Big Boy Night Night Routines

Last Friday James had his 18mth doctors appointment.  It went fairly well.  James is growing, he is 33 inches tall (70%) and weighs a whopping (sense my sarcasism) 24.10 lbs (30%)!!!  At this point, the doctor is not concerned with his weight as he is gaining, so we are happy with our tall peanut.  Luckily, companies such as Gap have prepared for these growing discrepencies and have nicely placed adjustable waist bands inside their clothes -- a godsend for us since James is in 2T's for lenght but could be confortably in 12-18mth for his waist.  James is not showing signs of Autism and is finally talking up a storm.

The only "thing to do" that came out of the doctor's appointment was what I had been fearing...No, it was not fully giving up the binki, in fact, our doctor told us that he doesn't care what or even how much James uses one until he turns two.  (We are still trying to limit his use to night time, but we are not as super obsessed as we were trying to be).  The thing to do was to stop letting James take milk to bed.

James has been taking a sippy cup to bed, and it has worked well for us, but the doctor said no more -- its bad for his teeth and it can lead to an increase in ear infections.  Therefore, we officially stopped giving him milk at bedtime.  We started on Saturday night -- we give him a cup of milk at 7pm, then we brush our teeth at 7:20pm then off to the bedroom to read 3 books (always ending with Goodnight Moon where we pretend to eat the bowl of mush and we tell the whole room hush).  James took his binki out to give me a night night kiss and then confusingly allowed me to carry him to his crib.  He cried a little and even threw out the water sippy cup we had put in there -- just in case he still needed the security of the cup.  James cried for maybe 2 minutes and then he was out.  Even better,  he slept better that night than he has been.  We have now been doing this for 5 nights and its going pretty well.  James still doesn't go to bed without crying, but its getting shorter and shorter and he is sleeping better and better. 

I think that James will fully adapt to this new routine and start to go to bed as easily as he once did with the milk.  It is kind of funny looking back and thinking how much we were dreading this day-- getting the official STOP from the doctor (even though we knew we probably should have stopped about 3 mths ago).  We really didn't think our schedule driven child would adapt so well, but we definitely under-estimated him.  He is doing great!

Changing routines, I believe, can be (and is for us) just as hard on the parents as the kids.  We as parents worry every time we change an aspect that we think our child is attached too -- how is going to effect them, are they going to hate us, are we going to be able to stand our ground.  But at the end of the day, I truly believe that schedules are the best thing for our young children.  Yes, we have veered off scheduled -- which is good because it teaches James to cope, but overall, we stick to a pretty structured routine.  This takes a lot of stress off of James, and a lot of times us.  He knows after lunch we wash our hands and walk to the bed room, say bye to all the people and then he goes down for a nap till 2:30/3pm and he is not taken a back when we say its time for bed.

We have friends that are not schedule oriented and they wait till their kids just drop and fall asleep.  If this works for them and their child that is great -- but how does that child re-act if all the sudden they need to put structure in their life?  I am not really sure, and I can't answer that, but what I can say is that my child asks to go to bed, and does not seem surprised when we tell him its time to eat, sleep or play.  He seems at ease and much happier when we are on-schedule and he knows what the day is going to entail -- for this we are a happy family unit and we are truly happy that James was able to adapt so nicely to the new bedtime routine without milk!!