Liz, I think my embarrassment (and guilt and shame) at our family’s bedtime solution comes from stories like yours (and I’m not saying at all that you make me feel like this, or not to share your story, of course you all know that don’t you). I just know how much careful, gentle and hard work you would have put in to get it to be like that. Bedtime with our kids used to be how yours is now, put them in bed, say good night and walk away.... but somewhere, somehow it changed for us. We didn’t want it to, and we tried so hard to get it to work like it always had, but we, as parents, just couldn’t try any harder and this is where we’re at now. I do hope to get back there to the “put them in bed, say good night and walk away” bedtimes one day, but for now I’m just accepting that this is just what we do.