I woke up this morning with kisses and hugs and a sweet little voice said, “Good morning mommy, I love you.” It’s an amazing way to start the day, but it wasn’t always like this.
Here’s something they don’t tell you when you have a baby – they may hate waking up. Every morning until he was about 3 years old, my son would wake up screaming and angry. He was the WORST morning person! I dreaded waking up and dealing with the drama every single morning. I’m not exaggerating. Every morning I’d wake up and just try and soak up a few extra minutes of sleep while waiting for the screaming to start. I hated life just a little bit Every. Single. Morning.
Nobody ever told me about that. They also neglected to mention they might wake up screaming mad from naps too. You’d think a nap would be refreshing, but no. It was almost as if he was angry he fell asleep and might have missed something. It was so bad that when it became a fight to get him to take naps that I gave up the whole ordeal. Why fight for 45 minutes to get him to sleep, then have him sleep for maybe an hour, only to have him wake up even more wound up than before? And want to stay up later? Nope. Not worth it.
It finally changed a little just after he turned three, when we switched to the toddler bed that he could get out of on his own. Then every night, around 2AM, he’d come screeching into our bedroom and demand to be picked up and placed into our bed. He’d bring two blankies and two stuffed animals at a minimum. And if any dropped along the way, or he forgot them, he’d wail until I got up and went to his room to retrieve them.
Around this time he switched from a morning meltdown to just demanding we “GET UP” as soon as the first wee bit of sunshine cracked through blinds. It wasn’t a request, and it wasn’t said sweetly. He would basically just yell “Get Up” at us until we succumbed to his unrelentless torture and got the hell out of bed.
And through all this, all the screaming, all the demanding and all the awfulness, I would tell him “Good Morning Keelan, I love you.” Every morning, just hoping it would sink in and maybe one day I would hear it back.
And now I do. Now that he’s four, he wakes up with a smile that makes me smile. He still sneaks into our bed every night, but he does it quietly for the most part, without a lot of fuss, and goes right to sleep. And I enjoy waking up with him so much that if I wake up first, sometimes I stay in bed just so I am there when he opens his eyes and smiles at me to tell me those words I waited so long to hear: “Good Morning Mommy, I love you.”
*So there’s hope for those of you that may be going through this now 🙂
Categories: Mom Life
Geek Mamas 
I laugh every day that I read your Blog –
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Got to laugh about this stuff because it’s better than locking yourself in the closet and crying lol. Having other people relate and laugh with me is the BEST.
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Definitely needed this! My threenager is so over the top in the morning. It’s like she can’t help but fight each and every thing we do. So thank you for the glimmer of hope 🙂
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Yes! Fighting everything. Every move. I keep trying to tell him life would be so much better if he would just go along with stuff. He’s finally getting it a little 🙂
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Yup, yup and yup. Sigh. I know or knew it well. Triggered by a dream? Temperature change? Growing pains? Yup, all of the above. Even had my step son yelling out in his sleep. My mother in law screamed one time. I honestly, honestly sympathise! Thanks for sharing. Stacey
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We had the screaming out in the middle of the night thing too! I’d hover outside his bedroom trying to decide if it was better to wake him or let it go. So if it happened twice or was prolonged, I’d go in and rub his back and see if that helped. Sometimes it did and sometimes it would make it worse because it would wake him up….sometimes you just have no idea what to do!
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Yeah there are no books for this sort of thing. One never knows and never will what causes this sort of thing. So long as they don’t hurt themselves by hitting their head etc I am guessing that it is just the body and brain working their way through something. We can talk our way through our problems. Well some of us can 😶 and children cannot so perhaps it is there way of working out some stressor. Who knows. All guess work on my part but glad he seems past it. For a parent it is a feeling of hopelessness but the body and mind are such that the child probably doesn’t remember it in the morning at least mine didn’t. Take care. Stacey
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I did read about it recently in a book called the Active Alert Child and it helped me understand it a bit, at least for my child it fit. I wished I had read this book sooner! Some children are bad with transitions. And waking up is just another transition. It’s like they can’t comprehend going from sleep to waking and they just freak out until they accept they are awake now and it’s time to carry on with the day until they find something else to fight about lol.
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I suppose how you put it in terms of transitions makes sense. Light sleep to REM etc. My 17 year old step son doesn’t transition to the awake stage until almost noo. 😀
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I am looking forward to the days of him sleeping in! lol
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So so true! With my 3 year old it’s a 50 % chance. She could wake up the happiest kid ever or mad at the world and I never will know / can plan for it! 😀😅I guess their just like us but we just handle ourselves better. Lol!
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It’s true, I definitely wake up disgruntled sometimes but manage to handle it without screaming and crying lol
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This is so true!! I have a threenager at the moment and there are days he wakes up and smiles at me give me kisses, and there are days wherein I am greeted with a smack on the arm and a scream demanding to be let out of the room! haha.
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It makes me feel a lot better knowing my son isn’t just a jerk and that they all can be like that 😂
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