We’ve all known that person.
Shhh! Don’t wake the baby. They tiptoe around the house for the first
ten years of their children’s lives so they’ll stay asleep.
That wasn’t me. Part
of that was undoubtedly luck, as I’m confident many of those parents didn’t
really want to maintain absolute nighttime silence for all of those years. But I was certainly fortunate in this. My children probably would have slept through
a bomb – I know they slept through plenty of other noise, including vacuuming
their rooms while they slept. Seriously.
The pinnacle, though, was my youngest son. Always easy to put to sleep, he simply
required flannel. And while there was a
favourite flannel, any piece would do. A
flannel shirt, flannel pillowcase, flannel scrap … it worked for many years.
When he was barely five years old, we travelled by plane to
celebrate my in-laws’ anniversary.
Travel is disruptive to most children’s sleep, but he napped through
long waits in airports, and in the van we rented on arrival. (The plane was filled with far too much
excitement for napping, but that’s another story). That piece of flannel was kept handy in a
carry-on bag and served its purpose well.
There was a total of twenty people sleeping in a small
wartime bungalow, including ten children – mostly under ten years old, so for
the children, this was like a large sleepover.
Normally scheduled nap and rest times went out the window, but no one
really minded. Children slept in piles as needed. (semi-seriously) Until the big night of
the anniversary party, that is. It was
about 6pm, and we were on our way to the party venue.
My youngest, that great sleeper, hadn’t napped in days. Many days. He fell asleep in the car on the
way to the party. We got to the
party. But he didn’t wake up. We carried him in and began setting up. He didn’t wake up. Guests started to arrive, but he still didn’t
wake up. (This feels a bit like The Very
Hungry Caterpillar, hmm?) To avoid
anyone tripping on him, we moved him with a pile of coats behind the piano, out
of the way, assuming he’d awake before dinner.
He didn’t.
As is probably typical in most families with children
ranging from three to seventeen, this anniversary celebration included performances
from many of the grandchildren. Singing performances. Dancing performances. Piano-accompanied performances. This was not a quiet event on any scale … but
my youngest slept on. Right through it all.
He finally awoke as people were leaving, inhaled several
leftover desserts, and kept us up for a couple of hours until the flannel
finally did its job again.
So what’s the lesson here?
There are a few subtle ones.
First and most importantly, there’s no best or right way to parent. Every child and every parent is
different. What was right for him wasn’t
right for my other children. What was
best for me might not have been best for another parent. As a parent – do your best, care, listen, and
understand that sometimes it’s ok to just let it be. The other lesson? No one really judged me for letting my child
sleep through the event. I appreciated
that big time. Judging other people is
one of those things which seems to come so naturally, and yet it never really
has any value. Can we just leave it
there?
And hey, if you need a nap on this (rainy where I am)
day? Go for it.
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