James has never been the perfect sleeper. In the two years of his little life, I don't think he has ever slept 12 hrs straight. He woke up at least one time at night for the first YEAR. And since then, he has woken up with teething, woken up because he can't find his paci, woken up because he heard us laughing, woken up because the power went out...etc. He at one point was sleeping about 11 hours at night, but that has slowly decreased to about 9-10 hrs. We used to put him down at 7:30, no problems. Even transitioning from his crib to his big boy bed went well.
But all of a sudden, James decided he didn't want to stay in his bed. We would put him down at 7:30, and he got up out of bed numerous times. He would sometimes play in his room. Sometimes stand up, turn on his light, turn off the fan. Sometimes open his door and go running down the hall until mommy or daddy put him back in bed. This could even go on for HOURS. One night he finally settled down in bed at 1 am.!!!
We tried spanking. We tried Super Nanny style putting him back in his bed numerous times without saying a word. We tried sticker charts. We tried laying down with him. We tried putting him to bed later. NOTHING seemed to be working...
Justin sitting by James' room, waiting on his next escape attempt.
Can you tell he is having fun?! I think he sat there for an hour.
Watching James through the monitor. I can't even remember what he is doing here. Playing maybe...but at least in his bed. He just didn't seem tired!
Finally, we had a friend tell us that what worked for them was locking the child's bedroom door. So after rearranging James room where he can't stand on his bed to turn on the light, moving nap time to earlier during the day and only letting him sleep for max 2 hrs and not past 2:30, and taking the door knob out and turning it around so that we can lock his door from the outside....James finally started going to sleep about 5-10 mins after putting him to bed. He would cry for about 3 minutes and then put himself back in bed and go to sleep! Yay!
Hopefully soon we will be able to stop locking the door.
O.k. I haven't encountered that issue with the Fish Sticks but sounds like you guys handled it well, figured out what worked and got things working. Point for parents!!! I also thought about those plastic child proof doorknobs that ya'll can put on the inside door knob of his room. Who knows though...he might be able to figure that out too. ;)
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