Night Moves

A few weeks ago, I posted about the Monster getting moved from the nursery into his ‘big boy bedroom’ (see, “G’bye Mommy!  G’bye, Abba!“).

We hear from a lot of our friends about the problems they have with their neuro-typical kids about moving into the big-kid bedroom at some point.  We have friends whose kids yell and scream until they’re retrieved when they’re in there.  We have others who have figured out that any gate in front of the door is hardly an impediment and manage to break out of solitary on a regular basis on their own.

We don’t have any of these problems with the Monster.  Honestly, while we’ve always had a gate in front of his door – lately more for using it for time-out than for actually keeping him safe in his room – he’s never seemed to think about trying to get through it (which wouldn’t be hard) or going over it.  He’s always seemed content for someone to come get him, even if it means making noises after a certain point to let us know that he’s awake.

On the other hand, we’re seeing behavior changes since he’s moved in there.  Namely, he doesn’t want to take his glasses off at night.

Not being sufficiently verbal, we can’t really ask him why he wants his glasses, which leads to a bit of a guessing game on our end.  The wife is of the opinion that perhaps it’s a security thing – that he feels more secure if he can see clearly – and that in the new room, he’s able to get to his glasses in the dark.  The new room has a small table next to his bed, whereas we used to put his glases up on his dresser (still within reach, but away from the bed and requiring him to get up on his tip-toes to get at them).  Plus, the new room has a night light, so he’s better able to see, and that might be contributing.

Of course, I come at it from the point of view of someone who does has worn glasses for decades… and simply that I’ve gotten used to the fact that I either know where things are in the dark or not.  (That, and sleeping in my glasses is positively uncomfortable.)  I’m thinking it’s more of a reaction to moving into the new room on its own – without anything having to do with wanting to see and agreeing perhaps on the personal security issue.

My only real concerns are two-fold:

  • Obviously, I’m worried about him damaging the glasses, even if they are ‘memory metal’.  I have memories of doing horrible things to my own glasses as a kid – between playground fights and other accidents – and as an adult, I know how long it takes to get them replaced as well as how much that costs…
  • I’m also wondering what he’s doing if he has them on at night and I’m concerned that it gives him incentive to stay up later still, which is a problem on school days.  Most of the time, as long as he’s in his room, I’m hoping he’s at least chilling in his bed, but last thing we need really is his having trouble getting up in the morning…

The only solution we’ve found thus far was by the happenstance of his grandmother sitting for us last night and simply taking his glasses off downstairs.  I did the same tonight and he didn’t put up a fight…

I just hope that we can get back to his glasses being up there, or better, his taking them off on his own up there and leaving them off…

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