Stick with Your Routine

“Bedtime is 1AM.”
  

•      At bedtime, there would always be a story to tell, a lullaby to I cannot stress enough how important it is to cultivate a routine that works for you and to allow for special exceptions at special times. 
  
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Routine is very important to kids.  For different reasons, it also makes so much sense for parents, too. 
  
  
  My sister is a wonderful parent, yet she had a bedtime practice that just wouldn’t have worked for me.  When her kids were preschoolers, bedtime was 7PM sometimes, or maybe 1AM as needed.  Now, I can imagine an odd but successful schedule for preschoolers in which bedtime is 1AM every night.  Perhaps one parent is home nightly only 11PM on.  Then bedtime is 1AM.  Note that after the word bedtime comes is, not maybe.  There is no modifying adverb, and 1AM does not get modified either.  Routine again works in our favor. 
  
  
  Guerilla Tip:  When you know what’s good, don’t get caught up with what’s natural.  Shakespeare’s work is not natural.  His man-made creations are loved because they are unnaturally good.  

•        As a kid, I had the worst time falling asleep, and I had nightmares to look forward to.
  
  Guerilla Tip:  When a kid tells you she can’t fall asleep, be tender and supportive.  Tell her in your own words, “I am not asking you to sleep; I’m asking you to keep your eyes closed.  Give the Sandman a chance to find you, Honey.  See you in the morning.” 
  

   
  

•      At bedtime, there would always be a story to tell, a lullaby to sing or a combination of the two.  If kids couldn’t agree on one fairytale, they got a hybrid of two, say Cinderella and the Three Bears.  Fables about witches who oven-roasted her visitors were not my favorites.  If kids were not calm and quiet after one story, they did not get a further story time ritual, but they could watch me sitting in the hallway with my own reading.  That way they got some halfway company for a bit longer. 
  
  I hit upon a good formula for the perennial cycle kids have of asking for more water and more bathroom visits, then of provoking the inevitable fight about when it all ends.  Instead, I told the kids they could help themselves to water—”Too late for juice or milk”—and to the toilet, without asking.  Therefore, I took myself out of the loop of arguing when enough is enough. 
  
  Hearing five or 10 stories pales by comparison to a passionate, real-live action drama between parent and kid with tempers and nostrils flaring.  Adults have a name for such push and pull games. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  A sweet bedtime cannot compete with a fiery one.  Water, okay.  Toilet, very good.  Engaging in drama at bedtime, no thank you.  

•      Dr. Benjamin Spock in his landmark guide of 1945, Baby and Child Care, advised feeding babies by the clock—regular feeding hours.  Dr. Spock was practical and calming to the new parent, he was an MD and parents followed his advice.  He also suggested watching digestion and demand, then using a little flexibility based on them. 
  
  By contrast, he warned that parents who normally worked days and slept nights but fed their baby completely on demand create their own difficulties.  “They have gotten the idea that the more they give up for the baby the better it is for the child, or that they have to prove they are good parents by ignoring their own convenience.” 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Giving up more for your baby does not by itself improve baby’s life or yours.  You can be a perfectly reasonable parent without ignoring your own needs, even your own convenience.  Keep it all in the mix. 
  
  Paradoxically, a page later he wrote, “If your baby is still asleep when one of these regular feeding hours comes around, you can wake her up.”  Whatever happened to letting sleeping dogs lie?  Wake a sleeping baby to honor a timetable?  Where is the flexibility here, and who is in charge, the clock?  Putting them to bed according to a routine does not imply waking them up for food. 
  
  Waking a baby reminds me of hospital staff who wake patients up recuperating from surgery to check their vital signs.  Granted I am no nurse, but sleeping soundly after surgery is more than a godsend for the patient, but its own vital sign that the healing is proceeding well.  Waking the patient up is by no means for the patient’s sake, but to cover the staff:  “He had a pulse when my shift began.” 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  If you are sitting by a relative’s bedside in the hospital and the staff hates you, you are doing an excellent job. 

•      Some kids are irresistibly drawn to fire.  Rather than give them ideas with the hollow “Don’t play with matches,” I looked for every chance to handle fire together with them.  What happened behind my back, of course, I did not know, but at least when we were together, I was supervising, lighting the oven safely and showing trust. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Trust your kid even if you were not raised on trust yourself. 
  
  One example of trust is that it was Daniel’s regular job to blow out the havdala candle signifying the end of the Sabbath.  That was an important honor for him because he knew I ‘got it,’ which means I got him, too. 
  
  “Don’t play with matches,” by the way, is heard by kids as “Don’t play with matches when you are near me.”  Co-worker Marge E., of Plainsboro, NJ, used to tell me she thought her mother was a witch for sensing whenever the kids had been playing with fire.  Together with friends, Marge would roast potatoes for an hour on an open fire in an empty city lot, and then come inside.  How did her mother ever know? 
  

•      My mother’s neighbor Linda M. of Jerusalem was mother of two, one a mildly retarded boy named Yair.  This may be my mistaken classification, but I had interactive conversations with Yair where he held his own simply but clearly. 
  
  When he was about 12, my mother told me that he came over to Linda during the silent prayer of Kedushah, and Linda gestured softly she could not talk to him just then.  My mother, who strongly identified with her selfless self-image, thought it was cruel to treat a retarded boy that way.  I had my silent take on things and apparently so did Linda. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  Most kids can follow rules over time, and teaching them the ways of the world gently is the very best way to mainstream them all.  If it ever becomes clear that the lesson cannot be learned, it can always be dropped later. 
  
  For example, table manners are important to teach kids, including those with limitations.  So says writer Temple Grandin, who had her own ‘experiences’ coping with and compensating for Asperger syndrome. 
  
  Guerilla Tip:  The ideal is to mainstream every kid, starting from birth.