"She has a very hard time going to bed on her own and will not let us go downstairs when it's bedtime."
A TMP Times member sent me that line recently, and if you're already nodding, here's the rest of what she told me.
Her daughter put on her pajamas, jumped straight into her parents' bed, and said, "I'm SLEEPING HERE!" When her mom asked her to come back to her room, together, not alone, she screamed, "NO! I DON'T CARE. I AM SLEEPING HERE." Then, "YOU’RE MEAN!" A hand connected with her mom's body on the way back to her room.
She'd already tried everything gentle. "First I will try and get her out of my bed by asking if she wants a piggyback ride," she wrote. "I tell her we will read together. I offer to sit with her in bed." When none of it worked, she moved to threats. No playdates. No TV. "Nothing works except just keeping at it and staying calm," she told me. The next day, once everyone was calm, she followed through with a behavior reflection worksheet, an assignment to write dad an apology letter, and a canceled playdate.
She ended her message like this, “I have used your scripts to deescalate the situation when she starts screaming. It's like a switch goes off."
If any part of this is your house too, I want to start off by saying I don't think you're doing bedtime wrong. I think you're missing one important piece, and it's really hard to see it when you're inside the mess.
My read on this situation is that it’s not actually about sleep, but more so pointing to separation anxiety that looks like bedtime resistance on the surface. I also sense that this mom’s daughter has learned over time that fighting hard enough gets her what she wants, at least for the night. Essentially, fighting back pays off.
There's also a second thing going on that's easy to miss because it's not happening at bedtime at all. It's happening the next morning. This mom mentioned having her daughter complete a behavior reflection worksheet, write an apology letter, and/or follow through with canceling a playdate. Based on how this mom describes it, it seems that these consequences happen hours after the fight already ended in a cuddle. Which means the one moment her daughter needed her to be clear about her boundaries related to yelling, demands, and physical aggression, seems like it got a piggyback ride offer and a negotiation instead. This mom’s boundaries are valid, it just seems to be happening too late. Essentially what's happening is they get through the storm, reconnect, and then the boundary shows up on its own hours later, disconnected from the moment that actually needed it.
There's also a second thing going on that's easy to miss because it's not happening at bedtime at all. It's happening the next morning. This mom mentioned having her daughter complete a behavior reflection worksheet, write an apology letter, and/or follow through with canceling a playdate. Based on how this mom describes it, it seems that these consequences happen hours after the fight already ended in a cuddle. Which means the one moment her daughter needed her to be clear about her boundaries related to yelling, demands, and physical aggression, seems like it got a piggyback ride offer and a negotiation instead. This mom’s boundaries are valid, it just seems to be happening too late. Essentially what's happening is they get through the storm, reconnect, and then the boundary shows up on its own hours later, disconnected from the moment that actually needed it.
I call this the boundary gap. It's the space between the meltdown and the consequence, and it's where the whole thing falls apart. Nothing lives in that gap except more begging, more bargaining, and more threats that don't land because everyone already knows they're not really going to happen. By the time the actual consequence shows up, a full day later, it can land feeling random to her, since nothing calm or clear happened in the moment to connect the two.
Let’s talk about how to turn this cycle around. What should we be saying before, during and after these hard moments?
