The Power of Sticker

I find it truly amazing that a little bit of shiny paper with some tack on the back has the ability to almost utterly control the behaviour of a 2&3/4 year old.

But it does. Even when the brain controlling the behaviour is half asleep, the voice still says "sticker", in a feeble and distracted manner.

Little Moo, bless her little cotton socks, has learned to climb out of her cot. Pitch black middle of the night or bright dawn, side all the way up or sitting on the bottom. Floods of tears or bright and bouncing. She's out.

Actually, to be fair, I kinda encouraged her. Showed her how and helped her a couple of times. I figured it was about time she was doing more than lying there waiting for us to come in in the morning.

Hm.

Well, it seemed a good idea at the time. And to be honest, I still think it was.

However, she's taken about five years off my life. Or at least the apparition that greeted me twice right outside our bedroom door at oh-dark thirty when I got up to go to the loo has. Or the one that appeared at the foot of our bed whispering "daddy....daddy". (Did I mention she's mastered bedroom door handles as well? Time to install doorknobs.)

Not on.

So one slightly tired morning I mentioned this little problem in passing to the excellent staff at the Welsh Nursery Of The Year (aka Marnie's Day Care). I got as far as "Not staying in -" when the lady said "Stickers! Stickers'll sort it." Yeah right, I thought.

After another couple of nights, Lil'Moo and I had a conversation, which ended in me promising her a sticker if she stayed in bed all night. I wasn't expecting much reaction, so the bright light that lit up the depths of her eyes and the "sticker" repeated rythmically as she drifted off to sleep kinda took me by surprise. OK, I thought. Well, we'll see.

Well, it didn't work out exactly from the get go. We had a bit of forgetfulness about the idea, and then about the time (it doesn't really make it better that she's asking for a sticker for staying in bed when she's standing at the bottom of our bed at what-the-hell-time-is-it?). And then a bit too much rigour in applying the idea, so that she lay in her cot screaming after a nightmare.

But gradually the idea's sunk in; she gets a sticker (and we get a massive grin and a bounce) each morning she kinda gets it right, and now she's pretty happy to be in her bed awake until we come in to get her - unless like last night, she has a bad dream and then the noiseless ghost appears again. But we can live with that.

The coda to all this? Advice from Day Care comes at a price. Daddy has to do a dance for the day care ladies each morning Lil'Moo gets a sticker. And given Marnie stomps in shoving her sticker in everyone's face yelling "STICKER!" whenever she gets one, there's no way of avoiding it. But if it means a peaceful night's sleep...