Getting more sleep

I remember the story of Mama and Daddy getting a digital clock for Greg when he was a boy so that he would stop coming out of his room so early in the morning. They told him, "You may come out when the first number is 7." In Greg's effort to obey, things didn't go quite like my parents had expected. He would come into their room at 6:27, or 5:57, or 6:17, etc. This ended up being one of my mom's first indications that Greg might be left-handed. (Years later, when he learned to write, he wrote in mirror image--backward letters and from right to left--crazy!)

A couple of weeks ago, we got a small digital clock for Nate's room. We told him he should stay in his room in the mornings until 6-zero-zero. (Back story: Nate gets up capital-E Early. Most of it is from the various supplements he is on, many of which indicate hyperactivity and/or change in sleep patterns as a side effect. He had made a habit of coming into our room in the mornings some time between 4:30 and 5:30, sometimes going back to sleep and sometimes not.) The first few nights, we reminded him about the 6:00 rule, but we didn't do a great job of enforcing it (how much willpower do YOU have in the middle of the night?), but we kept reminding him about the new rule. On about night 3, it happened. I heard Nate open his door at about 6:02. He came down to our room and said, "Daddy, I stayed in my room until six zero zero!" We made a big deal about it for him, and he was so proud. Since then, he has done a decent job of giving us a bit more sleep! This morning, when I came upstairs, he was sitting in his room in the recliner, with the light on, reading the pages in his children's picture Bible. So cute!