The long goodnights

It sounded like a very sound piece of advice. Books, experts and others who’ve come before us have been espousing the need for a bedtime routine. Unfortunately, I have to admit, we have fallen short in this area.

When Matthew was born, we decided to have a baby-led practice which, we believe, required us to be sensitive to the needs of the child. This was how we knew when to feed him, when to let him rest and when to play. Remarkably, we found ourselves to have some sort of schedule which certainly made our lives easier than expected. It changed as he grew, but only to be replaced by other periods of routine. Of course, we made sure that he had the correct amount of nutrition, rest and all around health, but there were two things we weren’t fans of: the crying-it-out system and enforcing rigid rules on a baby who wouldn’t understand what it all meant.

Now that we have a toddler nearing his 18th month, things have definitely changed. The helpless infant has grown into an alert and active child, who has his own ideas of how things should be done. I’d like to think we’re pretty cool parents; we don’t put our kid in a corner and impose silence on him (the “kids are to be seen, not to be heard” of older generations), nor do we force him to do things that are beyond his skill level (the need to be an overachiever or “perfect”). Our guiding rule has always to treat each other with respect—keeping in mind that we all have feelings and want to be heard— never mind that this one-year old can be a challenging companion at times.

Never is it more of an ordeal than announcing bedtime to a child who thinks otherwise. It becomes more difficult knowing that you can’t rationalize, or even bribe, this kid to close his eyes and get his rest. A routine is something we haven’t quite established, as the time of sleep depends on a variety of things. Instead, we have established sleep cues.

After cleaning up, I give Matthew a little massage in a dimly lit room. We dress for bed and read books. Music is played—always music from one of his bedtime playlists—which has been setting the mood for sleeptime for the past 18 months. And then we wait.

Toddlers are experts in delay, I just read. When he refuses to sleep, it becomes a stalemate. Sometimes he cries (attention-demanding cries, not hurt cries), stands up in his crib and I put him back down and he calms down for a while, and the cycle repeats itself until he is exhausted. Sometimes it takes a bottle to give him that last signal that convinces him that bedtime has come. Other times, we let him stay in our bed where he tosses and turns until he falls asleep. More often than not we turn off all the lights and if we’re lucky he falls asleep quickly. If we’re not so lucky, sleep comes after two hours of being in bed in the dark.

As I type though, Matthew is in our bed putting himself to sleep. We’ve gone through our bedtime steps, after resisting his crib, he calmed down on our bed. I see him peek at me and sometimes even go to the edge to see how I’ll react, and when I tell him to lie down he clambers back to his pillow. He’s quiet and obedient and patiently waiting for sleep to come, a situation I find to be miraculous.

Sleepy.

I would hope, then, that this is a sign that I am doing something right. That I’m still being sensitive to his needs. That by choosing to not tyrannically impose bedtime on my terms, we are both able to have peaceful evenings. The great thing is, this isn’t the first time or the second time. Many, many times, with just a little flexibility, I end up with a compliant child who peacefully sleeps through the night.

The music has now stopped, and the only sounds to be heard are my keyboard keys clicking as I typed and the white noise of the air conditioner. It was a long night, indeed, but somehow Matthew proved to me again how easy it can be. Routine or no routine, we got bedtime down pretty okay. Then again, tomorrow is another day.

Done

Just a quick note. I am posting from Los Banos, where a few hours ago, I had Matthew’s tongue tie surgically cut. We’re here because my mom and ninang, who helped us finance this, chose the doctor. He was very nice and very good, by the way.

Everything is okay now, he’s asleep after a very tiring day. It was uneventful as expected (except for a nasty anesthesiologist who told me that I had to “control” the crying child because he can’t sedate him that way. I literally shook in anger and told him he need not be stern as I wouldn’t know that piece of information thank you. By the time it surgery came, he was all nice. Probably realized belatedly that a mother’s ire is not something to be courted.) Matthew cried a lot when the IV was placed (to hydrate him, and later to administer the anesthesia). I can only empathized—I detest those things. (I even feel the needle after they take it out, and I feel that if I move a millimeter, it will break under my skin. I think my son takes after me.)

Anyway, I saw Matthew’s released tongue just once so far: when he spat out food to signal he was done eating. But that was after he demanded for solids when wanted to restrict him to milk and mashed food first. He had not taken anything else by mouth since 10am because he was scheduled for general anesthesia. I found it though a very good sign that he had a hearty appetite after surgery.

