About a week ago Tara and I were up in the middle of the night. It wasn't due to illness, not because of stress, can't claim insomnia (sort of)- Kennedy wanted milk, at 3am. Now, I know that we've been guilty of trying to satisfy her desires in the middle of the night. "We don't want her to wake up Alex" was the usual mantra. Problem is, in keeping her quiet - we've created a midnight monster. No more.
We've set up a little system for sleeping through the night. We no longer go to her in the middle of the night when she has a nocturnal milk fetish. It's not that we don't care, we simply need to regain the routine we had a few months ago. Bad parents, I hear from the peanut gallery. Maybe. Still we're trying to help Kennedy take control over certain parts of her life. In addition to sleeping through the night, hitting other people and using the potty have been issues of late. With all this in mind, we created the "Kennedy's Big Girl Chart."
Every time Kennedy 1)Sleeps through the night 2)Uses the potty 3)Plays with other kids without hitting them - she earns a sticker. Five stickers in any one category and she earns a reward. So far we've met some mixed results. No stickers yet in the potty and pounding categories, but she has earned four stickers for nighttime tranquility. The fourth sticker was earned last week and you wouldn't believe how proud little DeDe was of her accomplishment. "I slept through the night" was becoming our new mantra. Still, it's been three days since the last sticker and we haven't gotten there yet. I will say that progress is slow (we didn't make it again last night), but we're still hoping one day we're off the charts!
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