The beauty of babywise for us has been predictability and routine. As a mom that works full-time outside of our home, I need our schedule to run as smoothly as possible and I need to be able to maximize our time. I have worked full-time since before we had children, and I knew as soon as I was pregnant that I wanted an approach with routine. I have a set work schedule, I have a fairly set routine at work, I drive home the same way…I thrive on order. However, I need a schedule that works for us, which may be look different than a typical babywise routine, so I love that I can be flexible as well.
The predictability and parallel flexibility came into focus this past week, in particular, while I was on vacation with my two children. They have had a fairly set routine for the past 3-5 years, but last week they had more disruptions than normal. It was our first “long” car trip, and we arrived over 3 hours later than expected (2 hours after bedtime), missed naps three days during traveling, went to bed late almost every night, and switched our daughter to a full-sized bed the day we got back.
While I would not recommend that many disruptions in one week, our kids did amazing. They are so used to resting or napping every day and getting up at the same time that they never even blinked an eye when I told them they still needed to nap. In fact, my 5 year old napped every single day we were at my grandparent’s house. Only one night did they balk at being in an unfamiliar room in a farmhouse without air conditioning and it might have had something to do with a fudgesicle right before bed during a thunderstorm 🙂 Twice my three-year old asked for it to be rest time. Yes, she was on the tired side but I can assure you I can count on one hand (maybe one finger) the number of times she has actually asked to go lay down.
This is definitely an unusal babywise story that doesn’t happen every day but I wanted to encourage those of you especially in the throws of toddlerhood! Take courage that protecting naptime and missing events to prioritize sleep will pay off!! Ironically it does bring flexibility because you have such well-rested children the vast majority of time you can make exceptions easily as they get older. You can also work and find ways to follow babywise. The ability to enjoy a vacation with my well-rested, mostly well-behaved, sweet as all get out children on a short week of vacation with lots of disruptions is priceless! I truly believe that without the years of teaching and training and routine that this week would have been borderline disasterous.
Just in case you were wondering, the transition to the full-sized bed was seamless!
Bethany from thegracefulmom.com