My wife said, “We made a mistake. We shouldn’t have done this.”
And I agreed in silence.
This was the immediate response when our 18-month toddler made a fuss on the first and second nights we moved our children to our bedroom.
We came to realize that the previous bedroom was stuffy and the temperature was warmer. The bottom line is it was not well ventilated.
To make sure that our children have a better room (also for their health), my wife and I unanimously agreed to allow the two kids to share room with us.
My elder daughter was okay with the change. However it was a HUGE problem for our toddler son.
His routine was upset. He usually went up to the room smiling from ear to ear. For some reason, he was happy coming into the room. Maybe he could play and make some stunts on the mattress.
But somehow he could not do that in the “new” room. He was quite pissed off, to say the least, with the change. All the fun he used to have disappeared.
He pointed to his previous room and he was crying uncontrollably. It took at least two hours to calm him down before the rest of us got to sleep.
But I insisted the children to be in our room.
In the midst of shaking our heads in disbelief, I got an idea. I tried to make our room look like their previous room. What I did was to place an extra mattress on the floor, move some children’s books and toys over, and whatever we needed to simulate the previous room.
On the 3rd and 4th nights, so far so good. Fingers crossed. And our son looked forward to the room and he behaved like he used to (a.k.a normal and happy) when he was in the previous room.
Phew. What a relief!
Lesson learned?
Don’t disrupt a toddler’s routine for your own fancy (at least we’ve got a valid reason), especially a routine that he likes. Never ever change or remove it.
However, if you have no choice but to do it, do whatever it takes to make the changes unnoticed.
Just like what we did.
Now everyone can have a good night sleep… after a short battle.
This post is written specially for WFMW. For more tips, head on over to Shannon’s Rocks in My Dryer.
