Monsters? No Problem for Big Brother

The following was originally posted September 15, 2009 at http://www.parentclick.com/BlogPost.html?id=1252:

Bedtime represents problems for plenty of multi-child households. Not so much usually for us. Mason has been decidedly more difficult to get (and keep) asleep than the others, but for the most part Riley and Jenna have been easy to get to bed, and, aside from the occasional slumberus interruptus, they have slept all night since we counted their age in months using single digits.

Recently, though, as her big brother has introduced words like "monster," "closet," and "RAAR!" to her rapidly-expanding vocabulary, Jenna has required a bit more gentle prodding to comfortably get to sleep. Previously she would flop down into her crib, close her eyes, and drift off peacefully, but that's become more and more rare as her 2-year-old imagination creates beasts and ghouls of all sorts stomping around her bedroom just around 9 p.m. each night.

Last week found an especially difficult night. Riley was in the middle of his bedtime routine as well, but Jenna was a bit reluctant to drift off. Instead of swiftly entering dreamland, she cried and cried, and was inconsolable even as I patted and rubbed her back and laid her baby in the crook of her arm.

I found myself quickly frutstrated by her unwillingness to give up the proverbial ghost. So I called in Riley, and learned a valuable lesson.

Riley squatted down outside her crib, right by her face, and sprang to action. "Jenna, it's okay," he said to her through her crib slats, instantly being the Susan Sarandon to Jen's Sean Penn. "What's wrong?"

Jenna blathered something I couldn't quite make out. I heard "monsters," but that's it.

"No, there are no monsters in your closet, Jen," he said matter-of-factly. "They're all gone."

My opening: "Yeah, and even if there are, what do we do with the monsters, Riley?"

"We throw them out the window," he said, remembering my instructions to him when he had the same problems. Then he expanded: "You tell them if they don't be quiet, you'll throw them out." Then he proceeded to do just that, telling the phantoms the way only a big brother can to vacate the premises immediately, only to force them out by the scruffs of their imaginary necks when they didn't move fast enough.

Jenna had stopped crying, and watched her brother sticking up for her, literally tossing her imaginary tormentors out of the window, and within a few minutes she was asleep.

My feeling of helplessness turned to pride, as I realized that my son had an effect on his sister that perhaps no one else in the world could have. He literally spends more time with his siblings than anyone, including Crystal and I. They're together virtually 24 hours a day, and while they bicker and squabble with the best of them, they also have gotten to know each other probably better than anyone knows either of them.

They have a special connection that can't be manufactured, created, or forced, but comes about only from playing, talking and interacting as much as two people possibly can, and moving across the entire spectrum of emotion, from the most loving connection to the most petty annoyance.

And believe me, they do plenty of both.