The longest night (Part 5 of 5)

Reflecting back on the last 5 years, I think I was the only dad in the world who was still sleep-training a 9 year-old daughter! But I also think that this Part 5 will be the last entry! Although, truth-be-told, our sleep routine was hugely impacted by divorce which made things more difficult and it ultimately became habit. When my daughter was 4, my wife and I had already split up and we pursued different parenting paths. I preferred to sleep alone; my ex-wife co-slept with our daughter. In previous articles (Parts 2, 3, 4), I documented attempts to sleep train our daughter during the alternating weeks she was with me. There were glimpses of success; but more nights than not, my daughter would simply climb into my bed in the middle of the night regardless of how we started out. This has been going on since her kindergarten days. I once had high hopes that I’d have this sleeping thing nailed down in a week. Man, was I a neophyte dad! It’s now been about a year since she’s been sleeping through and staying in her room. She still comes over mostly on weekend mornings. But through it all, it was a long journey and we’re probably closer as father and daughter.

What kept me going these past years was the comment made by a fellow single-parent that my daughter was, “Only seeking closeness and comfort as a child of divorce.” I can’t deny this. So gradually, I abandoned all serious attempts to separate her from me at night time so she can find comfort. I also grew to enjoy this quiet time; I would even reprogram my phone to go into night mode at her bedtime hour. The reality is that quite frequently, I fell asleep right beside her after reading. On some nights, I slept right through to morning! Other times, I woke around 2 or 3am and tried to get back to sleep in my own bedroom for the remaining hours. It’s amazing how the longest nights often felt the shortest for me. This went on for years in my household and it was a sleep system I unintentionally developed called the ride-it-out method.

But as my daughter chalked up another birthday, I recall someone telling me, “Eventually, she’ll want to be on her own.” That time is here. I wake up in the morning to find that she is not beside me. Even her stuffed toy is not jammed against my back anymore. I smile and then feel wistful. I get up and find her still fast asleep in her own bed. I give her a soft kiss on the forehead and whisper, “Ten more minutes and then you get up.” She nods with eyes still closed. I head downstairs for coffee. It’s the sign of the times and an eventuality that I had long expected. She’s growing up. Her school and extracurricular activities are more demanding and she’s physically more tired. She needs her sleep more than she cares where she gets it.

I wake up in the morning to find that she is not beside me. Even her stuffed toy is not jammed against my back anymore. I smile and then feel wistful. Over these 5 years, she realized that physical security isn’t a necessary requirement for psychological security. Over these 5 years, I realized that sleep training has just as much to do with psychology as physiology.

Could I have rushed it? Probably, but I would have done it for my reasons, not hers. It was difficult to be consistent when her mom has a different parenting approach to sleeping. So I never admonished her for being a child needing to co-sleep even though I desperately preferred otherwise. She needed to feel secured all the time, not just half the time as she is missing one parent on any given night. As she got older, she realized that physical security isn’t a necessary requirement for psychological security. She has to make that realization on her own and that is probably one of the biggest hurdles for a 9 year-old to surmount.

If I had known these things 5 years ago, I may have changed my sleep training approach. Notwithstanding the time it took me to sufficiently understand this parenting skill; I don’t think I lost anything for the sake of hastening an independent sleep arrangement. Five years have come and gone. In another five, sleep training will just be a hazy memory like my attempts to recall getting up in the middle of the night to change her diaper once upon a time. Time continues to fly at a dizzying pace. Most of her nights are now sleeping alone. Exceptions exist, but they are just that. Another parent gave me a woman’s insight. “Your daughter comes to you not for warmth, company or security which she knows she has, but she comes to you for well-being. That’s what you’ve been providing at bedtime for the past 5 years.” Then it dawned on me that sleep training has just as much to do with psychology as physiology. We all sleep very soundly now.