Going Parental: The GoodNite Lite

Up until a few weeks ago we had a Safety 1st Grip ‘n Twist Door Knob Cover ^[1] on my 3-year-old’s doorknob so she couldn’t get out of her room at night. For me, it was the fear of her roaming around our apartment in the middle of the night and hurting herself, opening the front door, finding her way to the knife drawer — normal things we parents worry about — that led me to put it on her door. Once we put her in a bed, the thought of her having free rein in our apartment caused me complete anxiety. I’m Jewish, what do you want from me?

Anyway, a few weeks ago she said, “I want the white off my door. I’m a big girl. My cousins don’t have white on their doors.” My girlfriend and I looked at each other and said ya know what? She’s right. She is a big girl. She’s been potty trained forever, she makes it through the night without wetting the bed (98% of the time). Let’s “take off the white.”

We took off the white.

I have never yelled, “Get back in your room!” more than I have in the past three weeks. It’s unreal. Every five minutes, “I have to make a pee-pee,” (LIE) “I need another hug and kiss,” (MANIPULATION) “I need a sip of water,” (ANOTHER LIE). It had grown into a full blown epidemic. It would go through the evening, up until it got to the point where one night I think she woke me up every hour, on the hour, to make a pee-pee and one time, the little shit woke me up to fix her blanket and line up her babies because they had fallen out of their obsessive compulsive line in her bed. That was it. I was done!

“If you don’t stay in your room, the white is going back on the door!”

Imagine the loudest, shrieking, piercing high-pitched scream that you possibly can, and then magnify that by about one billion and that almost explains the screams that came from this child’s tiny little mouth. We couldn’t win. Nothing was working.

And then… it happened. Parents ^[2] magazine finally gave me a reason to give a shit that it existed. It told me about The GoodNite Lite ^[3]. Fine, it told my girlfriend about it. I don’t read that fucking magazine.

The GoodNite Lite is genius. You set the time that you want it to turn on at night — it is illuminated as a blue moon, indicating to your child that it is night time and they are not allowed out of bed. You then set the time that the moon changes into a vibrant yellowy-orange sun that indicates to them that they are now allowed to get out of bed.

We ordered it and used it last night for the first time. The kid loved it. AND — It worked! She didn’t get out of bed once. I even heard her yell this morning, “The sun is on, I’m getting out of bed!” I swear I’m going to send the inventor of this thing a lifetime supply of Godiva ^[4].

This is the best $35 I have ever spent. Ever.

And we weren’t even douche bags about it. We set it to go on at 7am this morning — a totally reasonable time for her to wake up. Because yeah, obviously I wanted to set it for 9am. But I didn’t! Good parenting right there. Feel free to take notes, people.

Going Parental appears every Thursday. The GoodNite Lite appears whenever you want it to. It’s a beautiful thing.