One more glass of water. One more cuddle. One last thing.
At 8.12 pm, Louise was in bed. Story read, teeth brushed, light off. Élodie, her mum, had already put her hand on the door handle when a small voice called out:
Élodie went to fetch some water.
Two minutes later: “I need a wee.”
Then they had to find the rabbit. Then put the blanket right. Then answer an extremely urgent question about snails.
At 8.41 pm, Élodie was still there.
When a child delays bedtime, the tricky part is that each request can seem perfectly reasonable. Refusing a glass of water seems absurd. One more cuddle is no big deal. And of course you wouldn’t say no to the toilet.
The problem isn’t necessarily one request. It’s the queue.
When every request pushes bedtime back a little
Élodie realised that she was responding to each new request as if it had arrived on its own.
Water? All right. A cuddle? Of course. The rabbit? Here you are.
But what Louise was discovering was that after “goodnight”, there were still plenty of little doors through which the evening could be extended.
That didn’t mean she was making a plan to manipulate her mum. At five, leaving her parent, the conversation and the brightly lit living room to be alone in her bedroom can simply feel hard. One last request puts off that moment for a few minutes.
And when the grown-up is tired too, it’s easy to give in to the little request in the hope that it really will be the last one.
Spoiler: it isn’t always.
Set a limit on the routine, not on every need
The next time, Élodie tried to make the ending clearer before turning off the light. Louise went to the toilet, filled her glass of water, chose her cuddly toy and had a cuddle.
Then Élodie clearly said that the routine was over.
“We’ve checked the water, the toilet and your cuddly toy. Now it’s time to sleep.”
“I’ll come if you need me. But there won’t be another story or another bedtime routine.”
The distinction matters. An unusual fear, pain or an out-of-the-ordinary need obviously deserves a response. The point isn’t to ignore the child behind a rule.
It’s to avoid reopening the whole negotiation over every small, ordinary request.
Louise still called Élodie that evening. Once, to ask whether snails slept too.
Élodie answered from the hallway: “I think they do. Goodnight.”
Louise tried a little “but…”, then fell silent.
That evening, the last thing was finally the last thing.
