by Shannon Lane

Created on: March 24, 2010   Last Updated: March 26, 2010

There is nothing more beautiful in this world to behold than the sight of your own sleeping child. I am a mother of two and I thought my first child was going to be the end of me. She stayed up late and got up early. We did this for four years until I had my second child. Oh bless her, she taught everyone in the house a thing or two about how to sleep. I had of course picked up a few tricks along the way from friends and fellow parents that had no effect on my first child but worked like a charm for my next one.

I made the mistake of letting my oldest set the rules. Mommy changed that up a little with my baby. Bedtime was eight o'clock and we started getting ready for that very important time at six o'clock. Slowly we would all have our dinner and take a soothing bath. I love the new lavender products on the market. They smell so good and have a calming effect. We all got good and cozy in our pajamas and dried our hair. Then I would go in their room with them and play for a bit. On the nights I had the energy, we would play the clean up game.

Story time became important either from a book or something I just made up off the top of my head. This took about twenty minutes and I used my voice as my tool. Near the end of the story I would lower my tone and volume a little and then a little more until it was time to whisper wonderful things in each of my childrens ears. I would tell them very special things about how great an beautiful they were. I would tell them how proud I was to be their Mommy and how very much I loved them.

The night lights were turned on and the tone for the night was set. My oldest stopped fighting sleep when I stopped letting her do it. She needed to see that bedtime was for everybody in the house, not just her. I also found that running a fan in the room to create a gentle white noise would help them to stay asleep against bumps in the night or sirens outside. Now, they are eleven and seven and on the weekends they get to do their own bedtime, but during the week they have no problem at all when it's bedtime. We still put on our pajamas and I still whisper the cool stuff. The only thing that has really changed is that now they read to me and they make up stories of their own.

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