Righting a Bad Decision
This weekend we spent our time undoing a terrible decision we made before we brought Maggie home. In the excitement of adopting our second child, we thought it would be a good idea to have the girls share a room and use our other bedroom as a play room. In our infinite single-child-parent wisdom, we thought bunking together would help the girls develop a relationship and learn about sharing. Those lessons might be learned in some shared bedrooms, but not in this house.
We are optimists. When the shared sleeping arrangements went poorly at first, we kept telling ourselves it would get better. Maggie was transitioning and once things were more "settled", all would be well. After 5 months of night time chaos and arrangements not working, we declared our experiment "failed".
It is humorous when a decision like this backfires. We heard horror stories about shared rooms, but we told ourselves, "Oh, but it will work for us. It works for so and so. They say it is not a problem." But for us, this was a problem on so many levels. First, La Nina likes to sleep. The Magster is a decent sleeper, but she does not require the amount of sleep her sister does. So, La Nina and her 3 hour naps, just didn't mesh with Maggie's 1.5 hour cat naps.
Second, if both girls are not asleep when they are both going to bed or for a nap, then a game of "wake your sister" ensues. At nap time, the Magster is at the plate to awaken La Nina. Maggie will run down the hall everytime a turn my back, knock open the bedroom door and pounce on La Nina like Tigger the Tiger. At bed time, La Nina returns the favor with the well timed shriek as soon as I leave the room. The shriek always happens at the exact moment when I am sure she is not going to shriek. Frequently, it awakens Maggie with a start and leaves her riled up. Every day it is a battle that leaves someone crying, and on more than one occasion it was me!
La Nina hates missing out on anything and realizes her sister sleeps less than she does. So, for the past 2 or so weeks, she has been using the Magster as her personal alarm clock. La Nina refuses to sleep anywhere but with her sister, knowing that her sister will wake up before her and sound the alarm. This "alarm" insures that La Nina will miss nothing. But, La Nina has been exhausted lately and hard to get moving in the morning, thanks to her new "alarm".
Likewise, the sleeping arrangements were forcing me to dash into their room every time Maggie squawked in order to preserve La Nina's beauty rest. It was reinforcing all the wrong things about night time behaviors for Maggie. I don't want my kids to think they can cry at night and I will come running to save them. If someone is waking me up, there better be a good reason. And lately, Maggie has been getting pretty liberal with her night time needs.
Separating them is already paying off. Nap times were smoother for the last 2 days, and last night when Maggie threw her blanket out of her crib, I merely handed the blanket back and went to bed. She tried "the old blanket toss" again, but realized she was sleeping without it quickly, 'cuz Mommy wasn't coming back for it. I am pretty sure that game won't be played again tonight.
At least this decision was easily undone and we can say, lesson learned. When a few people advise you something is "no problem", and the vast majority of people think you are nuts, get details. We should have listened to all the people who told us we were nuts.
We are optimists. When the shared sleeping arrangements went poorly at first, we kept telling ourselves it would get better. Maggie was transitioning and once things were more "settled", all would be well. After 5 months of night time chaos and arrangements not working, we declared our experiment "failed".
It is humorous when a decision like this backfires. We heard horror stories about shared rooms, but we told ourselves, "Oh, but it will work for us. It works for so and so. They say it is not a problem." But for us, this was a problem on so many levels. First, La Nina likes to sleep. The Magster is a decent sleeper, but she does not require the amount of sleep her sister does. So, La Nina and her 3 hour naps, just didn't mesh with Maggie's 1.5 hour cat naps.
Second, if both girls are not asleep when they are both going to bed or for a nap, then a game of "wake your sister" ensues. At nap time, the Magster is at the plate to awaken La Nina. Maggie will run down the hall everytime a turn my back, knock open the bedroom door and pounce on La Nina like Tigger the Tiger. At bed time, La Nina returns the favor with the well timed shriek as soon as I leave the room. The shriek always happens at the exact moment when I am sure she is not going to shriek. Frequently, it awakens Maggie with a start and leaves her riled up. Every day it is a battle that leaves someone crying, and on more than one occasion it was me!
La Nina hates missing out on anything and realizes her sister sleeps less than she does. So, for the past 2 or so weeks, she has been using the Magster as her personal alarm clock. La Nina refuses to sleep anywhere but with her sister, knowing that her sister will wake up before her and sound the alarm. This "alarm" insures that La Nina will miss nothing. But, La Nina has been exhausted lately and hard to get moving in the morning, thanks to her new "alarm".
Likewise, the sleeping arrangements were forcing me to dash into their room every time Maggie squawked in order to preserve La Nina's beauty rest. It was reinforcing all the wrong things about night time behaviors for Maggie. I don't want my kids to think they can cry at night and I will come running to save them. If someone is waking me up, there better be a good reason. And lately, Maggie has been getting pretty liberal with her night time needs.
Separating them is already paying off. Nap times were smoother for the last 2 days, and last night when Maggie threw her blanket out of her crib, I merely handed the blanket back and went to bed. She tried "the old blanket toss" again, but realized she was sleeping without it quickly, 'cuz Mommy wasn't coming back for it. I am pretty sure that game won't be played again tonight.
At least this decision was easily undone and we can say, lesson learned. When a few people advise you something is "no problem", and the vast majority of people think you are nuts, get details. We should have listened to all the people who told us we were nuts.
posted by One Lucky Mom @ 8:40 PM
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