School is back in session (has been since last week, but who's counting?) and life moves quickly. Jake has done his own "school" a few times and loves feeling like a big boy.
I'm a little frustrated though.
Bedtime has become my nemesis....yet again. Jake and Cameron fight EVERY single night. I'm losing my mind and just want to sit in the fetal position crying.
It starts out innocently enough. We do our bedtime routine: scriptures, brushing teeth, and prayers. Then I encourage BOTH boys, "Leave your brother alone. I do NOT want to see or hear from either of you for the rest of the night." The boys respond, "We won't. Good night...."
Then the brawling begins. Cameron hurts Jake, Jake screams bloody-murder, Jake comes bawling down the stairs, "Mom, Cameron hurt me..." I yell at Cam, Cam yells down the stairs and Jake screams a little more.
This repeats nightly.
I'm SICK of it.
I thought the bunk-beds were to blame. Whenever we'd send one boy to bed, the other would follow (usually after the first was sleeping peacefully) and shake the heck out of the bed, waking the other boy and causing a fight. So I took the bunks away. The boys have been sleeping on their mattresses on the floor all summer long. Finally, a few weeks ago, I got what I THOUGHT would be the perfect solution: a day bed with a trundle. No touching of beds at ALL! Unfortunately, I forgot that due to the size restraints, the beds are still only 3 inches apart. The fighting STILL happens.
I'm tired.....more importantly, my BOYS are tired. I wish I knew what to do to fix this situation, but I'm at my wits end and going more and more crazy each night. Tonight I just let Jake sit on my lap until Cameron fell asleep....it wasn't until after 10:00.
This is ridiculous. What more can I do? Why can't they just get along!?
2 comments:
We had a similar problem with Lily and Allie. Lily can stay up till midnight causing problems and still be up at 6:00 the next morning with no problem. I was tired of her waking up Allie every night so one night when Russ was gone I got mad sent them both to bed at 7:30 with two books each. That was 30 min. earlier than we normally put them to bed. They had instructions that if I heard a peep from either of them they would get their books taken away and just have to sit there. BOTH girls fell asleep before I even went in to get the books at 8:00. Since then we have been doing this every night. It has worked well. There are nights the books have been taken away, but I think I can count that on one hand. I think this works because it gives them a calms quiet activity to calm them down for bed time, also the rules are very strict with no wiggle room. Maybe you could figure something out like this? I hope things can get figured out, I know how frustrating it is to have your kids not getting enough sleep.
ditto -
If mine don't have naps, which is often, they go to bed at 7. It makes a huge difference. They're usually so tired and wound up, that the earlier bedtime works wonders.
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