I wish I could say that I felt fantastic about our visit with Dr. Ferber yesterday. Instead, I feel mildly let-down and only a little hopeful. Basically, his nurse (very young, clearly not a parent) took the history, ran it by him, and then he came in and gave us his diagnosis and solution in about 20 minutes. We didn't really address the trauma of early fall, and instead focused on what's going on right now. Dr. Ferber feels that we are expecting Maddox to sleep more than is reasonable (he thinks about 9 hours at night with a 2 hour nap is within the realm of reason) and suggests that we start by keeping M up until 9 p.m. He also suggested implementing a new sticker chart with stickers for staying in his room at bedtime, not calling out at bedtime, staying in his room throughout the night, and not calling out throughout the night.
I think my biggest issue is that I have been getting in to bed about 8:30 lately to try to recap some of the sleep I have lost for the past year. So, staying up til 9 with M, keeping him occupied, just about killed me (even though Al was around and playing, as well). My guess is that we'll eventually dial back bedtime to 8:30 or so, and we'll need to come up with a whole set of activities M enjoys that he can do on his own while we take care of all the stuff that needs taking care of at the end of the day - because I put my PJs on at the same time as M, and hit the bed the minute I left his room.
By the way, he earned 3 stickers last night. He fell asleep right away without calling or coming out, but he was up twice at night - 12:20 and then with a screaming fit (I think bad dream) at 3:40.
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I have a question, I have a 4 year old little boy that has been acting out over the last couple of months and it seems like every night he is getting out of bed and roaming around the house, that it seems like i can't keep him in his bed at night its like he waits til everyone goes to bed at night and then gets up and we have tried timeouts, corner for the 4 min talking to him just about everything and when he gets up its like he just wants to destory something he just messes with the tv (we have had to replace a screen) the computers books to draw in anything and i don't know why he is doing this and i can't make him understand that he can't get out of bed when everyone is asleep that he could hurt himself and its getting to the point where i am afraid to go to sleep because of this and that it is pulling my marriage apart and i can't keep going like this please tell me what to do i am at wits end Thanks for listening
To Shannon--I have a 2 year old who did this same thing until we put a crib tent on his crib and now he can't get out. Since I imagine your son is in a big boy bed, your only soluation is to turn the lock around on his door and lock him in. I know what your first thought will be on that--"Isn't that dangerous, what if there's a fire and he can't get out?" The truth is, it's extremely unlikely a fire would start in his room. Also, most children die in housefires from smoke inhalation because they leave their room, become lost or disoriented and succomb to smoke inhalation. Children who remain in their room with the door closed are usually found alive. Any firefighter (like my husband) will tell you that the rooms whose doors were kept closed during a fire are virtually left undamaged because no oxygen was allowed to escape the room and feed the flames due to the door remaining closed. So if you think about it, children are actually safer if they are kept in their room during a house fire and therefore it is not something to be concerned about by locking their door at night. Besides, the dangers of your son hurting himself, hurting your family (inadvertantly or otherwise), destroying items within the house or even wandering outside of the house far outweigh the concerns you might have with locking him in his room at night. If you don't have a lock on the door, get one of those door handle covers so he can't open the door.
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