"She tells me she wants to keep playing. I tell her I know she must be frustrated that it's time to go to bed and I know how she feels, and how about I set a timer for two minutes so that she can wrap up what she's doing? After the timer goes off, I give her the choice of putting on pajamas or brushing her teeth first to give her autonomy,"
"After the two-minute timer, she'll dramatically thrash herself onto the floor and declare that I'm the worst mom ever. At which point I'll grit my teeth and calmly ask her about the tooth brushing or pajama picking. She'll choose pajamas and then dilly-dally about instead of actually putting them on and explode at me when I ask her for the fifth time to put them on, pretty please, like we discussed."
Bedtime routines often start with calm, scripted gentle-parenting steps: acknowledging feelings, setting a brief timer, offering choices, and expecting cooperative pajamas or teeth brushing. Reality frequently diverges, with a child delaying, throwing tantrums, declaring parental failure, and using dramatic resistance like going "boneless." Repeated prompts lead to escalating parental fatigue and scripted emotional acknowledgment cycles that fail to produce compliance. Parents often resort to physically helping or managing power struggles despite attempts at autonomy and validation. The process becomes repetitive, exhausting, and comically reminiscent of circular children's stories where one action triggers another.
Read at Scary Mommy
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