A Mommy Story

When Cordelia was a toddler, our friends and family marveled that we had her on such a great sleep schedule. Around 6:30 or 7:00pm each night, she would actually crawl (or later walk) to the stairs and point up to her room, letting us know that it was time for bed. We’d change her into her PJs, read her a book, and take her up to her crib. Then we’d place her in her crib and walk away. She’d often babble and talk to herself, but rarely did she cry or protest.

Comments like, “Wow, you’ve sleep trained her SO well!” were not uncommon, often followed by stories of how their child would fight bedtime, get up repeatedly, or cry at being imprisoned in the crib. It would be easy to pat ourselves on the back and take full credit for the amazingly peaceful nights we had with Cordy, but the truth is we had very little to do with it: Cordy was the one who determined her own bedtime.

At this point, you may still consider us the winners of the bedtime lottery. A toddler who goes to bed by 7pm every night, leaving you free to spend time with your spouse without interruption? We even had a period of several months where Cordy would sleep until 6am each morning. Yes, I’ll admit we were spoiled. (If you consider spoiled to also include a child who refused to nap during the day at all and had violent tantrums that we would later find out were symptoms of autism. But that’s not today’s topic.)

It did have its benefits, but there were downsides. First, she was always awake by 6am, meaning someone had to get up early with her. Second, her sleep schedule made it hard to do anything with her in the evenings, because no matter where we were, she was asleep by 7pm, and grumpy if moved. If we had a family gathering in the evening, we could count on finding her asleep on the floor long before 8pm.

And then there’s one other problem.

While being asleep that early in the night is great for a toddler or preschooler, it isn’t as useful for a seven year old. To this day, Cordy still goes to bed early. It’s not a strict 7pm anymore, but she still has trouble staying awake any later than 8pm.

The problem with this situation is that going to sleep so early makes it impossible to get her involved in many after-school activities, or even have a lot of time to spend with her family in the evening. She’s home from school by 5pm, does her homework, dinner by 6pm, and then it’s time to get ready for bed. We pushed bedtime back to 7:30pm (from 7pm), although there are still many nights when the clock has barely crossed into seven o’clock and Cordy is complaining that she is tired and wants to go to bed.

Occasionally we ask her to stay up late, and sometimes she can keep herself up until 9pm, but it takes a lot of effort. For New Year’s Eve this year, she was awake (although very groggy) until 11:30pm, but only because she slept for 40 minutes on our way home from the zoo that night.

All of the advice books say to gradually step back the bedtime and in return the child will gradually start waking up later as well. Ha. Not this girl. No matter how late she’s up, her bedroom door still opens promptly at 6am and Little Miss Sunshine strolls down the stairs for the day. Only if we force her to stay up too late, Little Miss Sunshine turns into Little Miss Crabbypants quickly during the day, and keeping her up late again still does nothing to change her wake-up time. (But does make her progressively more grumpy.)

At this point, I don’t know what to do. I have the opposite problem of most parents: I want my child to stay up later! I’d like to give her the chance to take a class or be in a Girl Scout troop, but unless it’s offered on a Saturday it isn’t possible at the moment.

Anyone have any advice on how to convince a Sleeping Beauty to stay up later and enjoy the night?