Establishing a bedtime routine is essential for the emotional and mental development of your child. As a mental health professional, my education and training have provided me with the essential tools and understanding of the benefits of this routine, and thus have spent the past five and a half years optimizing this precious time before my angelic children retire for the day.

Step 1: Dinner

As the final meal of the day, and as the only meal we eat with all family members present, this is a great opportunity to reflect on the attributes we cherish most about one another. In our household, this usually includes enthusiastic declarations of how much one child appreciates another child’s fork/plate/cup/seat, more so than their own, even, and will make such exuberant vocalizations throughout the entirety of the meal. The children will often be so enthralled with the time they are spending together as a family that the food will be left uneaten. When encouraged gently to eat, the children will take the opportunity to show the skills they have learned in self-advocacy, and independence, and declare the food before them as inedible. Such valiant leaders they will make someday!

Step 2: Bath time

This is necessary, as while no food was actually eaten, they have managed to utilize the items on their plate to decorate their clothing, the wall, and the floor. Upon preparation for bath time, you will be impressed to discover food items have made it through the shirt, the onesie, and into the diaper. You will feel such pride for your tiny magician!

Step 3: Anarchy

While you are cleaning the feces out of the tub that has hastened the conclusion of bath time, your naked darlings will make vocal declarations as their wet bodies sprint through the hallways, ignoring any and all admonitions that it is time for settling down. Optional consumption of wine is encouraged while the Scrubbing Bubbles soak into the skid marks on the side of the tub.

Step 4: Pajamas

These are optional, of course, as by the time the two year old has insisted repeatedly that he no longer requires a diaper, and the one year old continuously wrestles away before you can get the second tab on her diaper attached, you are likely to lose any and all will to actually parent. Second glass of wine is encouraged as children scream over who gets to wear the only remaining superhero pajama top, as the others always seem to disappear just in time for the evening routine.

Step 5: Negotiation

Upon announcing that it is time to officially retire to bed, your children will recall the lack of food in their bellies from abandoning their uneaten dinner, and will make dramatic declarations of their level of starvation. This is the ideal opportunity for their vocabulary development, as they will relish your colorful response and selectively remember just the words that are guaranteed to garner a phone call from the principal tomorrow. It is important to foster opportunities to invite communication with those responsible for our children’s education.

Step 6: Put the children in bed.

Step 7: Gentle Reminding

Remind the children that it is, in fact, bedtime. Consider ingesting more wine.

Step 7: Pleading

Plead with children to please, just tonight, go to bed without fighting. We do, in fact, go to bed every night, so we do understand how this works, don’t we?

Step 9: Weep

Step 10: Triage

Ignore the wrestling, crashing, and shrieking coming from the children’s bedroom to utilize mental health education and training to contact all of the therapists to undo the damage you are undoubtedly inflicting upon your children, and find one that can squeeze you in first thing in the morning.

Sleep tight!

Keighty Brigman is terrible at crafting, throwing birthday parties, and making sure there isn’t food on her face. Allegedly, her four children manage to love her anyway.