At bedtime, my boys can sit and play and mess around, until they just pass out from exhaustion. So an 8 o'clock bedtime, turns into a 9:30 bedtime, turns into cranky boys the next morning!
So, my solution? First, we make sure teeth are brushed and pottying is done. Then we head up to bed. I will sit on the 2 older boys bed and we will talk. Talk about what happened that day, talk about their fears, talk about the future, talk about God. We have had some great talks and even a talk about how do you "get" to go to heaven, ending with my son, Austin, accepting Christ into his heart (officially) =). We also have helped overcome fears, prayed for others, and talked about the kind of people that God wants us to be. Then we say prayers.
They are then allowed to read quietly for a little while, and if I hear them talking beyond 8:45 pm, I tell them to go to sleep, and usually I don't hear another peep from them.
With boys, and maybe for girls too I don't know, they have to be whined down. They have to have a time when their little minds and bodies can slowly adjust to a bed and to sleep rather then going a mile a minute... It's less of a fight at bed, and it DEFINITELY works for me!
4 comments:
Hubby and I have been talking about this very thing recently. We used to be really good about this when our older ones were little. But, we've gotten out of the habit, and it makes it so much harder to get little ones to settle down for bedtime! It's definitely time for us to get back to quiet bedtime routines for the sake of our present batch of little ones. I think our older ones would appreciate it again too!
Thanks for your thoughts!
That's a really nice routine. My grown daughter lives with me. I go to bed before she does. She often comes and sits in my room and we talk. Cherish those chats...I love that we still have them :)
Excellent! Dean read to the boys every night from the time they were babies (I had to go to bed before they did due to my crazy working hours, but read to them during the day) until they were in HIGH SCHOOL!!! How cool is that?!
Oh, and another thought on the subject of spending quality time with the boys...every month or so I used to take each boy seperately on a "date". I'd let them choose where they wanted to go for a meal, what activity they wanted to do (it was usually hiking or bike riding!), and we'd have a nice serious talk, just the two of us, about the sorts of things you mentioned. They loved this time...it was all about THEM and no one else. It was also a good time to work on those manners...I'd tell 'em "the boy usually opens the door for the girl" and that sort of thing. It was so cute seeing Jeremy struggling to open the door for me when we went into the restaurant he'd chosen :-) Some women would probably think that's pretty awful...
Post a Comment