And Monday....

 

Friday

From Ferber to the Family Bed

I've written several posts about our travails with the Ferber Method of sleep training.

And now I'm writing, not to eat crow, exactly, but to say . . . . .

Every parent must use the methods and techniques that are right for them and their child . . .

And to say that what is right at Time A may not be the right choice at Time B. 

And so here we are:  In our Working Family Bed.

How did we get here?

It started a few weeks ago, when The Boy started waking during the night.  Rather than employ Ferber, I would just bring him into our bed. It was easier.  And having him there to cuddle was kind of nice.  We had him in our room from the day we brought him home until July 2012 -- well into his second year.  And, although everyone has been sleeping better and not getting sick anymore since we moved him to his own room, there wasn't a day in which we didn't miss him in our room.

We turned to Ferber last summer because The Boy would keep us up for hours on end in the middle of the night, and all of us were getting physically ill from the lack of sleep.  And when I say ill, I mean, "need a Z-pack and a chest X-ray" kind of ill.  It worked so quickly, the Ferber method, and everyone was happier for it, and better rested.

That is, until a few weeks ago.  I can't really articulate why it was different, but it was different this time.  The Boy is older and he's a good sleeper, but he was consistently waking at night.  He said he was having bad dreams and was scared.  And this age, going-on three, is when those sorts of things start.  So when the wakings started, it didn't seem right to employ Ferber, right away.  (Actually, even Ferber says not to leave them to cry when they have nightmares.)  So I'd bring him downstairs to our room when he would wake.

Soon, I started to feel the old exhaustion from the pre-Ferber days.  I started to feel unwell.  I was getting wrung out by the process:  put him to bed in his own bed, go to bed in our bed, wake up middle of the night when he called for me, get up and bring him downstairs, get him settled, get self settled.  I was easily losing an hour or more of sleep each night. No bueno. 

So we (or maybe just I) decided we needed to reFerberize The Boy.  I felt guilt, too, for disrupting his sleep training, once again.

But this time, the progressive waiting process was awful beyond any sort of level of awfulness of the prior go 'rounds.  And it just felt wrong this time. Call it a mother's instinct.  Ferber was not the right call this time.

So what to do?  We weren't going to do Ferber again, but I couldn't continue the middle of the night wake up process, and have a hope of being healthy and useful.

The solution:  we put The Boy to bed in our bed, with no intermediate stop in his own room.

Actually, we ask him where he would like to sleep each night, so he knows he still has the option to sleep in his room, if he wants it.  And we are all much happier, and better rested, for it.  I'm not going to say it is perfect:  I woke up with little feet kicking me in the small of my back this morning . . . but it was the morning, and not the middle of the night.  We have had solid nights of sleep since we instituted the Family Bed.  And that's a very, very good thing.

I don't regret our prior Ferber experiences. He was not sleeping through the night and we all were getting, e.g., bronchitis from being so strung out with so little sleep.  When he started sleeping through the night in his own bed, we were all healthier. We needed to get him over the hump to sleep the night through, and that wasn't happening when he was screaming half the night standing in his bed in our room. Having exhausted all other tactics, we needed Ferber's help to get him to sleep the night through. 

Now, he sleeps soundly through the night, but for the recent night wakings. Rather than lose an hour or more of sleep every night with night wakings, sleeping communally suits the family's needs right now. The Working Dad and I know that it could be months or years of bed-sharing with the boy, and we're okay with that. It's a small amount of time out of a lifetime, and we're glad to spend even our sleeping moments with him.  In fact, our bedtimes have become sweeter, cuddled together in our bed, as we read and listen to "quiet music."  I think The Working Dad and I will be a little sad when, one night, The Boy tells us he wants to sleep in his own room again. 

The thing to remember as a parent is that parenting is a relationship, not a power play. It's a relationship in which we have the majority of the power, by default, but he is a participant in this parent-child dance and deserves respect.  Relationships require constant reevaluation and flexibility.  Here, with our child it is no different.  And so.  Here we bent, so we would not break.

