Saturday, August 27, 2016

Exercise Time!

How do you put a toddler with separation anxiety, psychomotor overexcitability, emotional overexcitability, and sensual overexcitability to sleep? Wear out their bodies while keeping their brains and emotions calm, apparently. 

We still have a ways to go, but one thing we've discovered that helps is keeping her moving for a solid hour before bedtime. None of this "calm down for bed" nonsense. Baths wire her - sitting still just confines the energy. By the time her hour is up, she's usually (but not always) ready to have a couple stories and go lie down. We spend all of the older kid's story time with her jumping on the trampoline, then we do this while they go lie down. Sometimes we have to start back at ten again. Sometimes we do different things, or more stretches. Sometimes we do this randomly during the day when she needs to chill. It helps SO much!