It’s like in old sitcoms where they have an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, and the main character is caught listening to both sides, not knowing which to listen to. Except that they are in my head, not on my shoulder, and they aren’t an angel and a devil. They are mommy number one and mommy number two, and I spend my life listening to the battle between the two.
You have to let her cry. She cried for twenty minutes yesterday, and if you go in there now, you know naps will be done. They will be a thing of the past
But she sounds so sad.
She’s not sad. She’s angry. She does not want to be in there.
But she trusts me. She needs me to be the person she can count on when things are bad. She needs to know I will always be there.
She needs to know that you will always do what is best for her. And what is best for her is sleep. Every time she doesn’t nap, she is miserable the whole afternoon. She needs this.
But I need this. I need nap time. I need the break. This is all very selfish on my part. I’m putting her through misery to feed my own needs.
It doesn’t matter what you need or don’t need. You aren’t doing this for yourself. It’s for her. Sometimes being a mom hurts.
But all I want to do is go in there and sit on her big green chair and cuddle her in my arms as she calms herself down.
Yes. That is what you want. But you will be doing that for yourself. It’s not good for her.
But I don’t believe in cry it out.
This isn’t crying it out. She knows how to self soothe. She’s not an infant. This is a temper tantrum and going in there is the worst way to handle it.
Dr Sears says letting them cry is damaging to them.
But your doctor says that lack of sleep in American children is nearing pandemic and that children must nap. A lack of sleep is damaging to her.
But…
But…
And now I’m sitting here typing, listening to silence through the monitor as she has cried herself to sleep, and I realize that the only thing worse than listening to the screaming is listening to the silence. Because it means she is laying there with swollen, red little eyes after either her body or her mind gave up calling for her mommy to come.
If this were a battle of the wills, I guess you would say I won. But I don’t want to beat her will. I want her to keep her spunk and her strong will and her ability to tell people what she wants. I just want her to get the sleep she needs, and I want her to have the peace of mind that comes to a child when she knows that her parents are in charge, not herself.
And so I guess this is what they talk about when they say “this will hurt me more than it hurts you.”
Now I think I’m going to go lay in bed and cry myself. If I don’t throw up first.
