t awake at 7. It’s a very rare (and beautiful) occurrence. He hadn’t even emerged from his room to find his iPad.
So Flash showed up right after 7. He was confused that no one else was awake, and he admonished us: “I waited until the seven dot dot! Why aren’t there any lights on?!”
Success! While it doesn’t work perfectly every time, we’ve worked hard to “train” our kids to wait until that golden hour to come and get us. We have given them the gift of sleep and a bit of autonomy.
What do you do to help your kids stay in bed or sleep until a designated hour?
Check out this cool infographic about how much sleep kids need: Baby Sleep Habits – An Easy Infographic
