Have a New Kid by Friday (12 page)

From day 1, make baths routine at your house—just “what you do”—rather than a big deal. Some infants are afraid of water; others love water. There are all sorts of bath devices to assist with this, includinglittle visors that allow you to shampoo the child’s head without getting soap in her eyes. Use these when you need to make bath time more pleasant. But take charge. When it’s time for a bath, don’t let crying stop you. Remain matter-of-fact and calm.

If your 6-, 7-, or 8-year-old refuses to take a bath, you need to get a little tougher. “It’s bath time. Do you want me to give you a bath, or do you want to give yourself a bath?” No child on the planet—especially a boy—would want his mother giving him a bath at that age. So off will come the pants, shirt, and socks, and off your kid will march to the bathtub.

Bathing can become a real problem in the teenage years (especially with boys who tend not to mind the locker-room aroma) because many teens simply do not bathe as much as they should.

When your teen is sweating or menstruating, and hormones are fully functioning, he or she should take a shower or bath every day. If your teen resists, simply adopt the “sniff test.” You can take a whiff as your teen walks by to snag some breakfast before school, or even insist on the underarm sniff test. If there’s anything smelly going on, you’ll know. If so, simply insist that he go up and take a shower
now.
It doesn’t matter if he’s late for school. In fact, if you really want to clinch the deal so that he’ll take showers from now on, write in the note to school the reason he’s late:

Franklin is late for school today. He smelled, so I insisted he take
a shower first. Feel free to do whatever you do to children who are
late for school, and I will fully support you.

Franklin’s mom

After that, do you think Franklin would miss doing his own sniff test before he even came down to the kitchen?

Brushing Teeth

“It’s so gross. I swear his teeth are turning yellow. Pretty soon they’ll start growing mold. I think the last time he brushed was when I made him when he was 12.”

“When I bugged her about brushing her teeth, she just shrugged.‘I chew gum, Mom. It’s the same difference.’”

“He’s often too crabby at night to brush his teeth, and I’m too tired to make him do it. Isn’t once a day enough?”

Brushing your teeth is a basic hygiene action. No one wants to talk to anyone who has bad breath—at least not for more than a couple seconds past the first whiff. Not brushing your teeth also affects more than your social life. Studies from the American Dental Association show that there is a direct correlation between how healthy your mouth is and how healthy your entire body is. And just because you chew gum to make your breath smell “minty fresh” doesn’t mean that you’re getting all the fuzzies off your teeth that can cause cavities or make your body sick.

Adopt good teeth-brushing habits as soon as your child has teeth to brush. Even little ones can learn to be adept at teeth brushing. Brush 2 to 3 times a day (what all dentists suggest!) so that it becomes a routine, not a fight. Brushing after a sugary snack is a good idea too.

If your child forgets to brush his teeth or fights you on it, adopt a “breath check” in the morning. Before your child goes out the door to school, he has to breathe on you. (It’s not the most pleasant job for a parent, but the results are effective.) If your child’s morning breath could stop a moose in its tracks, the child turns around and goes back upstairs to brush his teeth. No fighting. No questions asked. Yes, even if he is late for school. In fact, if he’s late, the better the lesson for him.

Brushing your teeth is basic hygiene that everyone should practice. Enough said?

Bedtime Battles

“It takes us about 3 hours to get the kids to bed. By the time we get through the requests for snacks, juice, water, a bedtime story, and tucking them in—only for them to pop out 10 minutes later and come downstairs—I’m so exhausted I wish I could go to bed too.”

“Aaron won’t go to sleep without my husband or me lying down next to him. The problem is, by the time one of us lies down long enough to get him to sleep, we fall asleep too. I don’t think we’ve had any ‘couple time’ for over a year!”

“I remember always seeing imaginary monsters at night when I was a kid, so I understand Anna’s fears and I’ve tried to be patient. But lately she’s been getting up so many times in the night, claiming to see monsters, that I’m starting to walk into walls. There has to be a better way.”

I’ll put it bluntly. As my pa used to say, “When it’s bedtime, it’s bedtime. Either you can walk under your own power or you can be ricocheted into bed.” All of us kids knew that once we were in bed, there was no getting out of bed. Dad was absolutely firm about that.

The point is, every child needs a set bedtime. But that bedtime can vary, depending on the age and nature of the child. For example, a 2-year-old needs a different bedtime than a 14-year-old because that 2-year-old requires more sleep. Some children require more sleep than a sibling of the same age. The only children in a family who typically go to bed at the same time are twins and triplets. Does this mean that a child can’t go to bed
before
her bedtime, if she’s tired? Of course not! But it can mean an awful lot to your oldest child to know that she could stay up 15 minutes later than the other kids if she wanted to—a sort of birthright.

