The Bedtime Struggle?

I was recently out somewhere when I overheard a parent complaining about the nightly struggle to get her children to bed.  The mom was commiserating with another parent who fully understood this struggle and replied with great pity and understanding.  I don’t often get involved in mothers’ discussions out in the world since it came to my attention a long time ago that I very often disagree with them and I HATE confrontation.  This conversation was no different.  I sat and listened but had no intention of chiming in.  It did however get me into a conversation with myself, which is what often happens in these situations, since I know so few others who agree with me.  In this conversation with myself I came to the realization that I really did not have anything I could have offered to this little chat the moms were having, since, I have no experience with a bedtime struggle.

I am a mom.  My kids do go to bed.  But, they don’t have a bedtime and there certainly is no struggle.  My family all goes to bed at once.  My 9 year old, my 5.5 year old and my 2.5 year old all crawl into bed with my husband and I in our big ole family bed.  My youngest quickly nurses to sleep.  My oldest watches tv for a bit then nods off to sleep.  My daughter curls up adorably on her daddy’s chest and watches him play on the ipad while drifting off to sleep.  My husband and I can either go to sleep then or get up and do something else or watch tv or read.  The only struggle I encounter around bedtime is from the rest of the world when they hear how we do things.

“I can’t help noting that no cultures in the world that I have ever heard of make such a fuss about children’s bedtimes, and no cultures have so many adults who find it so hard either to go to sleep or wake up. Could these social facts be connected? I strongly suspect they are.”
-John Holt

I didn’t put a lot of research into how my family sleeps.  I didn’t read a lot of books, consult my friends or ask my pedicatrician.  Actually I did all that before I had my first child and found out that all the information in the books, and all the things the other parents I knew said they did and everything out there in the parenting magazines felt wrong.  It felt wrong and sad and foreign.  It was a bit of a journey for me to travel from that foreign land of what our culture says bedtime should look like to this place I fall sweetly asleep each night.

First I nursed my oldest to sleep no matter what they said.  He slept in our bed for a while, then a cradle in our room, then finally; reluctantly I put him in his own room where he would awaken each night around 1 to come back to my room and nurse and there he would stay.  Till we went up to visit family in Canada and he slept in the same hotel bed as me. And he slept through the night.  He was not waking up in the middle of the night because he was hungry or thirsty, he was waking up because he needed the comfort and security of his mother.  It seemed so normal, so natural, so comfortable.  When we returned from vacation he stayed in my bed after nursing to sleep and he is still sleeping there.

It seems funny to me that people think the way we do things is foreign or unnatural , or that we are the only family who lives this way.  Most of the rest of the world lives this way.   I discovered when my oldest was a baby that most of the people I knew had their babies sleep in their beds at least part of the time, but no one wanted to talk about it.  Why is that? Why have we created a culture of adults who are afraid to admit that they are there for their children?

I enjoy sharing my dreams with my children, awake and asleep.    I can count on one hand the times I have been awoken in the night by a child not feeling well or scared.   I do not wake up in the morning to children sneaking into my room to wake me up for the day.  I don’t have to set my alarm to be sure I wake up before my children to keep them safe.    I wake up to my littlest ones sweet smiles and I know my children are safe because they are there with me.  My children sleep comforted and happy, and so do I, struggle-free.