About a month or so ago, Britton got into one of her phases where she didn't want to stay in bed. She didn't want to get into bed with us, she didn't want to play, she just kept getting out of bed for no reason. Almost always in the middle of the night. So I came up with the idea of a sleep fairy that leaves you treats for staying in bed. I had it all planned out. I'd get one of those dollar birdhouses from Joanns, decorate it with moons and glitter (side note: A coworker referred to glitter as "the herpes of the craft world" this week. Yes, absolutely, yes) and leave it outside her door. If she stayed in bed all night, the sleep fairy would leave a nickel or a Starburst, or whatever the hubs and I could scrounge up that Britton wouldn't instantly recognize as coming out of her stash of stuff. I understand that there is a subset of parents who think bribing their kids to behave is horrendous. I'm not in that group.
But then I had to go snooping around the internet, and discovered that someone had already thought up a sleep fairy and had written a book. A book! What a great idea! I checked out the Amazon reviews, and everyone loved this book. It apparently has worked wonders for all children who won't stay in their beds. I checked my local Barnes and Noble, and as with any book I really want, they didn't have it. So I ordered the book and waited, so excited that a solution was in our midst, even if I was secretly disappointed I wasn't going to get to glitter up a birdhouse.
The book arrived, and I made the fatal mistake. I did not read the book before I showed it to Britton, made up an entire backstory about the sleep fairy (she's the tooth fairy's sister, apparently), and talked it up like it was going out of style. I should have read the book. Because what happened next was the kid ponzi scheme of endless treat-giving that turns into a major pain in the arse.
Admittedly, the book didn't work the entire first week. Every night Britton would request that we read it, then promptly forget that by getting up she would not get a treat under her pillow. And that's where our issue lay - you have to sneak into the kid's room and put a treat under the pillow, and you can't do anything else, say - a glittered birdhouse, because the book specifically says that the sleep fairy puts the treat UNDER YOUR PILLOW.
Every mom is rolling her eyes right now. Yes, yes. You're also all asking the same question - when exactly is a kid considered to have "stayed in bed all night"? Do I put the treat under her pillow at 11:00 pm before I go to sleep, just so she can discover it at 2:00 am? Do I wait until I wake in the morning, and risk Britton getting up early, finding nothing under her pillow, and call fraud on the whole thing? I figured that if Britton ever got to the point of staying in bed all night, I'd sneak into her room when the baby got up for his 3:30 am feeding and be done with it.
And then the clincher - it didn't much matter what time I put the treat under her pillow because she never made it to staying in bed all night. There were many nights that she only got up once and it broke my heart for her to check under her pillow and find nothing. There were times she got up because she needed a tissue or wanted to go to the bathroom, and the litany of exceptions to staying in bed just grew into a confusing list. No wonder Britton was confused - the sleep fairy would still come if you got up for a good reason (had a bad dream) but not for getting up just because. Ya'll know where this is going - anytime Britton got up, she also came armed with a "good" reason, true or not. And honestly, once she had gotten up and knew the sleep fairy wasn't coming, there wasn't much incentive left for her to not get up six more times.
I had it. I was mad at myself for even starting it. But how to bow out gracefully? In the end, I told Britton that because she was older now, she didn't need the sleep fairy. She is old enough to keep herself in bed. So I had her dictate a letter to the sleep fairy, that we stuck under her pillow, letting the sleep fairy know that she could go help other kids because Britton was older and didn't need her anymore. And I (I mean, the sleep fairy) wrote a card to Britton telling her how proud she was of her staying in bed, and how she would visit Britton in her dreams. Then I left the card under her pillow for her to discover the next morning.
In hindsight, I should have just ridden it out. Like all phases, this too would pass in time. And it did - she stayed in bed all night last night. And most nights she only gets up once. Of course, now she's as well-versed in the tooth fairy (thank you Berenstain Bears books) as she was in the sleep fairy, and has decided that her teeth feel loose. Doesn't matter that they aren't. I fear I may end up loathing the tooth fairy as much as I loathe her sister the sleep fairy!
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