Re: midnight party animals

[Guest guest]

>We just know because all her toys are everywhere and her >clothes are dumped

from her drawers or we find her on the >floor or sleeping under her bed. We

have an outside hook and >eye lock on her door so the rest of us can sleep

knowing >she's safe. I have to say that the melatonin has helped

>though.

LOL, is usually quietly sneaky, too. Some mornings, the only way we know

that he's had a party in his room during the night is from the evidence he's

neglected to hide: the small round clock is on the floor (spinnable!) and all of

the cassette tapes are out of the basket (he must've been choosing a different

artist than the one we had in his tape player).

It can be *really* frustrating to try to get him back to sleep in the middle of

the night. I don't know why we continue to persist; you can't *make* someone

sleep, no matter how well you set the stage for it. We're finding with

that if one of us hears him when he just starts to wake up, we can sometimes

tell him to lay down, tuck him in, turn his tape player on quietly (the same

routine we have at bedtime), and he'll go back to sleep. Othertimes, we'll hear

him getting back out of bed and bumbling around his room, and we just have to

try to pretend we don't hear him, so *we* can get back to sleep.

The hook and eye on the outside of the door provide great peace of mind. I felt

like a Bad Mom when we first put it up, but it doesn't really work to have a kid

roaming the house unattended in the middle of the night! And is

amazingly accepting of his plight when he tries to open his door once, and it

doesn't open. Then he just quietly starts his party...

We are going to start logging everything to see if we can find what triggers

this midnight party spirit.

Joni and , 6