It never fails. Just when you think you’ve finally gotten to a point where maybe, just maybe, sleeping patterns are getting consistent in your house - they change. Again.   From a sleeping perspective, the last six to eight months have been pretty great for us. Of course the kids have woken up during the night at times but there’s been no consistency to it. For the most part, everyone has been sleeping through and the only thing making me tired is the fact that I choose to stay up too late.     Everything changed this week, though, when our two year old decided to rebel against sleep. For three nights in a row he woke up at some point between 11 and 1 with absolutely no intention of going back to sleep. It wasn’t a pleasant wake-up either. Each night was three to four hours of crying, screaming and just plain anger at the thought of having to stay in his room (even with us there). He’s agile now - he can take off his sleep sack, he can jump out of his crib (we had the front off of it but on night three put it back on to try and keep him in) and he can open his door and leave. His physical abilities and determination make it a lot harder to get him to stay in his room and go back to sleep.   By Wednesday, I was exhausted. After having the equivalent of one night of sleep over three nights, I was actually starting to see some of the physical effects of lack of sleep. I was having a hard time remembering things – including the last names of people I email every day at work. I was hungry for junk. All I could think about were sweets and carbs. To top it all off, I actually fell. I lost my footing as I was walking out of the office and could not get my balance back enough to stop the fall.     I knew something had to give. My husband was away Wednesday night and I decided to try something I saw years ago on ‘Supernanny’. I remember watching her put a child back in her bed over and over again until she was so exhausted that she crashed. So, after a nice cuddle, I walked over to his bed, kissed him and said, “It’s time for sleep now. Mommy loves you. See you in the morning.” I walked out of his room and he absolutely lost it. Within a minute he was in the hall without his sleep sack on saying, “No sleep mommy.” So, I picked him up, repeated the same three short sentences and put him back in again.   21 times and 90 minutes later he crashed on his own and in his bed. He woke at 4am and when I walked in and asked him to lie down, he did and went right back to sleep. His sleeps haven’t gone back to normal (whatever that is) yet but that one night of action broke the pattern that was quickly becoming a habit. Now if only I could sleep for a week to catch myself up.   I recently read a study that said that consistently getting less than six hours of sleep a night can be as bad as alcohol impairment. It affects your coordination, reaction time and judgement. In a road test, sleep deprived drivers performed worse than drivers just over the legal alcohol limit. After seeing the effects that those three nights had on me, I completely agree. There are a lot of theories out there about what’s right and wrong with regards to how to get kids to sleep. No matter what you choose, it’s definitely in our collective best interest to have our families sleeping. Tiredness is one thing. Slips, trips, falls and car accidents are another.     Deanna is a Mom of three, wife, marketer and blogger - lover of travel, morning coffee, family time, belly laughs, good friends and uninterrupted showers! Follow her on twitter @DeannaCMiller ...