Hello,

In my last post, I talked about the success we have with using timer.

Another important item in my home is alarm clock. It has made the biggest impact in our daily life. Our kids' nanny once complimented us saying that our two girls have the best sleeping habit she has ever seen (only among a dozen of Chinese kids she cared for) and she urged me to share the trick with you all.

Here is the story. A while ago, we used to say it loud when it was time to go to bed. The two girls always tried to drag it out for a few more minutes. Then I read some parenting book talking about using an alarm clock to signal the beginning of a bedtime routine. We started using it. It was only after a couple of weeks of practice, the two girls would get ready in less than 30 seconds (grab her water bottle and pajamas and say goodnight to everyone) once the alarm clock goes off. Then my husband and I would each take one girl and read a couple of story books before turning off the lights. The best part is that it makes the afternoon nap a piece of cake also. We used to worry about how our nanny would handle two baby girls during nap time since before I went back to work (when my younger one was 3-month-old and my older one was one and half), my older one had to have someone stay with her till she fell completely to sleep. My younger one had to be rocked to sleep. Once the evening routine with alarm clock got established, our nanny started to use the same alarm clock for the afternoon nap. Now when the time goes off after lunch and some quite play, the two girls would each run to their own room and wait for her (or us during weekend) to put them into bed and say goodbye. We rarely have any headaches dealing with getting them to nap or night sleep.

Our luck with alarm clock didn't stop here. My older one seems to be a typical first child and can't wait to be with the adults once she is awake every morning (while my younger one can play with herself happily for quite a while after waking up). But the problem was during summer time, she often got up too early after seeing lights coming through from the side of the curtain. She would often call for us when it was 5-6am. We concerned about her not having enough sleep besides dealing with the interruption of our own sleep. We realized that the root of the problem was that she didn't know how to tell it's time to get up (actually she thought morning sunlight signals wakeup time). After having a great success with the alarm clock for getting them into bed, my husband was so clever figuring out that we could use alarm clock to get her out of bed also. As you might have guessed, it worked like a charm. After explaining to her that she should wait for the alarm clock to go off before getting up and practicing it for a week, she now keeps sleeping till the alarm goes off. The best part is that she is always very content every morning instead of in the old days calling for us and waiting for us to go to her room and telling her that she needs to go back to sleep since it was "too early". It works beautifully now she goes to half-day pre-school in the morning. She just follows the same time schedule every morning.

Hope our little trick would help to make some of your life a little easier.
ChiuLan

P.S. The alarm clocks we use were bought in China. They
are very cute often with little birds/duck/cat saying
nice songs.