So, being new to this whole mom thing I really used all the help I could get when I was FIRST starting out. Now, when I say "new" I don't mean that I'm a new mother to an infant, having just given birth to him/her. I mean I'm new coming into a home with a toddler running around!! I NEEDED some help! Jocelyn loves me and I have no doubts about that, and I her... But we had some serious problems when I first became her Mom. Problems that I didn't even know I was going to be facing and having to deal with. I knew I was going to have to help potty train her and teach her and help her learn different things and cook and clean and... Well, raise her! But being a young mother some things never really crossed my mind about raising a child until those things happened.
For instance, after Jocelyn's birth mother left my husband and step-daughter she began to sleep with my husband in his bed at night. Which is COMPLETELY understandable! However, once we were married that needed to stop. That's not my four-year-old's bed... It's mine and my husband's and it's one of the FEW times we can be alone together and have time to ourselves. We both felt that it was an invasion of space. So, we started having her sleep in her own bed.... It.... didn't really work as well as planned.
She started waking up in the middle of the night around 2:00 AM and coming in there then and waking us both up!! It was horrible! We didn't know what to do, because no matter what we did she would come in there and crawl right into bed. We started looking at this saying it needed to stop now! We didn't want a 6 or 7 year-old doing this in a few years and that's what was going to happen if we didn't solve this!
I started researching different ways to prevent this from continuing. We tried so many different things, nothing really worked. I finally found a solution, though!!
Every night we put her in her bed, explaining as we did this that this was her bed, her big girl bed and that this is where she slept, not with mommy and daddy. She asked questions, of course, and we answered them truthfully... And every night she still would come into our bed. And when she did one of us would scoop her up and take her back to her bed, crying and all, and explain again to her that this was her bed and where she slept. We also told her that if it were storming, or if she had a nightmare, or something serious like that, she could come and wake us up, but that those were the only times she could come to our bed.
This continued for a good few weeks, but slowly it started to stop!! She did come crawl into bed every morning that she got up for a while after we started doing this. We decided to let it happen and work on that once we got the middle of the night trips taken care of!
And we did!!! She doesn't come in there unless she needs us or it's stormy anymore, and the only time she comes into our room in the morning is to state that she's hungry!
If you're having issues with your toddlers I would strongly suggest lots of research on whatever it is! You'll either run across the same solution a number of times, proving that it works, or you'll try out a ton of different ones that may or may not work for you! But in the end just follow your gut and you'll figure out what's best for you and your family!
Thanks so much for listening to my story on being "new." I'm sure there'll be many more to come!!
- Stephanie
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