I know sleeping and getting our kids to sleep is hard. Right now Alex is working on negotiation his way to a later and later bedtime. Thing is, if he stays up later than 8:15 he’s cranky and unmanageable the next day. So we’re holding firm at the 8:00 hour.
When Alex was younger, we had tons of issues with getting him to stay in his own bed and ultimately resorted to my husband sleeping with him for several years. Every night he would curl up next to Alex and fall asleep with him. Sometimes he would make it back to our room, other times not so much.
Our issues ranged from Alex not getting to sleep, night terrors, waking up in the middle of the night, falling out of the bed and getting up before the butt crack of dawn. You name it, we’ve dealt with it.
One of the first things we tackled was when he was about four and we transferred him over to a big boy bed. He promptly fell out of it 1,000 times a night. If my husband wasn’t already in bed with him, he’d run screaming down to our room and we’d have to go through the whole “going to bed” routine all over again, even if it was three AM.
And we did have bed rails. He worked around them like an octopus and still fell out of bed. Each and every night. …continue reading
Having scored two weeks off work over Easter this year, my husband and I decided to take our two boys 3 and 5 on a ten day holiday to Kings Beach, Caloundra. A lovely friend had put us on to a fantastic apartment block right on the water…we could walk to the beach, the park, restaurants, shops….awesome location.
Both the boys were very excited about going to our Holiday House. Our older son with SPD has a fantastic memory, and as we have taken him on similar holidays he talked non stop the whole couple of hours drive there…remember this, remember that….
We were blessed with perfect weather the whole time. After a not so hot and quite wet summer, we were being treated with heavenly Autumn weather! Unfortunately holidays also spell changes to routine, new sensations, strange places.
Our first trip to the beach – all of a minutes walk away – started off well enough. As soon as we hit the sand off came his thongs, he didn’t like the sensation of the sand rubbing between his feet and the rubber. No problem though, walking on the sand in bare feet suited him fine. Both he and his little brother love the water, and “wave jumping” became our new sport. All went well until A’s long board shorts started to irritate his legs, “my legs are itching!” he was yelling out in distress. Trying to placate him I said “it’s ok, its just the sand and the water, your legs are okay”. He got more and more upset, to the point where I asked him if he wanted to get out….”NOOOOO….I’m still wave jumping!” …continue reading
