Sneaker

Devious? Moi?

The other night, while wife was at the movies, I was going through the ususal bedtime routine with the boy: "Remember, no getting out of bed like you did last night, ok?" "OK Daddy." No sooner was I down the stairs then I heard him jump out of bed and the THUNK THUNK THUNK of his feet as he ran to the stairs to come get me. "Daddy, I scared."

This was a familiar ploy of his. When we first moved here we were a little concerned that he would be frightened due to his new surroundings, so the very first night, I turned out the light and sat in his bed with him and pointed to all the shadows that could be scary and showed him what was causing them. Well, this seemed to put the wrong idea into his head, because it soon became his excuse for getting out of bed. (He had never complained about being scared before.) We'd put him to bed and after five minutes we'd see him downstairs. When he realized he was caught, he say he was scared even though he clearly wasn't. We'd go back up to bed, I'd ask him what he was scared of and he'd point to all the shadows. Sometimes he'd get up two or three times in one night with a different excuse. ("I need a toy." "I thirsty." "The Democrats are hopeless.") This went on and on for months in spite of many attempts to stop him. And he was pushing his bedtime back from the usual 7:30 to as late as 10:00 and then he'd be grumpy the next day because he would still get up at 6am, no matter how late he stayed up the night before.

One night, when our friends Andre, Marianne, and their kids came to stay with us, Soen convinced Adler to sneak with him downstairs and they hung out in the laundry room, giggling, for probably half an hour before we found them. Another night, as wife and I were going to bed we found Soen fast asleep on the laundry room floor. Who knows how long he had been there.

Finally, Michaela had had enough and she said, "If you get out of bed even one time tonight, you lose all TV, all treats, and we're taking away every single one of your dinosaurs." He got the message. All was fine for a month or two until he started up again this past week.

Meanwhile, we had decided to try to attack the waking up at he crack of dawn problem by teaching him to tell time. We have a clock that has animals on it instead of numbers. So, we told him, "No getting out of bed until this little hand is pointing to the Seal (7:00). That took a little figuring out, of course, since the Seal is rather large, comprising at least an hour-long window. So he first came down at 6:30, confident he had followed our instructions.

Anyway, after this most recent outbreak of getting out of bed--one night getting out of bed three times after promising me up and down that he wasn't ever going to do it again, and making me realize that he has no idea what the word "promise" actually means--we brought down the hammer again: Stay in bed or else no TV, no treats, and we throw away all his dinos. After pleading with us, "No, Daddy! No! I want my dinos!" (God, we're so mean) we reached an understanding.

Last night he didn't get out of bed once. And this morning, he came downstairs at 7:30, clutching his huge wall clock, to prove to us that he had waited for the little hand to get to the Seal. Victory you are MINE!