One parenting strategy I got from How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk was the idea of writing down instructions for children in order to encourage their cooperation.

I decided to try it with my son's bedtime routine. Since he'd been a baby, we had tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a fixed bedtime routine for him. It was driving us nuts, because he would sometimes stay up playing until midnight!

Finally, I called my 2.9 year old son to my side one day, and told him, "Let's make a list of all the things you do before you go to sleep." I asked him to remember the things he did before bedtime, and I wrote the following list: (1) take a bath, (2) brush teeth, (3) pray, (4) read a book, (5) turn off the light, (6) sleep. Because he can't read yet, beside each number, I drew a little drawing to help him remember what the item says. We read through the list a few times until I was sure that he understood what each drawing referred to.

Then we started putting the list into action. Every night, at around 9:15 PM, I remind him to start wrapping up whatever he is doing because, "In fifteen minutes, we're going to start doing the list." Then at 9:30 PM, I take the paper out, show it to him, and ask him what the first item on the list is. After we're done with each item, I ask him what the next item is, and so forth.

Since we instituted the list, bedtime has been a breeze. My son loves doing the bedtime list; he gets excited about it, and takes it very seriously. Most of the time, he is more than willing to drop whatever he is doing to do "the list," and he often double-checks the list to make sure he's doing everything in the correct order.

He also sees the list as a tool to help him get to sleep. Once, he was having trouble falling asleep for his nap, and he asked me if he could look at the list. I happily obliged, and though it wasn't bath time yet, we did the last four items on the list, to help him fall asleep.


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