Just a vent... As I said I have pretty much stopped disciplining or criticizing in any way. This morning was different.

So last night we fall asleep around 11 pm. We are woken up at 2 am by this little knocking on our bedroom door... a sound I have heard more times in the middle of the night than I care to remember. Usually it happens when SD12 has been with BM who has been feeding her restaurant food and crap all weekend; then SD's stomach will be upset and she will come wake up DH in the middle of the night because her stomach hurts. That doesn't happen all the time, but maybe once every month or two.

Anyway, last night I had a pretty good idea I knew what it was. See, last Friday SD told me that the night before, she had woken up in the middle of the night and thought she saw a ghost in her mirror. She saw someone standing by her bed but when she looked next to her bed, no one was there. I just said "Huh, that's creepy" and didn't make too much of it. Then she tells me, she had told her mom about it, and her mom said it was probably a family relative who recently died (someone SD never met.)

Now, this is a child who has ALWAYS been fearful, who at nearly 13 still cannot be left alone in the house for any length of time; a child who only recently was weaned down to 1 nightlight. But BM thinks it's a good idea to let her watch all those ghost hunter shows, and to tell her she is being haunted by a dead relative!

Sure enough, SD had woken up in the middle of the night and thought she saw the ghost. She freaked herself out and woke up DH (and me!) at 2 am. DH went out and spent about half an hour talking to her, and then let the dog sleep in her bed for the rest of the night. (Of course, when I wanted to let one of the dogs sleep with my BD, he said he didn't want dogs sleeping in the kids rooms.)

So this morning I was cranky and tired. I told SD that ghosts don't exist, that it's fun to talk about them but if you start scaring yourself you have to get back to reality. I told her she shouldn't watch the ghost hunter shows. And I told her she is way too old to be waking people up in the middle of the night because she's scared. I told her she needed to learn how to get herself back to sleep.

SD took it all ok, she is not that rebellious. DH sent me an email later saying he didn't know what to do because she was so "freaked out" about this ghost thing. I broke my own rules and told him what I thought... I told him what I had said to SD about being too old to be doing this. I also told him if he coddles this kind of behavior it is going to continue and probably get worse. I said, if she can get half an hour of quality time with Dad by doing this, then why would she stop? I told him if she learns that nothing good comes from waking Dad up in the middle of the night, she will eventually learn how to fall back asleep, or stop waking up in the first place. (I also said we could take her to see a counselor if he wanted.)

I'm not just talking out of my hat. My BD hasn't woken me up in the middle of the night since she was about 5... because she figured out that nothing pleasant happens when you wake Mommy up for a frivolous reason. She is today a bouncy, fearless child who sleeps through the night just fine on her own.

DH never replied to that email so I don't know yet if the hammer is going to fall on me for being so CRUEL and HEARTLESS to his little baby. Let's hope not.