Hellobee

I last shared the ups and downs of Miss H’s transition to a twin bed. Overall, she’s doing really, really well! But she does have a tendency to stall at bedtime. And she does ask sometimes to sleep in our bed, or have us lay in her bed for a really, really long time. Teaching her way back when that we all sleep in our own beds has been incredibly helpful during this transition. Sometimes I’ll joke around when we’re playing that I’m just going to fall asleep in her bed because it’s so comfortable and she quickly reminds me, “No mommy – you sleep in your bed!” Despite this I felt like we needed to have another surefire way to encourage Miss H to go to bed without too many stalling tactics and to stay in her bed.

I present to you the penny jar!

Yep, it’s a jar and 5 pennies. Super, super simple. Each morning if Miss H has gone to bed well the night before and generally slept well in her bed, she earns a penny which she gets to put in the jar. After earning 5 pennies she gets to earn a prize (a book, small toy, etc.) or a trip out (to the library, coffee shop, etc). If she has a terrible, terrible bedtime that involves her getting out of her bed a million times and not listening, then she could even chance getting a penny taken away.

So far Miss H has earned a penny every night, has never had one taken away, and has earned three prizes. Some nights bedtime is a breeze and we barely have to bring up the pennies. On other nights we have to bring it up quite a bit – “Do you want to get that penny for tonight?” “You only have to earn 1 more penny and then you get a prize! Now be a good listener, lay down, and go to sleep.”

I chose to do 5 pennies  because I figured 5 good bedtimes was a pretty good streak, but it wouldn’t take too long for her to earn a prize. Without the payoff of the reward it would be difficult to motivate her each night.

Part of me struggles with the balance between motivating her while not spoiling her. However, we’re incredibly taxed right now with caring for the twins while still giving Miss H plenty of attention, and tackling a tough bedtime with Miss H night after night would be incredibly difficult for us. We get very little downtime these days from our beloved kiddos, so the 1-2 hours each night after the kids are in bed and before we go to sleep is precious. And I know that we won’t be doing this forever.

Instead of making this an expensive endeavor, we are using things we have on hand or need to buy anyway. We held back a couple of Miss H’s Christmas gifts from us and from friends because we felt like Christmas was going to be too overwhelming. We’ve had other things, such as a new bubble bath, that we wanted to buy for Miss H so we are using those things as prizes. Toddlers get excited by small, silly things so it’s easy to find great prizes for her that we needed to buy anyway.

Have you used incentives to help encourage your LO to sleep or do you think it’s going overboard?