The past week or so we have had a horrific time getting Sweet Pea to go to bed. I have only seen his behavior in one other place, the show Supernanny. Yup, it got that bad. I always watch that show with the comfort of knowing that my kids don’t (and won’t) act like that. But this week something was different. What was happening to my child? He was fine during the day. We played and laughed and he obeyed like he normally does.  But then he turned into a little monster at night — screaming, getting out of bed, and fighting us at every turn.

When stuff like this happens, we don’t just shut him in his room and let him cry. We really try hard to think about what could be going on. There IS a reason for bad behavior. We like to try to fix it, not just let him cry and hope that works. We realized that the only major thing that has changed in the last few weeks was us moving Peanut back into our room. That and he is getting older and he is really testing us and pushing boundaries.

So here is what we did: We have two bathrooms in our apartment, but we have almost zero closet space. So we use the bathroom in our bedroom as storage and we all use the bathroom in the hallway for our needs. I simply moved around the boxes in the “storage” room so Peanut’s pack’n'play fit in there. Then I had Sweet Pea help me move it in and told him we were making Peanut her own room. He was VERY excited about this. So now they both have their own room (even though Peanut is still basically in our room…I can open the door to the bathroom and touch her from my bed).

Also, on our way to bed I grabbed a piece of paper and a crayon. When we got to his room I told him he was going to help me make a list of things we do before bed and then we were going to follow them. Here is what he came up with (with a little prompting from me):

1. Go to potty and brush teeth.
2. Read two books.
3. Sing our song (we always sing Old Rugged Cross before bed)
4. Pray
5. Pick an animal to sleep with
6. Cover up with blanket
7. Hugs and kisses
8. Mommy and Daddy go to other room
9. Go to sleep

Each time we did something we would refer to the list to see what was next. He was so excited and got a grin on his face every time. And tonight he went to bed without any fuss at all and fell asleep instantly! Tomorrow we are going to make a more permanent list and hang it on the wall for future reference.

It is such a great feeling to know we FIXED the problem, and not just put a little band-aid over it. Our kids are real people with real feelings. We can’t just ignore bad behavior and hope it goes away. We have to figure out what is going on and fix it. It is hard sometimes to figure it out and can be even harder to solve, but it is always worth it.