The stay-at-home dad: Elmo is just getting warmed up

Elmo is just getting warmed up

Sleep regression can haunt parents with young children. Just when you think you’ve figured out how to get your little ones to routinely sleep on their own through the night, a child will suddenly reject that routine and return to relentless screaming and fit-throwing.

All of our four kids adjusted terribly to sleeping in their own rooms. Now, three of the four do it fine, so long as they manage to extend their bedtime routine to equal the run time of a “Lord of the Rings” director’s cut.

Our youngest, who turns three next month, has probably struggled the most when it comes to sleeping on his own, in his own bed, and staying asleep through the night. Still, we’ve been making it happen the last several months, so long as we read several stories and sing a lengthy rendition of “Wheels on the Bus” (which now includes verses about the bus ride activities of cows, horses, pigs, Granny, brother, sissy, other sissy, Spider-Man, Chase from “Paw Patrol” and many more).

Now it’s not working. Even after the full routine, he screams. No matter what we do, including the very specific, science-backed tactics we deployed to sleep train him in the first place, he screams at us until all of his random requests are met.

These “requests” are generally nonsensical. He’s tired and mumbly, so it’s difficult to understand if he wants his water cup filled with ice, or if he thinks “The Office” should have ended after Steve Carell left the show. I mean, I agree with you, kid, but now isn’t the time to discuss it.

He started waking up in the middle of the night again, and he won’t calm down unless I lay on the floor next to his bed and wait for him to fall asleep. Even with a yoga mat on the ground, I can’t handle this. I’m an adult. I sleep on a bed.

On Wednesday night, he woke up around 3 a.m. (again). I just couldn’t take it anymore.

“You need to sleep in your bed. I’m going to sleep in my bed.”

And so the battle began.

After he screamed for several minutes, my wife took him out of his room and sat him on the floor of the living room.

Wife: “Here. You can stay up. We’re all going to bed.”

She flipped off the lights and came back to bed. Silence. I could see him through our cracked bedroom door just standing in the middle of the dark living room, stunned by his mom’s allowance. After a couple minutes, he wandered into our room and tried to climb in our bed.

Wife: “If you want to go to sleep, you can sleep in your bed. This is Mommy and Daddy’s bed.”

He exploded. He ran screaming out of the room and up and down the hallway, pounding his feet and waking his sisters downstairs (his 6-year old brother was already wide awake and laughing, as they share a bedroom).

Finally, after several minutes of banshee noises, he gathered his blankets, his Spider-Man doll and Paw Patrol stuffies and made a makeshift sleeping space for himself in the hallway. He turned on all the light switches he could find, then laid down. Silence.

It was adorable. And also pretty hilarious.

He started talking to himself a bit, and I knew eventually he could not be trusted in the middle of the night if we were all asleep. So I finally got up, picked him off the floor and took him back to his bed.

“You sleep in your bed! No more screaming!”

Then Elmo decided to open his mouth.

Our son recently took a liking to an Elmo doll that moves his arms up and down and says various phrases. Our son wants to sleep with him, but all the toy features keep him awake, so we settled on Elmo “sleeping” on the floor next to the bed. If our son is too loud, then Elmo can’t sleep, and Mom and Dad have to move Elmo to another room.

Our son takes this very seriously (except when he doesn’t). He could care less if his brother gets to sleep, but Elmo apparently deserves the most peace and quiet of anyone in the house.

Anyway, as our son objected (again) to staying in his bed, I said some mean stuff to Elmo and threatened to take him out of the room. When I picked the toy up, it started rattling through its various catchphrases over and over again.

“La, La, LA LA! Elmo’s world!”

“Elmo likes to DANCE!”

“Will you be MY FRIEND?!”

At this point, everybody in the house is listening to me lose it with this toy. I can hear hushed laughter from the other kids and even my wife.

Finally Elmo stopped. For two seconds. Then he started again:

Elmo: “La la LA LA!”

Me: “ARRRRGHHHHHHHH! SHUT UP, ELMO!”

Elmo: “ELMO IS JUST GETTING WARMED UP, BABY!”

My suspicions were confirmed. The toy was possessed.

I left the room in a rage as all the kids (and my wife) laughed at Elmo’s perfectly-timed retort. I don’t remember the rest of the night, but the ridiculousness of my rampage was enough to reset the house, and all the kids apparently went back to bed without incident, including the two-year-old.

The next day, the three older kids repeated Elmo’s slight over and over again, and the two-year-old howled in laughter every single time.

“Hey Dad, Elmo’s just getting warmed up, BABY!”

Kids, I love you. But I also hate you all so much.

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer and stay-at-home parent to four kids, ages 2-8. He is tired, especially in the age of Pandemic 2020. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.