Babble

a magazine and community for the new urban parent

 

The Sleepless Generation

The unhappy results of the war on sleep-training. by Melissa Rayworth

May 12, 2008

It's ten p.m. and I can hear him in there. His baby brother is fast asleep. But my older son, Mason, is wide awake. He's leafing through comic books and sneaking out of bed, rummaging around for action figures. Just a few weeks shy of his fifth birthday, Mason can write his name, throw a baseball, even croon a wicked rendition of "Go Tell Aunt Rhody." But he hasn't learned how to go to sleep.

Bedtime is a tense negotiation, an unpredictable mix of hugs and tears and impish grins and broken promises to stay in bed. Once he crashes, it's only a matter of hours before he's at our beds