A few months ago, I happened upon a tiny paragraph hidden in the corner of Parents magazine. It was a excerpt about a product called the "Good Nite Lite". It works through a timer, which is set by the parent. The parent sets the timer to the child's bedtime and a moon illuminates. When the appropriate wake up time is reached (which is also set by the parent), a sun appears. The key is to gradually increase the wake up time by 15 minutes, so your child learns to stay in bed. It also gave an example of a child who always awoke at 5:00 am but changed her ways after using the night light. Fabulous I thought! Who wakes up no later than 5:00 am every single morning? Yep...Bubba! What better candidate for the Good Nite Lite than us?
After our two night lights arrived (one for each child of course), I unpacked them and set the timers for 5:15 am. Here are the results:
Morning 1: 4:45 am wake up
Morning 2: 4:40 am wake up
Morning 3: 4:30 am wake up
Morning 4: 4:00 am wake up
As you can see, something was going terribly wrong. Bubba was supposed to be getting up later, not earlier. After thinking this through I asked Evander, "Do you think he is anxious about the sun appearing?" My thought was dismissed, but I decided to try one of my famous science experiments. Bubba had conveniently removed the sun/moon light from the plug, so I just left it unplugged. He asked about it and I said, "I don't have time to reset it tonight, so no sun in the morning."
The next morning, he slept until 5:00 am. I just knew that a visual cue, like a sun, would help him to see that it was time to get up (of stay in bed). I forgot, though, how sensitive he is. That one little change to his sleeping environment rocked his whole world. Now, we are back to the CARS night light that Momma Bird gave us and the closet light on. What a difference a light can make!
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