The power of the smelly sheets

The boy, like many kids (actually, like many adults), has a stubborn streak.  When he gets something stuck in his head, it's near-impossible to change his mind.  The frustrating thing about it is that what he decides to allow to stick in his head is often unreasonable, rarely predictable, and usually seems to have nothing to do with anything that has happened before, is happening at the moment, or will happen in the future.

The latest evidence of this stubborn side is actually, for once, kind of paying off for me.

At 4.5 years old, he hasn't logged a lot of hours sleeping in his own bed.  He spent the first 3 years co-sleeping with me, then at some point in his third year we pawned him off on his sister, and he spent over a year sleeping with her in her queen bed (coming to my bed an hour or two before we all woke up for the morning).

Recently, we moved him to his own room, to his tiny toddler car bed that he loves to play on and jump on, but hasn't actually slept in very much.  The transition went much better than we were expecting, and every night he went to sleep happily in his bed, surrounded by pillows and stuffed animals.  As before, he'd make his way to my bed at about 6am.  This lasted a few nights, and slowly but surely, the time that he moved beds got earlier and earlier, until we were at a point where I'd go up for bed and he'd already be there, having shuffled down the hall on his own while I was still downstairs watching something like CSI: Saskatoon, or NCIS: Rochester.

I love co-sleeping, but with our queen sized bed, my semi-bad back, and G's determination to maintain his full half of the bed no matter whom I let into MY half of the bed, I wasn't sleeping well.

I was trying to figure out an effective but easy way to convince him to stay longer in his bed, but nothing was working.

Cue stubbornness.

His nighttime pullup (yes, still in pullups at night, a rant for another post) had leaked a tiny bit and made a small damp spot on the sheets on his car bed.  G was changing the sheets at bedtime that night, the boy happened to be in one of those stubborn moods, and he became adamant that he needed THOSE sheets on his bed, and no, he DIDN'T care if they were smelly.  He had no prior favourite sheets, had never given any indication he ever noticed the sheets, but suddenly, he HAD to have bumblebees on his sheets, and NO, those animals on the clean sheets were entirely unacceptable. Screw you, cute giraffes.

I sensed G was frustrated, so in trying to lighten the mood I joked to the boy that if he slept the whole night in his bed that night, he could have the smelly sheets back.  But he took me seriously, and after some negotiation, it was decided that the smelly sheets would stay on for as long as he wanted, for as long as he slept each night in his bed.  The first time he didn't sleep the whole night in his own bed, I would get to change the sheets.

(I feel the need to explain that the sheets aren't really smelly. They need changing, sure, but I'm not letting my son sleep on stinky, urine-soaked sheets.  We just call them the "smelly sheets" because that was one of the first things out of my mouth when I was first trying to convince him to let G change the sheets. By the way, not smart - don't ask a kid feeling cranky and stubborn a question like "you don't want to sleep on smelly sheets, do you?" because the answer will not be what you want it to be.)

To make a long story short (too late), he has now slept in his bed all night every night for three entire weeks, which most certainly surpasses the sum total of the random nights he's spent in his own bed in the 4.5 years leading up to this.

Last night he even came in at about 4am, and said "okay, I'm ready for clean sheets now."  After my mental fist pump, I whispered that I'd change them tomorrow.  He paused, then asked me what animals are on the new sheets.  I said I didn't know, that I'd just put on whatever was clean.  Another pause, then his head lifted, and he said "actually, I don't want you to change my sheets, I'm going to go back and sleep in my bed." And off he went!

My mom got a kick out of pointing out that, after that many years of wanting to sleep with me, not to mention in the midst of a very clingy phase that has been going on for a month now (help me!), the boy has decided that he's willing to forego special cuddling with Mommy for... stinky sheets.  So touching.