Oh Brycen....

So discipline isn't our strong suit I supposed. Last night, Brycen was told he had to go to bed, no lights, no tv and go straight to sleep or he couldn't go to Fashion farms today to get a pumpkin. That was at 10pm last night. As of 2am this morning, the boy was still awake.

We have always had a problem with Brycen going to sleep at night. For a few months he had nothing in his room, no toys, no tv, nothing. Just a bed. Still, every night, he was awake. We tried having him awake by 7-8am and taking no naps yet still, 2 am rolled around and he was still awake. The only thing getting him up early did was make him super grouchy. It put us all on edge. When we forced him to stay in his empty room and go to sleep, he would SCREAM which in turn would wake the girls up. For those couple months I would sit upstairs listening to all 3 kids scream bloody murder. We spoke with Brycens doctor and the only advice he had was to give him benedryl to calm him down. This didn't work either. We tried time out, spankens, rewards, punishment, everything. Nothing worked. We stopped giving him anything to eat or drink after 6pm and that worked...for like a day. We came to the conclusion that no matter what we did, Brycen stayed awake. When he had nothing in his room, he would escape at night once we were in bed and hang out downstairs. We were at the end of our rope so thats when we decided to move all his toys and tv back in his room. Has that solved his sleeping problem? Not at all. What is has done though is it keeps him in his room. He now relaxes at night while watching a movie and he no longer wakes the girls up with his constant screaming. Is it the ideal move? No. Its not. He beat us. He won. Slowly though we are pushing our way back. At first his tv time and toy time was unlimited. Now, his tv goes off a little while after Brad gets home. We are taking things away little by little and hoping that helps.

A lot of people would be mortified if they knew this is how we raise our child but, its the way we have chosen to do it. It actually seems to be working too. Are we going to be in for more problems as he gets older with tv addiction and sleep deprivation? Maybe. Or maybe, our odd parenting style may just work for Brycen and by the time he's 5 he is going to bed at a normal bedtime with no tv and no toys and no lights and is bright eyed and bushy tailed for school. We aren't going to harm our children. We will make sure they get the amount of sleep they need and we won't let tv corrupt their minds. Right now though, he's 3.....