Then, when my second daughter fell asleep and I went to my oldest daughter, I found her asleep while watching TV! What a delight! I still haven’t forgotten the joy I felt that day… If my oldest daughter fell asleep in her stroller while we were out, I would wake her up exactly 30 minutes later. Then, in the evening, I would take her to the park and let her play tag until she was completely tired, and she would fall asleep in no time at all. But when things didn’t go as I expected, I would give up on “going to bed early.” I would think that it was okay to have days like this every once in a while, and would wait until she was sleepy or for Daddy to come home. By the time my second daughter turned one year old, they were both sleeping in the same futon at the same time. In both cases, my oldest daughter graduated from taking naps, and I think it’s no exaggeration to say that I spent the whole day trying to get her to fall asleep as quickly as possible. And today, as I looked at the sleeping faces of my two children breathing heavily on either side of me, I reminisced about those difficult days of getting my kids to sleep, and even those days of trial and error seemed dear to me.
I hope this will be helpful to moms all over the country who are struggling to get their kids to sleep. Good luck tonight!
Script writer:Tae Watanabe Comic artist:Sayuko Mito