The Mean Witch
A while ago, Walt's sister Cathy gave Devon a book called The Peace Book, a sort of hippie paeon to many different ideas of what peace is. The book has a very particular structure: each page has a caption paired with an illustration like the following...
Peace is watching it snow. [illustration]
Peace is keeping the water blue for all the fish. [illustration]
Etc.
The other day I was reading this to Devon, and about 3 pages in she asked me, "Who is Peace?"
"Well, peace is a feeling."
"But who is Peace?"
I didn't have an answer (unless, of course, you count Jimmy Carter).
Walt and I have finally entered the digital age, and all I can say is that it's really come back to bite us in the ass. The good part about it is that we finally got a new TV, and wow is it nice (Ed, may your TV rest on peace). We've been thinking about it for a while, but it's just seemed really extravagant. Then one of the guys at Dolby recommended a specific brand (they're all home theater geeks there, from what I can tell), and then we happened to be in Costco recently and there was the TV. We bought it and haven't looked back...
For the longest time, we've been anti-TV (not for us, of course, just for Devon) and haven't let her watch any TV. A couple of months ago we decided that we'd let her watch some classic musicals, so we bought some DVDs -- The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz -- and instituted "movie night." On Saturday we eat dinner and watch a musical.
Devon became obsessed with The Wizard of Oz and wanted to watch it over and over (not surprising, since there's loads of research about young kids learning via repetition -- and the TV show Blue's Clues was groundbreaking by airing the same show for a week). After several viewings of the Wizard of Oz, we had the perfect storm of events: we got Devon a "big girl bed" (aka a twin mattress) and I think she suddenly started to understand the plot of the movie. So we moved her crib out of the room and Walt spent a whole day assembling her new bedframe (apparently we bought the world's most complicated bedframe). At first she was really excited about the bed, but then when it got to be time to go to bed, she didn't want to get in bed -- and not only that, but she didn't want to even stay in her room.
After a while, we figured out that she thought the "mean witch" was hiding in her room -- and very likely, the removal of the crib (the only bed she can remember) just excaberted her anxiety. Now we've spent the last week with her wanting to either sleep on the couch (in the living room) or in our bed. Ugh!
We just started a program that we're hoping will lure her back to her room at least (at this point, I don't even care if she sleeps in the bed): sleepy stickers. If she sleeps all night in her room (and hence we get some uninterrupted sleep), she gets 1 sticker. After 5 stickers, she gets a special prize (TBD). And after 25, she gets a big prize. So far we've only had a 50-50 success rate with this -- the night before last, she agreed to sleep on the floor in her room and slept through the night. This was the first night we tried it. Walt said the first thing she said when she got up in the morning was, "Where's my sticker?" Last night, unfortunately, was a total dud -- she was up twice and finally got into our bed at about 4am. We're really hoping that if we can get her up to at least 5 stickers, the prize will be an incentive to keep doing it. If this fails, we'll be pulling our hair out to come up with another idea...
Peace is watching it snow. [illustration]
Peace is keeping the water blue for all the fish. [illustration]
Etc.
The other day I was reading this to Devon, and about 3 pages in she asked me, "Who is Peace?"
"Well, peace is a feeling."
"But who is Peace?"
I didn't have an answer (unless, of course, you count Jimmy Carter).
Walt and I have finally entered the digital age, and all I can say is that it's really come back to bite us in the ass. The good part about it is that we finally got a new TV, and wow is it nice (Ed, may your TV rest on peace). We've been thinking about it for a while, but it's just seemed really extravagant. Then one of the guys at Dolby recommended a specific brand (they're all home theater geeks there, from what I can tell), and then we happened to be in Costco recently and there was the TV. We bought it and haven't looked back...
For the longest time, we've been anti-TV (not for us, of course, just for Devon) and haven't let her watch any TV. A couple of months ago we decided that we'd let her watch some classic musicals, so we bought some DVDs -- The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz -- and instituted "movie night." On Saturday we eat dinner and watch a musical.
Devon became obsessed with The Wizard of Oz and wanted to watch it over and over (not surprising, since there's loads of research about young kids learning via repetition -- and the TV show Blue's Clues was groundbreaking by airing the same show for a week). After several viewings of the Wizard of Oz, we had the perfect storm of events: we got Devon a "big girl bed" (aka a twin mattress) and I think she suddenly started to understand the plot of the movie. So we moved her crib out of the room and Walt spent a whole day assembling her new bedframe (apparently we bought the world's most complicated bedframe). At first she was really excited about the bed, but then when it got to be time to go to bed, she didn't want to get in bed -- and not only that, but she didn't want to even stay in her room.
After a while, we figured out that she thought the "mean witch" was hiding in her room -- and very likely, the removal of the crib (the only bed she can remember) just excaberted her anxiety. Now we've spent the last week with her wanting to either sleep on the couch (in the living room) or in our bed. Ugh!
We just started a program that we're hoping will lure her back to her room at least (at this point, I don't even care if she sleeps in the bed): sleepy stickers. If she sleeps all night in her room (and hence we get some uninterrupted sleep), she gets 1 sticker. After 5 stickers, she gets a special prize (TBD). And after 25, she gets a big prize. So far we've only had a 50-50 success rate with this -- the night before last, she agreed to sleep on the floor in her room and slept through the night. This was the first night we tried it. Walt said the first thing she said when she got up in the morning was, "Where's my sticker?" Last night, unfortunately, was a total dud -- she was up twice and finally got into our bed at about 4am. We're really hoping that if we can get her up to at least 5 stickers, the prize will be an incentive to keep doing it. If this fails, we'll be pulling our hair out to come up with another idea...
posted by Devon Szalva at
10:16 PM
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