Nighty-night.

Wisdom Shaming

Wha?

A few weeks ago, Emily Yoffe wrote a piece and then a follow-up piece suggesting that if young college-aged women didn't get blotto at college parties, they would be less likely to be rape victims.  A wing of the feminist commentariate went nuts, insisting that Yoffe was blaming the victim to dispense such common sense advice.

Some of the opposition even seemed to suggest that they would prefer the blotto-rapes occur so that the rapists get caught and prosecuted so they wouldn't go on to rape again...as if it's okay to offer one drunk college girl up to the rape gods in order to save five...as if there's a guarantee of prosecution when the victim was too drunk to remember exactly what happened?  It was surreal. 

Disturbingly, though, American college culture seems to revolve around drinking.  Example:  I saw a  series of photos recently of a sorority chapter's cooler decorating competition in advance of the big game against their long-time rival.  Lest you think that these coolers were destined to contain Capri Suns and orange slices, one of the young ladies had decorated her cooler with the phrase "Hakuna La Vodka."

How very drunk Disney princess of her....

But I was a drunken sorority girl too, 20-odd years ago, and it was a binge-to-blotto culture back then as well. I was fortunate to have friends, who were gracious enough to help keep me out of trouble -- and hold my hair as I puked -- the times I drank too much.

And the times I didn't, well, my sorority sisters and other friends were lucky enough to have me as a driver. In one instance, I actually helped carry a pledge, too drunk to stand, home from a fraternity party and sat with her through the night to make sure she was okay.

But none of that was okay -- then or now.

What if my friends hadn't been there for me?  What if I hadn't been there for them?  What might have happened?  I shudder to think. 

But here's the thing:  we knew it wasn't good for us to drink to excess like that. We weren't stupid or unaware. But we ignored the advice. 

We've got to make it uncool to behave that way. We've got to make maintaining control, even just a little bit, acceptable behavior and not "unfun."

And that means for the boys and the girls too. 

Because, I've got to tell ya', I am aware of instances where the sorority-girl-network failed some of my peers and they were harmed. And that is horrible.  Horrible and tragic.

Obviously, I think that we parents should educate our boys about respect for women and acceptable behavior toward women. That means starting early. It includes teaching them what consent is and that a drunk girl can't really give it.  And these boys are the most likely to be harmed by alcohol poisoning or other physical risk taking behavior. For their own safety, they should drink less. 

It also means teaching girls how to protect themselves from a potential assault:  don't accept drinks from strangers; don't drink to black out; do travel in packs with trusted friends; do be wary when a drunken boy takes your hand to lead you away (if he's really into you, he'll be okay with accepting your phone number and calling you in the morning).

Giving that advice is not blaming the victim/potential victim of rape. It's giving her tools to avoid becoming a victim.

I'll tell you something else:  it is not a feminist statement to get shit-faced drunk.  I think there is a certain subculture of the feminist culture who thinks that it's an affirming feminist act to be as loud and as raunchy as any 19 year old frat boy out at the party barn.  All I have to say is, really?

The college drinking culture makes sobriety, even moderation, uncool. So the girls get sloppy and the boys lose inhibitions, and everyone forgets the good lessons they were taught.  This has nothing to do with feminism, and everything to do with an American society that has failed to teach its young people how to handle alcohol and the situations that alcohol can create.

I'm not sure how we change the binge-to-blotto culture. If it's not changed in  the 20-odd years since I was a participant in it, I'm not sure it will change organically, or at all. 

But it seems to me that the place it will have to change is at home.  And the time for change is long before these kids set off for college. Parents are totally uncool, by their nature, but I think we've got to start this thing early so it sticks, like music lessons or a foreign language. It doesn't mean our kids won't drink -- or even that they shouldn't -- but maybe they'll be a little bit safer about it when they do if we give them the tools to think it through.  Safer than me and my friends were . . . .