parkersanity

Well, our jack-in-the-box is doing better. He is still learning to NOT come out of his room until the blue light comes on (we set the light on a timer). This morning Ewan got up at 6am and was sitting in the chaize lounge reading a book when I heard him. I put him back in his room and told him to stay in there. Yeah, right! He got up again and I laid him back down. Next thing I know he went in Isaac's room (who was sawing logs) and turned on the light, scared Isaac and woke him up! I thought I was was going to scream. Ewan did that the day before and knew that going into Isaac's room while it is still sleep time is wrong. So off he went in his room while I held the door shut. He cried about it but he stopped trying to come out and stayed in there until the blue light came on.

I am trying to figure out what is best to do. Should I put a lock on Ewan's room? If I do that he won't learn to come out when the light comes on and we want to start training him to go potty when he first gets up rather than going in a diaper. Jon thinks we should put a lock on Isaac's door so Ewan can't go in there and wake him up.

My question is--why is it that before we put Ewan in the big boy bed he would wake up everyday somewhere between 6:45-7:15 and now that he is in the big boy bed he wakes up at 6am? He has been getting out of bed when I lay him down at night and we play the put-you-back-in-silently game. We are definitely making progress. I usually only have to do it 5-10 times and he gives up (instead of 200 3 or 4 days ago!). But what do I do for the morning time? Is it just novelty to Ewan now and once the novelty wears off he will start going back to his normal schedule? I think some of the early wake up time is because he is going to bed a little late--it has been between 7:30 and 8 instead of 7:15-7:30. He usually wakes up early if he goes to bed late. I guess novelty and a slightly late bedtime are a bad combination.

I really want to shower Ewan with praise and rewards for complying to the new big boy bed rules. I want 1 day of him doing what he is supposed to do! Even if we had some jack-in-the-box syndrome when he first went to bed and he stayed in bed all night and got up when the light goes off I think I would give him his rewards and a ton of praise. I don't get any joy in correcting him and teaching him what to do I just know it is necessary. I get a lot of joy giving him lots of praise and rewards. Right now I am hoping that this training and adjustment for Ewan goes a lot faster then potty training did. For Ewan it wasn't that he didn't know what to do he just wanted to be stubborn about it. I wonder if Ewan is someone who doesn't like change very much and this is how he deals with it....