A Tribute to SuperNanny!

Just when you think you have things figured out, your world gets a little readjusted and humbled!! We've had many instances where this has happened in our household and thanks to Jo Frost aka. SuperNanny we've kept order and sanity in our household!

We used to watch it a lot before Claire was born and I'm so glad because a lot of her techniques have been useful in our house. We modeled our time out process from her, learned that kids like order and predictability, get on the kids physical height when talking to them about something important and the latest one is bedtime procedure.... this is what's been going on in our house since Friday night....

For those who don't know, Claire has always been pretty easy to put down for bed and nap. She has always slept in her own bed (it's across the hall) and has always put herself to sleep. I can't remember when the last time was that she fell asleep with me holding her. So I thought she'd be just fine adjusting to her big girl bed (especially after doing great on a mattress on the floor for a week and a half). Well - I was wrong!!

Friday night Claire had a tough time going to bed. She has been using delay tactics like "I need to go potty" when she already was given the last chance warning. Well, we decided we just needed to let her know that we were serious about that last chance and stick to our guns!! She eventually fell asleep with screaming and crying we've never heard before bedtime. I knew it was going to be a rough night. It tends to be if she has any trouble falling asleep on her own.

So....we were up from 12:45 p.m. - 3:45 a.m. because Claire just didn't want to stay in her bed. We knew we had to be consistent so we weren't making any bad habits even though we wanted to take the easy road. The funny thing was she was never crying or leaving her room but would just come open her door and say "mommy" or "daddy". So we would go pick her up and put her in her bed over and over again without saying anything to her or even looking at her (this is a Jo Frost technique when breaking kids of this habit). Well, it's worked and most importantly there wasn't any crying or yelling so even though we were exhausted, we weren't raising the stress level or making it a power struggle more than it was. Since then she has done better but for every nap or night time, we've had to use this technique at least once but it hasn't been as bad as the first night and seemed to lessen each night.

Anyway, just wanted to share what we are dealing with. I think she has realized she can physically get out of her bed and open the door and it just testing us. Well, we will trudge on and get her on a regular sleeping schedule once again! So thank you SuperNanny for having a show where parents can learn practical child rearing tips. Cheers to Jo and Bristish TV coming to the states!