To sleep, perchance to grow

A parenting expert said once, at a workshop that there were three things we couldn't force kids to do. Eat. Sleep. Poop. We could create the conditions in which it became easier and more conducive for them to eat, sleep and poop. But that's about all we can do.

We have occasionally epic battles with Baby J about eating. Part of me is telling me to lay off because I don't want this whole eating thing to become an even larger issue when she is a teenager. I did spend a better part of my research year reading and writing about eating disorders. Anyway, proper food is not a necessity to her. If she had her way, she'd snack on biscuits all the time. Why eat fish and meat and vegetables when there're biscuits to be got from their Great Grandpa? But since I'm home most of the time, this is under ok control. Evan, being a boy, wolfs down most things in sight, including foul TCM concoctions. I'm thankful for at least one who is easy to feed. Make it conducive for them. Occasionally, I let them muck about with their food, but generally they have to eat what is put in front of them at the table. We think that is good training.

Poop is something we haven't got to apart from sitting them on the potty everytime we strip them and or shower them. Evan has learnt to yell "POTTY!" if he's done a poop in his diaper and both of them know how to sit on it but most of the time, nothing happens. He also uses it as a "get out of jail" card from being strapped into his high chair for meals or cloistered in his room for a nap. Unfortunately for him, his caregivers weren't born yesterday and wisened up to it after the first round of false "potty" alarms. On the occasion that they do what we tell them to, on command, they get a great amount of cheers, but I suspect, it's still a long ways more before we can go diaper free with conviction.

Now, sleep. Our kids don't have the best sleep patterns. They still wake up twice at night. Once about 3 am and once about 6. Both times, needing milk though the 3 am one, I'm rapidly dialling down in a bid to get them to skip it. I think that one will slowly sort itself out and I might help it along by ignoring their 3 am demands for milk once we move out and I am no longer in danger being accussed of 'ignoring' my children's plea for food. But we see this area as an area of some success. On the clock, the twins, take an 'at least' 2 hour nap in the afternoon after lunch. This is without fail. I have stuck to it, fighting resolutely to keep them from being out after lunch even if it is a wedding or something equally important. I am similarly unbending about their bed time. If the kids are home, they are in their room by half 7 and they are asleep by half 8 or so. If they are at my parents, their only excuse for breaking schedules, they are bundled into the car before half 8 so that they can fall asleep on the way home. On the occasions that they weren't able to, their sleep that night would be disturbed, filled with subsconscious thrashing and screaming and that would make me grumpy because by extension of their sleep being disturbed, mine is too. This is where we are most Nazi. It doesn't matter that they still wake up but it is of utmost importance to us that they are down in bed when they are supposed to.

Why? Why not let the child lead the way and sleep when he feels sleepy? Why inconvenience others because you demand early dinner appointments or have no children in attendance? Well, because kids don't know better and if left up to them, play is obviously more important than sleep. But the problem with that is late sleepers equate late risers. Kids also need sleep to grow. That's when they grow, while sleeping. So if there's little sleep to be had, there's little growing being done. And from a parent's point of view, when the kids are asleep, there is peace in the house and things can get done. So, reasons for them to sleep early.

But I realise, I am in the minority here. I was at the airport late last night to send my brother off. There was much amazement at the fact that the airport at 11 pm at night was teeming with kids, running amok, totally hopped up on Coke and sugar I am certain. Not only were there kids, there were toddlers and babies in prams. Shouldn't all these below 1 m in height little humans be in bed? I understand that it is somewhat a privilege for me to be able to go out once my kids are asleep because we have people at home with them. Not everyone has that so sometimes, there is no choice but to take the kids along.

True, but I suspect that would not account for ALL the vibrating-on-the-spot, screaming and running amok kids I saw at the airport. And what is worse than a kid up at 11 pm at night? A kid, up at 11 pm at night eating at MacDonald's and having a sundae for dessert. Packrat, irritated by the Energizer bunnies gone wild the night before Easter, snarkily comments that the more of them that are not asleep and not getting enough sleep, the easier it will be for our children to get ahead next time. These will be the kids who will have problems getting up at 6 in the morning and will spend half the morning before recess trying to wade through the sludge that is their brain. And these will be the parents who will get told off in no uncertain terms by principals when they beg for later assembly times for their sleep-deprived darlings. I love principals who take parents to task and turn it back on them. "If you got your kids to sleep earlier, assembly times would not be an issue, would it?" was the sarcastic rhetorical response to the whiny request.

It's a thorny issue, this sleep. Kids are smart. They use sleep or the lack of it as a weapon against their weary parents. A couple I came to know recently were at wits end with their four-year-old because he could keep on going till midnight without blinking an eye the entire day. A few pointed questions unearthed the reason. The parents were not often home early. The kid only saw his parents if he was up when they got in. And the parents thought it would be wiser to stay out later till he was asleep to slip in. That vicious cycle led to the kid only falling asleep at midnight and the parents being very exhausted and exasperated. There is also the fact that once kids discover that during the hours of sleep, fun exciting things can happen, like trips out to supper and MacDonalds, why sleep? If they slept, they'd be losing out on the fun.

We make bedtime boring for our kids. The room is dark. We're in there with them and most of the time, we pass out from sheer exhaustion. Left with nothing to do in a dark room, they figure they might as well fall asleep or the quiet and dark lulls them to that point where they don't put up a fight and just doze off.

I was brought up to be in bed at 8 pm. I suspect that allowed my parents time to do stuff with my older brothers and well, whatever stuff parents do when you are asleep. It meant that I didn't survive slumber parties very well but the good thing is even now, when I need to get up in the mornings, my mind goes from zero to a hundred by the time I hit the shower. It's helpful with the twins because they're most active when they first get up and a sluggish mommy could at the very least be un-fun for them and the other end, be a danger to them. So I am a great advocate of sleep.

It took all my fear of being beat up and being yelled at to not go up to the parents who were blissfully filling their kids up with Coke and ice cream and ask if they thought what they were doing was wise. It also took all my sense of self-preservation to not ask them why their kids weren't in bed? Some parents purposely keep their kids up. They claim it's the only way they get to see their kids after work. They also claim that if they get their kids to sleep early then they will wake up their parents before the parents want to be up. I'll hazard a guess to say that these parents also got taken to the airport late at night for kaya toast. We think it's an Asian thing. Our friends in Australia and other Caucasians we know get their kids down by 7. That way, they have their dinner in peace and actual have decent adult conversation.

Ironically, I need to go back to bed now after writing this. But I have a good reason at least. Sick, congested kids don't sleep well through the night. That means, Mommy hasn't had much sleep and needs to take the opportunity while the kids are racing up and down the living room to try and get some shut eye or the brain is never going to leave zero today, let alone reach 100.


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