Boo spends a lot of time watching "kid shows" on PBS kids. Admittedly, probably more than he ought. We try to curb it, some days more successfully than others. As a result of his love for the tv shows, he has also come to love pbskids.org. He navigates it as though he designed it. A few months ago he found a section called pbskids play, which was a type of educational program teaching preschool skills. It was quite a nice program really. He enjoyed it and learned a lot. The problem is.....it was a free trial. You guessed it. The trial is over, and when he tried to play it tonight, it wouldn't let him in without signing up to pay a monthly fee or buy it outright. Not the least bit something I can afford right now, and it led us into a MAJOR meltdown! I haven't seen one this bad in a loooooong time. It was ugly. Frazzled the very tip of my rope! The extreme heartbreak at the loss of the pbskids play game led to a tantrum over my refusal to allow him to have his "bink" before bedtime.
I have been trying to get rid of this bink for a long time. He is just soooo darn attached to it and I hate how it breaks his heart when I even hint at the idea of trying to sleep without it. I have finally gotten it whittled down to where he only gets it while he is in bed. My theory is that as soon as he falls asleep and relaxes it falls out of his mouth so it can't be doing THAT much damage, right? Well, I don't know, but that's where we are at right now. And it is SO stinking easy to make special excuses and allowances for times when he is the most stressed and upset and can't seem to self soothe......but I really MUST stick with this bedtime only rule. For his sake and for mine. If I give in even a little I loose all credibility in my insistence that bink is for bedtime only. So you can imagine the EPIC fit that took place in my house tonight. I had a bit of a meltdown myself.
In the end, I finally managed to convince him to allow me to put on his pajamas and put him to bed. I laid with him. We snuggled. We said our prayers. I rocked him and he asked me to sing "The Boosie Song." It was a very sweet end to the day. But less than 30 minutes later he was up out of his bed telling me "Mommy, I can't sleep." I took him back to bed and laid down with him again. I told him I love him and what a good boy he is. He was softly mumbling something unintelligible. Then suddenly he announced "I still can't sleep." A lightbulb went on. The entire I can't sleep routine was from an episode of Dinosaur Train. When the Pteranadon family went on vacation, Tiny couldn't sleep in a strange place and kept getting out of bed. Boo was acting out the episode down the very last word. I explained to him that we were not going to act out the Dinosaur Train tonight. He was not going to pretend to be Tiny, he was going to lay in his bed and go to sleep. He sighed, "ok, I will just be Boo."
So now my little one is sleeping soundly and I hope to be doing the same very soon. There is never a dull moment in this family!
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