Bedtime. Boy, can it be rough sometimes. I don’t know about you, but my girls come up with all kinds of ways to delay bedtime.
“Can I have a glass of water?”
“I need to go to the bathroom!”
“Can we read one more book?”
“I need to go to the bathroom, again!”
And, my personal favorite, “Can we cuddle?” I mean, how can you possibly say “no” to that?
One night, my youngest taught me something: I need to be present in saying goodnight. She took her hands and created the shape of a heart. She asked me to do the same. She put her heart right up to mine and said, “Our hearts, together forever.”
This was one of those incredibly precious moments of motherhood. This was such a tender and sweet gesture–I loved it.
Turns out, she did too. She repeated this again the next night, and so began our nightly ritual. I know this helps us both complete our day. No matter how bad my day may have been, I have this one moment that I look forward to each night. It is something special to both of us. At the end of a crazy day, this is the moment that grounds me.
I know she won’t do this with me forever. I know one day I will likely have to do this on my own just imagining that precious little girl who taught it to me. For now, I will cherish this time every night. My day wouldn’t be complete without it.
QUESTION: Do you have any gestures that signal your love to your child or children? Is there something special between you that helps bring you back at the end of the day?
CHALLENGE: If you don’t have a special moment with your child at the end of the day, think of something you can do to build that mother/child bond. Think of a gesture, signal, or bedtime song that you can use to share those feelings of love with your child.
My four year old boy started asking for a “double-kiss.” At the same time, we just cheek-to-cheek kiss on both sides of our faces. An extra second of love that I hope he does with me forever!
I love that!! My four year old girl asks for a kiss attack…where I kiss her all over her face. 🙂
We do butterfly, eskimo and cheek kisses before I leave the room to say goodnight. I so cherish all those kisses 😉
Each child gets their own bedtime story…it’s a great chance for them to pick out their own story and sit on mom or dad’s lap and have that special cuddle time. (Siblings get to listen,too.)
Love the heart ritual! Thanks for sharing.
One of my twin girls (age 6) and I give each other “nosies” (she calls them “nuzzies”) after we say prayers. She’s my independent, less-snuggly girl during the day, so at night we spend lots of time snuggling to make up for lost time! She holds me close and at that moment I let any stresses from the day completely wash away. My other twin is a big snuggler all the time, but at night she’s chatty so after prayers, hugs and kisses she’ll usually tell me a few fun facts about her day. As I leave the room, sometimes they’ll blow me kisses to keep with me all night, or they’ll hand me a stuffed animal to sleep with so I think of them. They also like to yell out “I love you more than ____” (puppies, the indoor bouncey gym they love to go to, Chick Fil A, etc) as I’m leaving the room. My nine year old boy, who is very independent and hardly ever lets me too close to him anymore, loves to share details of his sports and school life with me at night, and lets me cuddle him a bit, which I always look forward to. Occasionally we’ll flip through one of his photo albums or yearbooks and talk about the pictures.
Thanks for the article, it really got me thinking about how important these rituals are to me. Sometimes it feels like we’re just going through the motions, since the chores leading up to the actual tuck-in (homework, showers/baths, picking up dirty clothes, toothbrushing,etc) can feel so exhausting. Tonight I’m going to take an extra moment to savor the quiet time with my littles. 🙂
I loved this. What a sweet picture to cherish as well! We have a house full of boys so when it’s time to say goodbye they always request, “A hug and a kiss and a punch and a five.” They say it super fast and I run around them going as fast as I can to hug, kiss, fist pump and high five all of them. They love it and so do I. I’ll miss the days they stop asking for that! We need to cherish these sweet sweet moments.
After we say prayers and I tuck him in, I pause before shutting to door and say “I love you.” My little guy repeats it back and then I do a loud kissing sound from the doorway to which he responds with his attempt at the same… but it ends up a fishy face smack of a kiss noise. (He’s two and the kissy sound is tricky) 🙂 It’s pretty special to me; especially on those days when I wanted desperately to lock him in his room until he turned 4. It really does bring our love back to the forefront and helps me end our day well.