The First Step In Becoming Independent

I am starting to learn first hand the massive difference between being a parent and a friend.  I’ve realized that being a parent is mainly about giving your kid what they need, not what they want.  Recently we started the self-soothing bedtime practice.  This is when a child is put into their bed awake and fall asleep on their own.

Up until recently our routine was to bring her into her room with her last bottle, feed it to her and rock her to sleep then put her to bed asleep.  Our first crack at self-soothing was a little too much for my wife to take, granted listening to your baby cry is difficult but listening to it for over a half hour knowing you could stop it proved to be too much for her so she rocked her to sleep.

The next night my wife went out with her friends so it was up to me to put the baby down and I was determined to have her fall asleep on her own. When the stroke of bedtime fell upon our joyous night of rolling around on the floor grabbing toys and tasting them, jumping around like a maniac in her jumperoo while I rocked out on Guitar Hero and finally reading stories that had finger puppets built in to the book. (She LOVES them and tried to eat the puppet) I took her to her room, put her in her crib, read her a bedtime story, kissed her goodnight, turned off the lights except for her nightlight and left the room.  As soon as I left, the screaming started.  Doing my best to ignore her screams for attention I pumped the volume up on the TV so I could just hear her.  She cried for 26 minutes straight before I checked on her and found that she had pooped, by this time she was exhausted from crying so much.  As soon as I picked her up to change her diaper she was immediately quiet.  This reassured me that she was only craving attention and/or wanted her diaper changed. I changed her diaper with minimal discussion and put her back in to her bed.  Once I left, the dreaded crying continued and didn’t stop for 15 minutes.  When the crying stopped I went in to check on her and found her dead asleep.

The next night my wife and I put her to bed just like I did the night before.  This time she cried for 15 minutes before we went in to check on her and found that once again she cried a poop out.  She was changed quietly, put back to bed and cried for about 10 minute before she fell soundly asleep.  As we continued this bedtime practice the amount of time that she would cry before falling asleep grew less and less.  Now when we put her to bed her standard behavior is to whine for about 5 minutes and then falls asleep, when she is really tired she won’t whine at all.  We really like the self-soothing practice because it works for nap time and it also works when she spends the night at her Grandparents’ houses which is huge because it makes sleepovers much more desirable to her Grandparents.  I strongly feel that this not only makes bedtime easier but mainly increases my little girls independence.