Shut-In

While at swimming class today (more on that in another post) I overheard two moms talking. The one mother was talking about how her daughter gets up during the night. "I even have to put a velcro-lock on my fridge," she was saying. "Otherwise she opens the door, and leaves it open during the night."

And that got me thinking.

Back in a previous post, I talked about Sutton's bedroom door. Well, it's not technically a real door. It's two folding doors. You know the ones I mean, where they come together in the middle and close. Here, I'll give you a picture.We originally wanted to remove these doors and install a normal door, with a doorknob. But this is a rental house, and we needed to get permission from the owner to make the changes. The owner was OK with it, provided that we used a licensed contractor, and had the rental company inspect the work when it was completed. Then we found out that it would cost us $400 to do it; and that's not even including the paint. Umm, forget it. Thanks.

So, what have we been doing? Well, we switch off between two things. First, we shut the doors, and use a baby gate to keep them closed. For example.

And that works. Until he wants to get up. Then he bangs the doors against the gate, screaming and yelling for us until we get up and take down the gate.

Or we try leaving the gate off. And he gets up during the night. We've caught him sneaking around the dark house at night. And trying to get him back to sleep takes FOREVER. Not to mention that he gets up at the crack of dawn, since his room gets a lot of sunlight. And yes, we have blackout curtains. And it's STILL bright in his room. Go fig.

I feel terrible about having to lock my child in his room at night, but I don't know what we should do. Either option is not the ideal situation. Does anyone have suggestions?