Tired mom enlists help of Santa to get 2-year-old to sleep: “Last resort”

A mom who was struggling to get her son go to sleep ended up turning to Santa Claus for help, with surprising results.

Parenthood brings with it any number of challenges in the first few years following a child’s birth, not least when it comes to sleep. Earlier this year, a study from the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, using a national sample of parents with children between the ages of 1 and 6 found that 1 in 4 parents, found bedtime to be challenging.

Those parents could do worse than follow the example of Rebecca Chanel, a mom from New Zealand. In a video posted to her TikTok channel @mumhackz, she revealed how she and her husband have enlisted the services of Santa Claus in helping get their son Leo to go to sleep.

“It was a last-resort idea that popped into my brain at bedtime in desperation to get my 2-year-old to sleep,” Chanel told Newsweek. “He is fighting bedtime at the moment, after we welcomed his new brother home three weeks ago.”

In the clip, Chanel can be heard speaking into her son’s baby monitor while he lies in his cot, wide-awake. “Santa, are you there?” she asks. “Yes,” comes a croaky reply.

“Do you think Leo should go to sleep, Santa?” she says, with the voice on the other end replying: “Ho, ho, ho! Yes.” Later Santa can be heard signing off from the conversation with a “ho ho ho! merry Christmas.”

It seems to do the trick, with Leo telling his mom “nunigh” before settling down to sleep. According to Chanel, this ended up being “the quickest he went to bed ever.” It is a reminder of the power that the idea of Santa has over young kids, whether it’s encouraging them to believe in the magic of Christmas or reminding them he has a list of who is naughty and who is nice.

Chanel said they hit upon the idea because, “sometimes his dad will say goodnight through the monitor.” “Leo has just started to believe in the magic of Christmas and Santa, and so we gave this a go,” Chanel said. “It worked!”

Chanel said they have been doing a “lot of front loading about Santa over the past month” and it still seems to be working. “He now says goodnight to Santa at bedtime,” she said. “I have told him that if Santa isn’t busy, he might say goodnight!”

All of which is great, save for the fact that, come the end of December, Santa Claus is going to be much less of a priority to Leo. Chanel might want to seriously think about getting the Easter Bunny to give Leo a call if and when that happens.