She may remember this night for the rest of her life. Maybe not. But it stands out as different from all the other nights in the seven years before it.
Natalie is a hummingbird on speed, a hopped up rabbit, a spastic housefly. She flutters and dances and chatters non-stop, all the live-long day. She runs everywhere she goes. You would think with the frenzied energy that drives her through fourteen waking hours, she would collapse in an exhausted little pink heap by 8:00 pm each night, but instead, though she is sent to bed by 8:30, you can hear her running about, playing and talking after 11:00 pm. She has been heard singing in her bed well past midnight (she’s like her mama; the night owl doesn’t fly far from the tree!). No amount of scolding or timeouts on the stairs have helped. They say that there are several things you can’t force a child to do; sleep is definitely one of them.
And, as I’m sure you can imagine, unlike her bunny relatives, she doesn’t hop out of bed in the morning, because she is too bushed from her late night escapades.
When the big kids used to do this, I made them plop down on a hard kitchen chair in the boring ol’ entryway until they were plumb tuckered out. Recently, the big kids were laughing and joking about it. “Do you remember how Mom used to sit us on a wooden chair till we were tired when we wouldn’t go to sleep?” They talked about all of the ways they would flip and turn in the chair to try to get comfortable. They would soon begin begging to go to bed. “No,” I would say with hesitation, as though I were considering it, “I just don’t think you’re tired enough.” But eventually I learned that this technique wasn’t quite doing the job. They were still goofing off after-hours.
Then, whilst wandering the dark corridors of my diabolical child-rearing chambers, I came upon an almost fool proof method for inducing sleep without Benadryl. And it worked.
I haven’t had to dust off this particular parenting tactic in a few years, mostly because Jonah tends to just lay the heck down and go to sleep. But for Natalie, it was time to pull out the big guns.
“Natalie, come down here.”
She tentatively descended the stairs, and stood on one foot hugging the door jamb.
“You have a lot of energy tonight. Let’s not waste it. Go get a washcloth and a spray bottle.”
She looked at me suspiciously.
“Go on”, I coaxed.
When she returned with the rag she held it out to me as though I were the one who would be using it. I gave her the simple instruction, “Okay, go scrub the spots off the kitchen floor.”
She was shocked, but didn’t protest. How could she? What would she say? “I can’t, Mom, and I have to go to sleep.” Her shoulders did droop a bit as she dragged her little feet back into the kitchen.
She disappeared from sight for a while, but I could hear the spray bottle, so I knew she was working. Soon she migrated to the doorway to be sure I could see that she was crying, but she never quit working. I let her go on like that for another ten minutes, and then called her to me.
“Do you think you’re tired enough to go to sleep now, or do you need a little more scrubbing time?”
“Noooooooooo,” she whimpered.
“Oh, good,” I said, intentionally sounding very relieved that she chose to be done. “I’m glad you’re tired. You should sleep really well now.”
I hugged and kissed her, and told her I loved her. The lesson is built in, after all. No need for a lecture.
*Post scrub script: Some kids are tougher than others. Natalie has gotten the opportunity to scrub the bathroom floor this week, as well. This time there were no tears. She hummed as she worked. I think she simply knew what to expect this time, and seemed somehow content with the situation. Maybe she was relieved to have something to do with her energy. Some children are a quandary.
When she was done, she went straight to sleep.
I imagine she’ll be doing the baseboards sometime later this week. I picture her, years from now, at a family reunion, telling her older siblings how hard she had it compared to them.
“You guys got to sit on chairs. I had to scrub the floor!”
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