6 Ways Sleep Training Twins Is Like Caring For Drunk College Roomates

If you have any kids past the age of three, you’ve lived to tell the tales of removing the crib walls and the hours upon hours spent struggling to get your child to stay put in the new big kid bed. There are tears, exhaustion, and screaming, and the toddler might get upset too.  We are living through this right now in our house, with the additional entertainment of living through it with twins.

For a while now, my daughters have been running the show.  They aren’t taking naps and they are awake longer than my first grader every night.  I don’t understand how they are physically capable of being awake for that many hours.  It is slowly starting to shift;  I lived through this once with my son and I know it gets better.  But that doesn’t make it any less maddening.

Managing this process with one child takes patience.  Adding a playmate to the same room ensures a merry-go-round of mayhem.  In between the constant trips back and forth to break up the party, instead of stewing and going crazy, I’ve started to discover the similarities to another time of life.

I think back to my early twenties when nights out didn’t start until 10 pm and the only time I saw the sunrise was because I hadn’t gone to bed yet.  Those days are so very long gone, but the memories of caring for roommates who had one too many drinks are some of the best stories that remain from that time. Strangely enough, nights caring for tipsy roommates share quite a few similarities to nights juggling slap-happy twins:

• They keep asking for just one more drink.

• They think it’s hilarious to take off their clothes.

• The more frustrated you get the more they laugh at you.

• Hysterical giggling abruptly turns into sobs of despair.

• The longer they stay awake the greater the chances of dealing with a hazmat situation.

• Making sure they go to sleep in their own beds eliminates any morning-after drama.

The last few nights are already seeing quicker results, but I’m not ready to believe this is over. Bright summer evenings and warm upstairs bedrooms are just around the corner, and I expect that to bring out the clowns once again.  In the meantime, I am just expecting the worst and enjoying when it’s not, and trying my best to look at the funny side of all of it instead of banging my head into the drywall.  Like all phases, this one will pass, and I can add it to the list of accomplishments I survived and can laugh about later.