Well, as predicted, Bella’s nebulous fear of random events has manifested into a crippling fear of being alone in the dark. I knew this day would soon come. I’ve read in various parenting magazines that children her age begin to fear darkness and being alone. Until recently, she has slept without incident in her own full-sized Hello-Kitty-laden bed. Now, she won’t fall asleep unless we’re lying next to her, which makes preparing her lunch for the next day a near-midnight event. Even if we sneak out once she’s asleep, she somehow senses we’re no longer there and wakes up crying for us.
Of course the routine continues into the middle of the night where she either climbs over Jin’s head in between us, or cries until one of us accompanies her back to her room where she stands near the bed until we obediently crawl into her bed first. The trick, we thought, was to lie motionless and emotionless next to her until she fell asleep; then we oh-so-carefully maneuvered ourselves with hush-like precision over the blankets and off the bed back to our own room. But the problem was, within 1 hour, like clock-work, she’d come running back to our room again only to start the process over again.
This down spiral of relentless sleeplessness has continued for the past few nights. Jin and I are tired. We hear nightmares from parents warning us not to give in to letting the child sleep in bed with you; stories of pre-pubescent children nearing middle school who are still in their parents’ bed are enough to scare the living pants off any self-respecting adult – which is why we’ve opted to escort her back and forth, to and from our bed into to her own bed, night after night. But our resolve to prevent the child-in-the-bed syndrome is wearing down like the carpeting on our hallway floors. I fear we may soon accept our fate and let our dear Bella sleep in bed with us tonight. After all, middle school is only a few years away.
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