Bedtime in the Watson household. Not my favourite time. I live-tweeted bedtime tonight because instead of me handling my boys’ bedtime routine, my husband did the bulk of it while I got to take a breather. It allowed me to see it as a story featuring my favourite characters, and when it comes to finding a simple universal story to tell, who can’t relate to kids who don’t really want to go to bed?
My husband and I parent well together, but I as a work-from-home mother, I would definitely be considered the primary caregiver in our household. It’s a dynamic that works well for our family, but by the time bedtime rolls around, Mom’s exhausted. Dad gets home from work with fresh parenting legs at 6:30 and we put our young children to bed at 7:30 when the big guy has Kindergarten in the morning, so bedtime is Dad’s time to shine!
Using a Twitter thread, you can see a clear beginning, when Dad calls bedtime, a long drawn out middle where my sons delay going to bed for over an hour, and then and ending where they lose a high-stakes wrestling match and finally go to sleep. Yeah, I said a wrestling match. Check out the story here:
The 8 Point Story Arc
Tonight at bedtime, my husband got the boys to brush their teeth and get their pyjamas with only a minimal struggle. This is our stasis. Our everyday life. Then, when it came time to tuck them in, our 3-year-old couldn’t find his security object – his “Stinky pillow.” It’s this little cuddle pillow with baby Dumbo on it that he has had since he was born, and he has not spent a night with out it. “Stinky” missing is our trigger. And man, is it ever a trigger. It’s a trigger from a storytelling standpoint, and for a 3-year-old’s meltdown.
So begins our quest. The quest for “Stinky pillow.” Dad and the boys look for the pillow, but can’t find it, so I go to look for it. In the meantime (surprise!) Dad and the boys have a wrestling match before bed to try and take the little guy’s mind off of his missing pillow while I look for it. I get annoyed that my husband is wrestling with the kids at bedtime and getting them riled up instead of doing relaxing things (like, I don’t know? Read a bedtime story?!) and walk away to calm down. I collect myself and remind myself that bedtime is Dad’s time to do things his way.
Then I hear my 5-year-old doing his ring announcer voice. He introduces himself and his little brother as the “Brothers of the Instructions” rather than the “Brothers of Destruction.” That’s The Undertaker and Kane, by the way. Thinking of my 5- and 3-year-old sons being associated with anything to do with instructions gets the better of me, and I start laughing. My son thinks I’m laughing AT him, so he gets mad at me. My husband knows why I’m laughing, so to avoid explaining something my son won’t understand, he says “if Mommy won’t stop laughing, she has to be the referee for the next match.”
I agree on the stipulation that if Dad wins the match, it’s lights out. This is my critical choice. And once I wouldn’t always make. But tonight I did. In our story’s climax, the boys decide that it’s a fair stipulation, and even though it is now way past bedtime, and I would usually be irritated that everyone is still awake, I join in and play with my family. Of course, in our reversal, Dad “wins” the match, and the boys finally agree to go to bed. I am then left to reflect on how grateful I am to have my husband handle bedtime, which is my resolution.
EXSM 3989 - Digital Storytelling Class Blog 