The lads refusal to sleep, since we took away his night time dummy (other posts here and here), when he goes to bed at night is coming to a head, a sleepy head.  There are three (aren’t there always!) main things arising as a result of this.

The first of these is behavioural.  The more tired the lad is, the more frustrated, cheeky and, of occasion, downright naughty he becomes.  It seems to me that you can’t even discipline this type of tired induced naughtiness … he’s hardly even aware of what he’s doing, of course,  that doesn’t mean he can’t be told off, it’s just not very effective :( . 

If he’s being very naughty as a result of tiredness this also leads to frustration, exhaustion and stress for my part as I attempt to deal with him.

The second is his motor function, or lack thereof.  The more tired the lad is the less he is able to co-ordinate, and (being a toddler) the more excitable and energetic he seems to become.  What’s the net result of this combination?  Well, there are skint knees and elbows, bumps and bruises, stave and breaks (although thankfully none of this latter pair as yet).

For me, this means more irritation (crying is not a pleasant sound) and stress.

The third is language skills.  It’s funny, or not, that the more tired and stressed you are, the less able you are to speak, form sentences or find the words you’re looking for. 

So as I write this (I draft it on a pad of paper first) the lass (11mths) is sitting in her high chair squealing away, the lad (3yrs 10mths) is running around, intermittently falling over and gibbering nonsense all the while ignoring my (29yrs 6mths) probably incomprehensible pleas to just eat his lunch …

… I’d hoped he’d take a nap in the afternoon, he didn’t :roll: