Sleep is another thing I had to schedule. As I said in Single Parent Travels: Set Expectations I can tell how he will behave by looking at three things, one of them being sleep. I wanted to make sure that while we were there he got enough sleep to help curb negative behavior as much as possible.
When we are at home, he doesn’t have a set bedtime. He also has a couple sleeping problems. He won’t sleep if I am not there. I am sure this has to do with anxiety, and Tiffany being hit has somewhat reinforced those anxieties. His thought process is if I am not home, that means I am out somewhere, and if I am out somewhere, something bad could happen to me without any warning and of no fault of my own at any point in time. So when I’m not home, he will go lay down if someone tells him he needs to go to bed, but he won’t sleep, he will lay there wide awake waiting for me. When I am home, he also has problems going to sleep if I am not laying down and going to sleep when he is. Which, from a child’s point of view is understandable, as I may be up having lots of fun without him. Also there are days where he is physically going so fast through out the day that when he lays down to go to sleep is when his brain tries to catch up. When these days come, he is well aware of it, and knows that he won’t be able to sleep. This is when he asks for his sleepy time medicine, which is just melatonin. When his brain get going like that it needs a jump start to tell it that it is not time to catch up to his body, it is time for it to rest.
There was a couple of things that not only helped to schedule our sleep, but for him to willingly go along with that schedule. First, he knows that Tiffany doesn’t like to be alone in her room. My brother-in-law is staying there with Tiff. In the morning he gets up and goes to the apartment to shower, change and eat. That leaves Tiff alone in the room for however long it takes him on any particular day. This created a great reason to go to bed and get up the next morning. We had to go to bed and go to sleep so that we could get up and go sit with Tiff so she wasn’t alone in the morning. Since he wanted to do whatever he could to make Tiff happy and see that beautiful smile on her face, not only did he go along with it, he reminded me it was time for bed if he thought it was getting to late.
Another thing that helped was for the couple of hours before we went to bed, it was our time. We left Tiff when they came in to get her ready for bed and give her the night time medications. This usually gave us at least two hours before bed where we were alone and could spend our time with just each other. He really enjoyed having this time and it helped to put him at ease.
Also, the more time I scheduled outside activity time before we went back to the apartment, the better. Getting him out and moving around wore him out before bed. When we left Tiff’s room, I would bring him outside and have him run around doing all the things I talked about in Scheduling Activity Time. I would make sure that he was out there for at least half an hour so he could truly wear off that extra energy.
You may also want to read Scheduling Playtime While Traveling and Scheduling Meals While Traveling