Alright, I’m not sure I can keep this bottled up anymore. I am a human being and I need sleep. Not a couple hours here or there, but a whole night’s sleep!
Since my first child was born, four and a half years ago, I think I have had about 20 good sleeps. I’m sure you can do the math on that one. I’m talking about going to bed and not waking up until my alarm says it’s time to wake up, sleeps. Although I know it isn’t true, it feels as though my children have set out to take turns waking up from one night to the next.
There’s really no rhyme or reason to it either. My son would wake with night terrors, even though we are very strict about what the kids watch on TV. My daughter seems to just wake up screaming for no reason, and then falls right back to sleep. As you parents know, even the act of waking up from your sleep for 3 seconds can severely hamper your mood the next day.
We’ve tried what feels like a thousand different ways to help them sleep and so far we haven’t had much luck. My son seems to sleep through the night more and more as he gets older but my daughter has started coming into our room at least once a week, wanting to sleep with Mommy and Daddy.
I’m not someone who can turn down a sad child, so we allow it but it means almost zero sleep for Mommy and Daddy; which also means more friction between Mommy, Daddy and the kids. My wife and I have discussed me going into my daughter’s room to sleep but that solution seems unfair to me, considering my wife runs a daycare, which I consider to be one of the toughest jobs in the world.
As you can imagine, four and a half years is a long time to go with minimal sleep and I can start to feel it catching up to me. I tend to be irritated a lot more than I used to be. I snap at the kids at times, without putting much thought into why. By the time 6 o’clock rolls around, I am basically ready to check out for the day and it’s a terrible feeling to know that I am letting my family down.
So I turn to you, my fellow Dads and readers, to ask if you have any sleep tips to pass along. My daughter is 2 and a half, won’t nap anymore and is generally a disaster by the time supper is done. With a daycare running out of the house, forcing her to try a nap isn’t an option as she’d keep all the other kids up.
Thoughts??
Cheers!
Chris Read is the owner and writer of the blog Canadian Dad. Please feel free to stop by to say hi and/or follow on Twitter or Facebook