Some nights, bedtime sucks. There, I said it. All the yelling and the pleading and the tears. ...And that’s just from me and my wife to get our three-year-old son to bed.
Honestly, the poor kid is just like me when I was little – always trying to avoid bedtime so as not to miss any fun that unfolds downstairs.
Then an idea came to me. My son has a nightlight in his room that projects stars onto his ceiling. I purchased those plastic stick-on glow-in-the-dark stars that were big in the ‘80s for kids to put on their bedroom ceilings. After bath time, I got our son into his pajamas, turned on the nightlight and with him in my arms jumped up into “the sky” to grab him a star. When I handed him the plastic star I had hidden up my sleeve as if I had pulled it down from the sky, he was amazed. SO amazed, in fact, that he willingly got into bed and immediately fell asleep holding the star in his little hands. Three weeks later and the kid is still hooked on the sky trick. Needless to say, bed time has turned into a piece of cake.
As parents we have to be creative geniuses to get our children to do things they sometimes do not want to do. And I have to admit, the way my son looks at me with complete amazement in his eyes as we jump into his bedroom galaxy makes me feel like a star every single night.
Sincerely,
As a Guest in the Stork’s Nest ~
R. Daddy
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