Dana Obleman: Hi. I’m Dana Obleman. Welcome to this week’s video blog. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about playing favorites. This is something that children learn at a really early age that one parent’s rules might not be the other parent’s rules. They do what I call testing. That can show up quite significantly at bedtime.

Especially as your child becomes a toddler, they can start to play preferences. For example, I just had someone call yesterday to tell me that every time she tries to put her daughter to bed she throws a tantrum, has a big fit because she wants daddy to do it.

She’s in a phase right now where daddy is really important to her. She’s having a lot of special feelings for daddy. That’s perfectly normal. Most children go through that at some point in their life.

Either it’s daddy for a month or two, and then it’s mommy. They kind of go back and forth sort of playing a favorite.

It’s not that easy to actually let that go and not be hurt by it, but it really is just a process of a child figuring out how do you navigate in this world and develop preferences for one person over the other.

If they learn that the behavior gets a reward, then that’s when problems will arise.

If every time she has a tantrum because it’s your turn to put her to bed if you give into that and get dad in to take over, chances are she’s going to throw a tantrum every single time you put her to bed.

The tricky spot is that that can translate into other areas of behavior as well.

If she starts to put the pieces together that throwing a tantrum around you is an effective way to get what she wants, you might find that she starts to throw a tantrum in any situation. You really can’t give into it.

It’s OK to let her have maybe some special time with daddy right before bed or let daddy do it, absolutely.

Once it’s a decision made that it’s your turn to put her to bed tonight, you have to stay strong through that no matter what kind of behavior she displays. One thing I find helpful with toddler aged and up is to make a chart.

Put that by her bedside. You can just really simply draw a picture of a lady and a picture of a boy and say, “Tonight is mommy’s turn. Tomorrow night is daddy,” and so on. Then she can look at it. You can reference to it.

Whose night is it to put you to bed tonight? Tonight, it’s mommy. That can help minimize the tantrum but really again I want to hammer that home. You can’t give into it because if you do, you just send her the message that that sort of behavior works.

That’s not the kind of behavior we ever want to encourage. Keep that in mind.

One thing you might think about as well, is if it’s bothering you that your child is playing a favorite or feeling like they have a stronger bond with the other parent, then carve out some time in the day where it’s just mommy and you time.

Maybe you take her to the library or go for ice cream. Try to create a little bit of specialness between the relationship she’s having with you as well as her father.

If you’re the one that’s home all day with her and you’re more the disciplinarian and the primary caregiver, you can see why it would be special and fun when daddy is around.

You need to try to create that sort of specialness as well so that she realizes that, “Yes, fun can happen with mommy as well.” All right? I hope that’s helpful. Thanks for watching. Sleep well.