Preschoolers?!?!?

Onna goes to preschool with several other kids, and this bunch has been together since they were babies. There is one boy in the group that is the favorite. The girls fall over themselves for his attention, and what he says goes. Onna will argue with me about any topic if I differ from what he says. He can be clearly wrong, and she will argue with me that HE IS RIGHT. I don't get it. Lately they've been playing animal games. Either they play dogs (her favorite), or tigers, or snow leopards. Yesterday it was panthers. As we were getting ready to walk out the door this morning Onna said, "Oh no, I was supposed to wear a BLACK shirt today so I can play panthers. J*** said!" She put the brakes on, and was not going to walk out the door, unless she changed her shirt. So to speed things up, I went upstairs, dug through her drawer and found a black shirt. I came down, and she said, "NO Mom, not a Howard Tigers shirt. It can't have WORDS on it!" Ok, so I went back upstairs (sometimes it's quicker to just do what she wants than argue with her). I looked in her drawer again. The only plain black shirt I could find was a turtle neck. She refused to wear this turtle neck on several occasions. Actually she won't wear anything with any collar up near her neck, but that's all I could find. I took that one back downstairs, and told her it was the only one I could find. She said, "Well, ok." She put it on, and off we went.

When I picked her up today, I asked her how it went playing panthers. J*** decided they were going to play space chimps. Space chimps can be any color so she could have worn the shirt she originally had on! I use that as a lesson in letting other people influence what we do/wear. I don't know if it sunk in or not... geez she's only 5!!

Here is our other dilemma: She is addicted to TV. I don't mind her watching some shows, but she wants to watch a lot. Recently our cable package changed. We lost NOGGIN/Nick Jr, but added Animal Planet. There is good and bad about that. We really like some shows on Animal Planet, but we miss a few shows from NOGGIN. The other thing it does, is it has her watching a lot more Disney channel. Not that it's a bad thing, but the shows are more "grown up".

Along with that, she's never been a fan of bedtime. I've never let her sleep in my bed, but I'd gotten into a habit of falling asleep in her bed. Last fall, I used dollars to reward her for the nights she fell asleep in her bed by herself. It worked great and she was falling asleep on her own every night. I was "forgetting" to give her the dollars more often than not when she got H1N1. The royally messed things up for us. Obviously because she was so sick, and she has breathing trouble anyway, I "slept" (yeah right) with her. She was sick for two weeks! So by the time she got better she was back into the habit of me sleeping with her. I tried a sticker chart with a puppy toy as a reward. That didn't work. So here we are.

She thinks she needs to watch TV before she goes to bed. Occasionally on the weekends, we'll sleep in the living room and fall asleep to the TV. She knows that this is NOT an option on school nights. Well, I thought she knew... the last few nights she's wanted to stay up. I've told her that she could stay up, but she'd be down there in the dark, by herself. I thought she'd be too scared to do it. Last night she decided she wanted to do it. I thought she'd last 5 minutes. I was wrong! I sent her down there, then I went to bed. I take medicine to help me fall asleep. I'd taken it thinking we'd read books and go to bed. Pretty soon she came and got me and said she needed a drink, so I helped her get that. While I was down there, she needed some crackers too. Then I went back to bed... Then I remember she came up at commercials... then the next thing I know it was midnight... and she was still up! She'd come upstairs, she said her shows were done and asked me if I'd lay with her in her bed. Oh MY! That's not going to work!

So here is the plan from now on (and I've informed her of the plan too). She can watch shows until 7:00 (That's when Hannah Montana gets over). Then the TV goes off for the night. (She's already freaking out about this because there's a movie on tonight that she wants to watch!) Then we can spend the next hour, playing Barbies, getting medicine taken, jammies on, teeth brushed, etc. By 8:00 we need to be in her bed reading books. I set her alarm clock for 8:00 so she'll know when it's time. Then we'll read her books (usually about 20-30 minutes). Then lights out. I'm not going to fight the sleeping by herself thing until I get the earlier bedtime thing down.

It's important that we get to bed early because now that I'm doing classes, I planning to use my early morning hours for homework. My head is clear then, the house is quiet, and I don't get interrupted. The problem with that is I already get up at 5:15, so I'm going to have to get up really early. That's why I'm saying lights out by 8:30....

We'll see how this goes.... wish me luck!