The Silence of the Lamb
Silence. That’s all I was after. Just make the screaming stop (and prevent me from adding to it) - nothing else mattered.
While the challenge presented by my youngest child today may not be unusual for some families (unfortunately), for us this is like having a completely different child that we’ve never met before suddenly show up and take the place of a usually extremely sweet and relatively easy-going child.
What follows is my wife’s take on the recent screaming of our lamb.
This has never happened to us before. The Youngest was just in the throws of a tantrum because she didn’t want to sleep (that’s not what hasn’t happened to us) … when she launched herself, twice, out of her crib. The elder child (almost 3) has still never discovered that there is, indeed, a way out of her crib. But her younger sister (21 months) has just made that (rather startling) discovery.
I had to laugh (after I made sure she wasn’t hurt) because when I went in after hearing her fall, she was on her front, hands against the floor and pushing up, with a very surprised look on her face. She had been crying, wailing and sometimes screaming for a while, and she didn’t really stop crying for more than the initial second or two. Then I put her back into bed and left the room. I was waiting only moments in the hall when I heard that same thud. Daddy then spent a long time getting her to calm down and stay in bed.
In all, it has taken over an hour to get her to calm down and go to sleep. In the process, she threw every book (I had no idea we had so many in her crib!), every stuffed animal, and both blankets onto the floor. I think she found the books the most satisfying, because they made the biggest thumps. She even pulled the white-noise-machine from the window sill and tossed it to the ground. Now it’s a no-noise-machine. Sigh.
Time has now passed. The above was nap time. It is now bed time; Jeff has lowered the crib mattress the remaining level in hopes of keeping her from bounding out of bed again (and again); and The Youngest is screaming her head off. Until Monday of this week (this is Thursday), both girls went down like champs. We would put them in their cribs, they would say night-night and we’d leave. But since Monday night The Youngest has been getting worse and worse. She cycles between screaming and angry, and pathetic and sad, calling Mommy, Mommy …. Mommy. And today is by far the worst. I really hope it doesn’t continue to spiral downward. I mean, how much worse could she possibly get … as far as bedtime goes?
I have suspicions that this may be a power struggle, in which case we just need to stand our ground, let her scream and she’ll eventually get the message. But there’s the possibility that she’s teething. Jeff thinks this might be the case [ed.: only because giving her teething tablets worked twice]. I would agree, except I think she has all of her baby teeth in already. We’re still giving her tylenol and/or teething tablets — just in case. Or it could be somehow related to the season: she was a terrific sleeper in her first year until autumn, and then we battled with her for at least 3 months … kind of like this. It’s November and we’re experiencing our first real cool spell. Could it be allergies? She’s not exhibiting signs of congestion, coughing, etc. Does that mean allergies are not to blame? Or could it be that it is allergies and that she’s just feeling terrible and it’s making her cranky. I wish I knew.
Maybe bad dreams? How on earth can you tell with a toddler who’s not even 2! And even if we knew she was having bad dreams, how do you go about fixing that?
This morning she woke up at 5:30. Both girls normally sleep until 7:00 or 7:30. So, now I’m fearing she (and consequently, we) will be losing sleep on both ends of the night. I thought she’d be good and ready for her 2:00 nap today! Guess I was wrong.
What makes me think this is a power struggle is that, in recent weeks she’s been increasingly stubborn and willful. When disciplined, she often either growls angrily, throws a short lived tantrum, or cries. It makes me nervous and I often second guess the way I’m disciplining or when to discipline.
The bedtime tantrum tonight lasted over an hour. A couple of things that happened during the calm moments started me thinking that maybe she’s feeling like she’s not getting as much attention as her older sister, who is going through potty training. That’s certainly a possibility. If anyone has suggestions or similar stories, we’re all ears.
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November 11th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
If I were to wager a guess, since this just started last Monday, I would say that the time change has at least something to do with the disruption in sleep patterns. She’s used to going to sleep an hour earlier (at least according to her body clock), so she’s probably feeling over-tired and having a meltdown.
There may be other factors involved as well (teething, cold/flu, or something else), but I think the time change has definitely played a part.
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November 11th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Yeah, that’s likely a contributor, but as the weeks drags on it’s becoming obvious that it has at least a little to do with attachment issues. She wants to be held a lot. And things improved dramatically when we started paying more attention to leveling out the attention we give each kid. It hasn’t completely subsided yet, but it’s definitely improving.
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