Things I have googled lately…

“Preschool drop off anxiety help”

“Three year old sleep anxieties”

“How to help kids scared of monsters”

“Child wont sleep in bed”

“Is wine at 9:30am really that bad?”

If you came by our house last night around 7:15pm you would have seen me pretend to gather up all of the “monsters” in Luke’s room, put them in a box, and send them outside into the garbage can. I’ve done this twice now…both times he was jazzed about the idea, and both nights he continued to not sleep in his bed…sometimes even taking to sleeping in the hallway…exhibit A:

It’s like a little game trying to see how quiet you can be when you sneak by him to get something from upstairs…Always have to think if the item is worth the risk of waking up the toddler…9 times outta 10 it’s not.

We’ve tried telling him monsters don’t exist…we’ve tried helping him “get rid” of the invincible monsters, we’ve tried night lights, and tents, and gates and all it’s done is a whole heap of zero good because he’s still sleeping like a lump on the floor and getting horrendous sleep. Which is seeping it’s way into every aspect of his daily life…

That’s Luke sleeping in the tiny spot between his castle and the bookcase…cozy looking right? Sometimes he’ll even sleep on a wooden box by his door. 

Today at drop off for school, we played the game where Luke cries really hard and hides in the car while his teacher tries to coax him out while the other teachers stare blankly at his behavior and the other moms in the cars behind me get REAL annoyed. This morning I even tried bribing him with a treat if he just got out of the car nicely…I’m not proud of this…it didn’t even work…but desperate times y’all.

Google tells me that this is normal, but what has me confused is the fact that we made it 5 months of zero issues and now all of a sudden he thinks going to school is not cool. Very uncool in deed. Like Minkus in Boy Meets World uncool.

The most frustrating part is when you look at the “8 sure fire ways to make drop off go smoothly” and you already do all 8….is there a step 9 you forget to tell me about?! THERE MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE. I guess step 9 was “Bribe your child” and they realized that wasn’t effective and they took it off the list…FINE. Or maybe step 9 was “Make sure your child gets minimal sleep and is exhausted” and they caught some flack for that. Or maybe step 9 was “If you do all these and your child is still a mess, open bottle, drink heavily”…

I understand that his brain is a heeping pile of emotional mush. That he’s in a phase and that when it’s all said and done I’ll be able to look back on this time and blah blah blah all the cliche parenting mumbo jumbo.

Helped your kids with monsters and fear of bedtime? Got that crying kid at preschool to be happy again? Share your wisdom. Gimme the wisdom y’all.

Stay tuned to see how this lil phase pans out…ain’t lookin pretty right about now.