Bedtime can be a battleground for babysitters.
The kids may have been well behaved and reasonably easy
to control all evening but as soon as bedtime is mentioned – chaos
can ensue!
You need to establish why the suggestion of bedtime is creating such resistance.
It may just be that they’ve had such a great evening with you that they
don’t want it to end. In which case – good job! If this is the reason,
a little bribery comes in handy.
Offering to read a bedtime story – and therefore to prolong the fun a little
longer - can often get them into their pyjamas and into bed. Make the story as
long as you can and read it in a quiet, soothing, fairly monotonous voice. We’re
aiming to calm them down here – so forget interactive or over-stimulating
stories.
‘Last one into bed is a …’
If more than one child is involved in the bedtime rebellion, it is tempting
to try and turn it into a race, just to get the little darlings under the
covers. But this can backfire. The last child into bed may be upset to be
last and the first one in will get horribly overexcited.
A calmer way to achieve the same outcome is to offer to read a story once all
the children are in their pyjamas with their teeth brushed. That way, they
are more likely to encourage and help each other rather than fight to be the
winner.
What’s the routine?
This is where doing your background preparation really pays off. Hopefully,
you are babysitting for kids who do have a usual bedtime routine – which
you will have previously asked Mom or Dad to explain, in detail.
If you look at it from the child’s point of view, they have already had
a very different evening to their usual – so they are probably expecting
bedtime to be different too. If you know their routine, well done! Now it’s
just a case of following it and being fairly firm.
If there is no usual routine, which is becoming more common, it will be harder
to convince them that it really is bedtime. Again, be gently firm and consistent
until they realise they’re not going to win this one.
I want Mommy…
Bedtime is often the point when the child realises that Mom and Dad really
are out for the night and they may become scared or tearful. Reassure them
that Mom and Dad are just out having a nice time and they will be back very
soon. Again, with smaller children, a little gentle bribery often works.
Help the child to imagine how proud Mom and Dad will be that they went to bed
without a fuss and were so good and well behaved. You could make a simple star
chart on a piece of paper and for each thing the child does well throughout
the evening, put a sticky gold star on the page. The child gets to keep the
chart to proudly show Mom and Dad.
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