Lockdown

This is actually a picture of Spencer when he was around 18 months old during a tour of Alcatraz.  But hey, Cole wears that same outfit all the time, so just pretend it's Cole behind those bars instead.

Do you have bedtime issues at your house?  We have bedtime issues.  Well, we had bedtime issues.  For a long time we had Bedtime Issues.

Cole would NOT stay in bed.  Could NOT stay in bed.  No matter how tired he was, no matter late it was, no matter if Lance and I were actually standing at his door, glaring in a threatening manner... the child child got out of bed.  We tried all sorts of techniques - time outs, not talking to him and just carrying him back to bed, standing in the doorway, making sure we had a good bedtime routine and schedule, and yelling threats, which was ridiculous because he's two, for Pete's sake. 

It was bad.

Actually, sometimes it wasn't that bad. It would go in cycles: just when we thought he was over this phase, something would trigger his naughty behavior and we'd have to start all over again.  In fact, this is why Cole now sleeps on the top bunk and Josh on the bottom.  We kept having to go into the room to get Cole out of Josh's bed, and then we'd discover Josh sleeping on the floor in the morning.  Heaven only knows why.  So we eventually had Cole move up top, which made them both happier and kept Cole in bed.  For a little while, at least.

And not only would he get out of bed, but he would turn on the light in his room, play with the fan, read books, harass his brother, etc.  The worst was when we would think he was asleep and then we'd go off and do our own thing, only to discover - sometimes hours later - him playing with toys down in the basement.  Then he'd be SUPER tired and grouchy the next day and I'd discover him taking naps in random places around the house, as you have seen in previous posts. 

To make matters worse, he kept getting up in the middle of the night and climbing into bed with me.  This whole phase started when he would get up maybe 10 minutes before the alarm went off.  Ordinarily I am very anti-child-in-the-bed, but 10 minutes is no big deal.  But the problem is, he kept coming in earlier and earlier.  And there was no use in me putting him back to bed because then he would just cry and wake Josh and Tess up. So I would just let him stay in bed with me.  He'd often fall back asleep, but I sure wouldn't.  And this problem kept getting worse and worse and he would come into our room earlier and earlier, so that I found myself dragging him back to his bed at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, praying that no other child would wake up.

Why wouldn't Cole wake Lance up?  Why didn't Lance put him back to bed?  These are just some of the questions that will forever remain a mystery.

It was maddening.

It got to the point that we were spending hours getting him to go to bed each night.  (And if you're a parent you know how important those few hours between your children's' bedtime and your bedtime is!) I came to absolutely dread bedtime because I knew it would just be a fight and sometimes I just didn't have any fight left in me.

Finally, one night I just couldn't take it anymore.  I was exhausted, frustrated, and ANGRY.  A bad combination for parenting moments, as any parent knows.  Cole got out of bed for the 1,290th time, and I snapped.  But just before I ran away, screaming down the street and tearing my clothes off in my lunacy (Try to get that image out of your brain!  Ha!), an idea came to me.  A wonderful, awful idea.  (Side note: isn't that what the Grinch's idea was?  Wonderfully awful?  We packed ours away and now I can't check.  Dang.)

Before I could lose the nerve, I scrambled downstairs to the storage room, found a box of old baby locks for door handles, ran back upstairs, and put it on the inside of Josh and Cole's door.

He was trapped.

Cole, as you can imagine, was not happy about this.  At all.

I don't think Lance was, either, but he probably saw the gleam of madness in my eyes.  And although he might not mind seeing me run down the street tearing of my clothes, I think he would rather stay on good terms with the neighbors.  So he wisely did not intervene.

You know what?  Cole was only upset for about 5 minutes.  And then all was quiet.  He had gone to bed.  In his bed.

I had won.

Okay, not that easily.  I mean, that night he went to bed.  But over the next week we had to come up with a new bedtime routine that included what we affectionately call "the lockdown".  First, you read Josh and Cole their bedtime stories and then help them say their prayers.  Then you help them get into bed and tuck them in.  Then you unscrew the light bulb in the closet, pull the chain on the ceiling fan so that neither the light nor the fan can be turned on with the wall switch, and then you make sure the door is closed all the way.  And then you stand at your post outside the door, just for a minute or two, to make sure the inmates are behaving.

Bedtime since we started this?  Not perfect, but I would say 99% better. 

Now, before you go all crazy and call child protective services and such, we do make sure to open the door just a bit after they fall asleep.  So it's not like they wouldn't be able to get out for a potty or some other type of emergency.  Oddly, even though the door is unlocked, Cole rarely comes into our room in the middle of the night anymore.  I wonder if he wakes up and thinks the door is locked, and so just goes back to bed rather than waking me up?  Who cares.  It works.

Still seem dangerous to you?  I consider it much more dangerous to have an unsupervised toddler roaming about the house in the middle of the night, which was a scenario I had discovered more than once with Cole. 

I realize that this fix is only temporary.  Some day in the future that child is going to figure out how to open that lock.  (I've already seen him testing it out - he had the same look of concentration as the velociraptors in Jurassic Park when they were learning how to use door handles.)  But for the time being, I'll take it.

Now, please excuse me.  For some reason I've got a hankerin' to watch Cool Hand Luke.  Think I could get the boys to start calling me "Boss"?