I have three kids... an older son, who is sitting home after his college closed for the year... and a 1st and 2nd grader, for whom I am now functioning as a teacher.

However, for the last 8 years, I've mostly functioned as a stay-at-home dad. My oldest youngest child is mildly Autistic and had significant infant acid reflux. I attempted to work from home at first, but I ended up spending 8 to 9 hours a day simply getting my acid-refluxy baby her food.

I broke down in tears of confusion, happiness, and relief when the local school system admitted my Autistic daughter at age 3 for full day school in a one-on-one session. And now she's back home... and I'm her teacher... and slightly disappointed at the school system for the apparently lack of basic knowledge in the curriculum... strange how that changed. I've come to realize that individual teachers are the important component, while the institution itself is broken beyond repair.

My youngest youngest child never slept... from birth until age 3, she woke every 2 hours. And then between 3 and 5 the nights got a little longer. But that was mostly due to finding the sweet spot of low room temperature, Marpac noise machine, and near complete darkness... God forbid someone three houses down the street sneezed in the night or the full moon was just barely lighting the floor or the room temperature rose above 64 degrees F!

In any case... I've been there... I know how it feels to be awakened in the middle of the night by a young child who I thought was/or should have been sleeping peacefully "by now" ...

After spending hundreds of hours reading about sleeping habits of toddlers, it's actually quite common to have a toddler regress in the number of contiguous sleeping time. I'd give advice, but that's never helpful...

--End odd stream of thoughts.