We’ve been having some bedtime disobedience around here lately, as I have previously mentioned. Phaedra spent several nights in her crib last week. To tell the truth, we’re just not sure what to do with her. We can’t punish that child. We say we’ll take away toys, she shrugs it off. Sometimes, she even tells us to take another one too because she doesn’t want it anymore. We put her in her crib, she cries a bit and falls asleep. We yell, we rant, we stomp, we try all number of things, and it just doesn’t seem to work with this kid. She just wants to keep on making mischief until she’s good and ready to be done.
When Eleanor participates with Phaedra, things escalate. They can go on all night when they play together. Most of the time, the key to stopping Phaedra is to get Eleanor to completely ignore her. When Phae reaches the point where she can’t get a response out of Eleanor no matter what she does, she gets bored and goes to sleep.
The night before last, Uncle Mike came over and gave the girls some cool new toys. He just got a new job, and he’s been itching to spoil his nieces. When we put the girls to bed, Grant gave each girl a stern talking-to about being quiet. They had been especially naughty the night before, and Grant was making it clear we wouldn’t tolerate any similar behavior. He told Eleanor he would take away one of the new toys she was particularly enjoying if he had to talk to her even one time about being quiet or staying in bed. He gave Phaedra a similar lecture with more threats.
After our usual bedtime routine, Grant and I sat in the family room and listened as Phaedra tried desperately to get Eleanor’s attention. It sounded a little like this: Eleanor! . . . Eleanor! . . . ELEANOR! . . . ELEANOR!!!! We were pleased that Eleanor had taken Grant’s lecture to heart and seemed to be ignoring Phaedra’s attempts to engage her. As Phaedra got louder, we decided that Grant would go check on her (he often has to be the one to enforce bedtime because I’m dealing with Curtis). Grant has gotten to the point where he won’t intervene unless the light is on or someone is obviously out of bed because past experience has shown that if he leaves them alone, they eventually quiet down and go to sleep, but if he scolds them, they just end up crying for me and it prolongs the process.
This time, the light was on, so Grant went in. When he came back, he held up a small hairball and told me he found it in Phaedra’s mouth. Gross. I was confused because the color of it was darker than Phaedra’s hair, but I thought it was possible she could have found some of my hair since I’ve reached that stage in nursing that I’m shedding like crazy (seriously—after I blow dry my hair, it looks like we carpeted the bathroom). Grant said Eleanor didn’t make a peep when he was in there; she didn’t even turn to look at him. He was pleased she was taking him so seriously about going to sleep.
Soon after, Grant went back to their room, and I heard him shout, “Where did you get that?!” And then I hear him shout, “That is un-ac-cep-ta-ble!!!” I knew I had to get in there quick because Grant was shouting in syllables, and when he does that, he’s reaching the end of his rope.
I went in and saw Grant holding a rather large brown hairball, yelling at Phaedra while Eleanor sat crying on her bed. Apparently, when Eleanor had refused to acknowledge Phaedra, Phae had taken it upon herself to go to more extreme measures than just shouting, “Eleanor!” She had pulled out Eleanor’s hair in several large clumps, and Eleanor, trying not to have her new toy taken away, didn’t make a peep.
Makes you want to cry, doesn’t it?
We put Phaedra in a crib time-out while we held Eleanor and told her she could ALWAYS tell us if Phaedra was hurting her and told her how sorry we were that that happened.
After letting Phaedra cry in her crib for a bit, I made her apologize to Eleanor. Eleanor totally surprised me when she put her arms around her sister and said, “I forgive you, Phaedra.” Eleanor can really hold a grudge sometimes, so I was amazed I didn’t have to ask her to be forgiving. I told Phaedra to tell Eleanor she would never do that again.
As I was trying to calm them down and get them settled in to go to sleep again, Eleanor sweetly asked me if she still looked like Eleanor. She was concerned that the clump of hair Phae had ripped from the front of her head was going to make her look funny. I assured her that she had plenty of hair, you couldn’t even tell some hair was missing, and she still looked just like Eleanor.
The next morning, Eleanor told me Phaedra had tried to pry her eyes open with her fingers, and she had walked on Eleanor’s back with her hands and feet. And Eleanor went through all of that without making a sound because she wanted to be obedient and didn’t want to lose privileges. It just breaks my heart.
But at least we know we can get through to one of them.
He’s wearing 0-3 month clothes that are too small for him because his mommy is in denial. He isn’t allowed to grow up that fast, and since he isn’t allowed, we aren’t moving on to 3-6 month clothing. So there!
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