A mom of two toddlers is being backed for her decision to not let her husband see their son when he got back from a month-long business trip.
The mom, u/ferret782, shared her story to the popular Reddit forum r/AmITheA**hole, earning 5,000 upvotes and 800 comments in 10 hours for her post, "[Am I the A**hole] for not letting my husband see our son even though he hasn't seen him in person for a month?"
The original poster (OP) says that her husband recently came back from a business trip. The trip was only supposed to be a week but got extended, separating him from his family for a month. He finally returned home around 2 a.m., while u/ferret782 was feeding their daughter. While he put her down to sleep after her feeding, he wanted to see the 2-and-a-half-year-old son he hadn't been able to see in a month.
"I told him not to because in the month he was away our son has turned into a ridiculously light sleeper," u/ferret782 wrote.
Though he told her that he'd be "quiet," she says that even the sound of a door opening can wake the child. The couple argued about it, but the OP held firm that he shouldn't risk waking up their son, even though he promised to put him back down should he wake up.
Babies and toddlers being "light sleepers" is a common complaint of parents, but according to the pediatric sleep site Tiny Transitions, this is because "light sleep" is usually an indicator of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which is when people dream. What people consider "deep sleep" is typically non-REM sleep, which is when the body restores itself.
Babies tend to spend almost twice as much time in REM sleep than adults, Tiny Transitions says—meaning they're generally easier to wake up. Since this is natural, while one can't necessarily "train" a child to go into deep, non-REM sleep, the site says that it can help to teach the baby how to go back to sleep on their own.
The best way is to avoid what Tiny Transitions calls "sleep props," which it defines as any outside stimulus to help the baby fall asleep, like pacifiers, being rocked or giving car rides. The site says that if a baby is regularly rocked to sleep, for example, when they come out of the REM cycle, they'll need to be rocked again to get back to sleep.
The parenting site Motherly has a few additional tips for toddlers. It's important, the site says, to have a nighttime routine that happens every single night, to help signal to the toddler that it's time for sleep. Before this routine, however, the site says that for two to three hours before bed, things should quiet down. It's also important to set a regular bedtime, so the child's body starts to fall asleep.
Newsweek has run several stories about toddlers fussing when it's time to sleep. One dad was dragged for forcing his wife to deal with their son's sleep issues alone. Another mom suggested giving toddlers a banana before bed, while another mom kept her toddler from wandering the halls at night with a life-size plastic goose to scare the tot into staying in bed.
Reddit backed u/ferret782's decision to not wake her sleeping son.
"[Not the A**hole]. He's supposed to do what's best for the child, not what makes him feel better," u/Hemenucha wrote in the top-rated comment with 10,300 upvotes.
"Absolutely the main reason dad should wait, its selfish to wake up the toddler at 2am because he missed him. Wait til the morning," u/whateverhoover added.
"The child is going to wake up, be excited to see daddy, and will not go back to sleep. Next day, everyone is going to be dealing with a super-cranky toddler. So instead of having a nice first day back with his family, it's going to be a s**t show. Dad needs to do what is best for the child at 2AM in the morning, which is let him sleep," u/Any_Cantaloupe_613 wrote, explaining why it's a bad idea to wake up the kid.
Newsweek reached out to u/ferret782 for comment.
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