Worth the Hype, 2

Mom's Advice

Boy oh boy. It has been a rough, rough ride here in the Love family household for the past few weeks. There's been next to no sleep because I'm an idiot. You all read about my brilliant, easy transition to the BBCB, right? And the followup that showed the downward slope the transition was taking? Well...it's just been...oi. I've never felt so defeated in my life. This less-than-3-year-old was ruling my world and I was just at a complete loss.
The fatal flaw in the BBCB transfer was the oversight of the bottle. You may not like how Bush handled the whole WMD thing but, trust me, it was nothing compared to the great bottle oversight of '07. Duh, duh, duh! You do NOT put a child into a sleeping arrangement without bars BEFORE you wean him from a bottle!!! You take the bottle when he can't do anything about it except cry in the dark.
So, we took the bottle away. His heart broke, my heart broke. We just broke. We broke down - seriously broke down. Once the sobbing turned into pitiful whimpering (over the course of several days) he decided that if he couldn't have a bottle to sleep with then he would self-medicate with all manner of distraction. Mainly, playing in his room and not taking naps anymore. Which, oh - my - gosh, he still needs.
The whole thing spirled downward to the point where he wasn't going to sleep at night until he fell asleep on the floor, then he'd wake up all disoriented and freaked out in the middle of the night and would take an hour to calm down again. He'd refuse to take a nap and his behavior during the normal waking hours was turning the whole family into schizophrenics with ticks.
We have removed everything from his room - there's nothing except his dresser and the bed. We have spanked and spanked and spanked - to no avail. We have used "blackout" techniques. We've tried rewards. We've tried praying. I have no hope, I can't think of a single thing that we havn't tried. Until!
Ahh, ahhh, ahhh - enter, mom. She gives me advice.
I bring up the carseat. I put him in it. He sees that he is in a desperate situation and sobs. I tell him it's a warning - if he gets out of bed then it's the seat for him: he'll stay there until he falls asleep. I let him out of the seat, he climbs in bed.
We have now had 4 bed-time successes and I've never even had to use the seat. Just the mention of it makes him cry. He hasn't gotten out of bed once and he's such a doll when he's gotten enough sleep! Happy, happy Loves.
Worth the Hype 2: Mom's Advice