For many families, bedtime becomes a battle zone of:

1. going through the child’s getting-ready-for-bed routines

2. getting the child into bed

3. getting the child back into bed when she pops out

4. making sure the child stays in bed

Children love routine, so here’s a caveat: pick your bedtime routine very carefully. Once chosen, it will be difficult to change. For example, if you have cereal as a snack or you read a bedtime story, your child, resembling a Philadelphia attorney, will
always
require
that you do those two things before he can settle down to sleep. The more complicated the routine, the longer it will take.

Every child on the planet will push to lengthen that routine. My advice, from personal experience with 5 children, is to not let that happen. If you read “just one more story,” you’ll need to do that every night. The smart parent will make routines brief and simple. I remember taking Holly, our firstborn, to bed as a child. When she was 18 months old, she’d grunt and point at the things she wanted picked up. And I, like a trained monkey, was foolish enough to do it for her. After a while I had so much stuff in my arms that I could barely hold her. Was that nuts or what?

No matter what routine you come up with, when 9:00 (or whenever bedtime is) comes, once that child is tucked into bed, it’s important that she
stays there.
When Holly was a toddler, I made the mistake of always getting her a drink of water from the
kitchen
, which Holly claimed always tasted better than the water from the nearby bathroom faucet, before she went to bed. By the time we got to Lauren, our youngest, any requests for water came from the bathroom, which was closer (by then I was smart enough to not let on to where the water came from).

Children are adept at manipulating parents . . . especially once they are in bed. They can manipulate by “needing” water and a snack (“My tummy is so hungry it’s rubbing itself raw”), seeing imaginary monsters (“Mommy, I’m scared”), claiming that they don’t feel good (“My stomach hurts”), or tattling on siblings (“Jason came into my room and scared me” or “Amanda won’t let me have my toy”). Children have a huge arsenal of things to pull out to delay bedtime and to needlessly involve their parents in sibling battles.

But what’s the purposive nature of the behavior? To get your attention. Is it working in your home? Probably, if you’re reading this! So what can you do?

Establish a bedtime routine if you don’t have one. The shorter and simpler, the better. Once that routine is established, follow it. Then, once the kids are in bed, insist firmly that’s the end. The kids need to stay in bed.

Warning: Your kids know how to play the bedtime game really well. Some kids will go to bed just fine, and you’ll heave a happy sigh. Then, a half hour later, you’ll see little eyes peering out at you from the stairway. The children will insist they need . . . well,
something
. If this sounds familiar, try this tactic: without even turning your head or acknowledging the child, simply say, “It’s bedtime. You need to go back to bed,” and return your attention to whatever you were doing. There will probably be a hesitation, perhaps even a request again for a snack, for water, or to take them back to bed, but ignore it. Simply go about your business. As far as you’re concerned, the bedtime routine is over. The bedtime job is done, and now you’re on to something else.

What about the child who shows up in your bedroom at night? If your child slithers into your bed on occasion in the middle of the night, that’s a molehill. If your kid slithers into your bed every night at 2 a.m., that’s a mountain. Why? Because your child doesn’t belong there.

With all respect to the advocates of the family bed, I believe wholeheartedly in the philosophy that every child needs a bedroom separate from their parents’. Children need a place to identify as their own space. And that’s true of a husband and wife too. How can you and your spouse develop a solid, lasting foundation—one that will continue after the children are gone—if you don’t have one place in the house where you can be with each other without interruption? How exactly can you get it on with two little bodies in bed between you?

If your child continually gets up in the middle of the night and crawls in with you, close and lock your door to keep the little disruption away. For those of you who are worriers, what’s the worse thing that can happen? You’ll wake up and find the little nipper curled up with her blankie or pillow outside your bedroom door.

Does that mean you should never comfort your child in the middle of the night? Certainly not. What I’m talking about is continual behavior, not the once-in-a-while behavior.

Thunderstorms will come and things will go bump in the night. Your child will get sick, wake up from a nightmare feeling scared, or be sad because of a real-life situation. As the parent, you are the psychological blankie for your child, and that child does need you sometimes. So here’s what I suggest for those times: keep a sleeping bag under your bed. If your child is scared and wants to feel close to you, let her know she can pull out the sleeping bag and lie down in it next to your bed without waking you up. That way your child gets the psychological closeness she craves, and you can still function the next day because you’ve had a good night’s sleep. You also retain your bed as your space in your child’s perspective.

For those of you with young children, do not climb into your kid’s bed to snuggle with her when you accompany her back to bed. If you do so, you’re reinforcing the attention-getting behavior. And you’re also violating the child’s individual space that she needs to be solely hers. If you violate her bedroom space, why would she not violate yours?