Well, that’s over and done with. My boy and I still have a busy schedule ahead. Tomorrow, we head back to Manila and straight to a product launch! But then again, I don’t think the Matthew’s quite aware of what happened to him. I wonder though if he remembered what it feels to be drugged. The sedated look in his eyes was quite a sight, I must say.

Parental Guidance

As parents, we always need all the help we can get. Today, more and more, the internet is proving to be a viable and efficient venue for finding resources to help parents deal with most any kind of issue. The online way of finding answers, support, reassurance, and even company has become a vital part of everyday life.

So much so that in addition to the already-exiting gamut of parenting websites, a novel idea still manages to come through. Parentography is a community where parents can share details that typically aren’t found on the usual travel websites, such as which restaurants have kids’ menus and highchairs available and which hotels offer kiddie pools. Besides reviews, members can also describe excursions, highlighting a string of activities and places.

Parents can share stories, photos, excursion ideas, ratings and reviews on all sorts of family-friendly places and activities. They can search for things to do by location, season, children’s age and other important factors. Parents can comment on other parents’ ideas and suggestions, look up the profiles of the parents who posted each review or excursion to learn more about them and their families, and use the interactive map to discover new adventures right under their noses.

As far as I can tell, it’s not limited to US options. But it’s fairly new, so the information is only minimal still. But it has good potential, I believe. After all, what good is it to be alive and well in this day and age if we don’t maximize the ways to be connected? Reviews for parents, by parents… a pretty fine idea, don’t you think?

Learning to make friends

In an effort to encourage the development of Matthew’s skills, we enrolled him in Gymboree classes. A cramped and hot house, with no community park nearby or even just neighbors to play with, did not make for an ideal situation for a growing toddler. We’ve been taking him to play at Gymboree since he was a few months old, but this is a new commitment to have him take classes wherein he will be exposed to a bit of structured instructions and classmates to interact with.

The “classmates” bit is what I was most after. Playmates, actually, more than anything. Children his own age. While my friends do have their own children, we don’t get together often enough to let the kids play. And even then, there aren’t really a lot of them. My brother has a son Matthew’ age, but geography and schedules also make it difficult for the two to meet and play. On my husband’s side, Matthew is the ninth grandchild, the eldest being eighteen already, and the one he followed being five. Playschool seemed to be a good alternative to a respectable social setting.

Since we enrolled him in two classes, we had access to unlimited play as well (as long as there were no other classes or reservations going on). Thus, Matthew has become a regular, whether accompanied by myself or my husband, at Gymboree where he get to run, climb, crawl, slide, jump, rock and scale to his heart’s content. And while he’s still content with parallel play, he’s starting to become aware of other children now.

What I did not expect was that I would also get to benefit from social interaction as well. Most of the adult companions of the children in Gymboree are the hired caretakers or nannies. There are parents sometimes, who mostly give each other a polite smile or at most idle chitchat.

To my surprise, last week, I met a mom who wasn’t just sociable, but really friendly and interested. While she tended to her daughter and I ran after my son, we had snatches of conversation which ranged from our difficulties of hiring and keeping a yaya, to the joys of being a hands-on parent, to emergency room stories, to the little fears we have about our kids.

Her daughter is a few months younger than Matthew, which encouraged a lot of questions. This is quite new for me, as I am used to being the one asking the questions to my more experienced friends. That day, I was answering questions about how I manage tantrums, how we taught Matthew to stay in his pushchair, what kind of diet I prescribe for my child. We compared notes, made our comments and observations known, and by the time our husbands had come for us, we realized that there was a certain affinity formed.

As I recounted my experience to my husband later on, I told him, “She’s lucky. She asks a lot of questions.” See, in my experience, mothers tend to keep things to themselves. We consult many books, websites, articles, and other sources of information, but we also try our best to let other people not doubt our capabilities. There seems to be a collective determination to make mothers appear as perfect— they who know exactly what to do, easily manages all tasks that need to be accomplished, are never too tired or too busy for everything and everyone around her. We seldom ask the questions that let others think for an instant that something’s amiss. In effect, while we don’t mean to, we tend to isolate ourselves and become resentful when no one knows what’s going on.

In one afternoon of asking questions and observing, another mother had benefited from my experience. But I must say that I feel lucky too, to have been given a chance to form a bond with another mother that tells me that I am not alone. While in theory it is easy to dismiss that fear, the reality is harder to deal with.

We didn’t get to exchange numbers that day, though. But I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing more of each other in the weeks to come. I expect that we’re lucky that way.