Bedtime

When we achieve tantrums at a rate of 4 or 5 per hour, I know it is time to throw the kids into bed early.

Bedtime revolves around reading. First there is snack time where I read aloud to the kids. We’re just getting into Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson. I can tell that a book is really working for the kids when I glance up and see that all eating has ceased and all four kids have their eyes riveted on me to hear what happens next. I love that feeling. I love trying to make the voices distinct and hearing them laugh when the book is funny. Tonight they protested when I stopped. It is tempting to just keep reading because we’re all having fun, but I have to leave space for the other bedtime reading.

The second iteration of reading is when the kids read to themselves in bed. Link and Gleek are both assigned to do a certain amount of reading each day. Right before sleep has proven to be the best time for this. The kids are attached to this time as well. They object mightily if I try to skip or shorten it. If I did not require lights out, they would keep reading until they were physically unable to keep their eyes open anymore. Link would probably run out of books before that happened. Finding books that appeal to him has been tricky because pages full of small type are still daunting to him. Gleek is undaunted. She reads all sorts of things. Patch doesn’t read yet. Sometimes I have Link read to him. Sometimes I come read to him. Sometimes he just looks at books or plays quietly in bed.

Kiki stays up later than the other kids. Partly this is because she is older, but mostly it is because putting Kiki and Gleek in the same room to fall asleep is just asking for a squabble. Life is much smoother if Gleek is already asleep before Kiki heads to bed. Sometimes Link objects to this unfairness, but his objections have yet to change the way I run things. Kiki did not used to participate in the reading aloud time. But for the last little while she has been just as interested as the other kids. That is the magic of Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. I had to do some adapting to read the text aloud. Pratchett is prone to long dialogues without much attribution, but I just sprinkled in a few names to help the kids keep track of who was speaking. It worked well. Now we’re into Alcatraz and Kiki isn’t sitting right at the table as she did for Pratchett, but she’s making sure she can hear. I suspect she’ll be back at the table before the book is over.

With all the reading, and “early” bedtime still ends up being 8:30 or 9 pm. I’m trying to increment that earlier on the theory that the high ratio of tantrums per hour is probably related to insufficient sleep. Also I need to make sure there is a solid after school snack. Low blood sugar is also a tantrum precipitator. Also I need more sleep so that I’m better at addressing the precursors to tantrums so that full fledged tantrums are nipped before they bloom.