So far, I’ve written about the middle of the night and the crack of dawn, but at least that early riser will want to go to bed earlier, right?
No way! Bedtime is the greatest form of evil in the mind of a child. If you are still a relatively new parent, enjoy the fact that you can tell your child that it is bedtime. He or she might groan and moan about having to ‘hit the hay’, but this beats the negotiation that comes when a kid is old enough to tell time. In my experience, there are three stages that occur in regards to bedtime...
#1. Keep Him on a Routine or We’ll Be up All Night! The initial stage of the kids-meet-bedtime pattern occurs in infancy. It’s that period of time when you don’t expect a full night sleep and you’re lucky to get one every couple of weeks or so. This is a time when many new parents are doing all that they can to establish a sleep routine, with the desperate hope that it will lead to the occasional five hours of uninterrupted sleep. Suddenly, the decision of whether or not to go out with friends for dinner must also take into account how it will disrupt the beloved routine. How many times have you had this conversation?
“But, he’ll fall asleep in the car.”
“We can just carry him in quietly.”
“You know that will never work. He’ll wake up and it’ll take us forever to get him back down.”
#2. It’s 7:05PM… Close Enough Once a child starts school, there is a definite need for a bedtime. Initially, with each of my kids, I found myself wanting to extend the bedtime. I missed them while they were gone and I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t denied any more time than absolutely necessary. However, as the school routine wore on, it became quite clear that keeping them up was not wise. Mornings could be absolute torture and, more than once, a child was dozing in his dinner. So, we set the 7:30 bedtime and held fast to it… and, there might have been a few times when we took advantage of the fact that they couldn’t tell time yet. We were known to whisper to each other, while they continued their bickering matches in the background, ‘It’s only 7:05… is that close enough?’
#3. You’re Going to Have to Turn the Clocks Back… Then, one day, those teachers will do something so absolutely evil that it will make you wonder what sort of vendetta they have against you… they will teach your child how to read time. Ahhhh!!! Worse yet, the little buggers will TALK to their friends, and suddenly ‘bedtime’ becomes ‘negotiation hour’. You just might find yourself counting the ticks of the second hand, because there is no chance that you are going to get that eight year old to climb the stairs to his or her room when that clock reads 7:59. After all, bedtime isn’t until 8:00, and even that is questionable, because Landon or Aubrey or Aiden or one of their other friends doesn’t have to go to bed until 8:30.
No way! Bedtime is the greatest form of evil in the mind of a child. If you are still a relatively new parent, enjoy the fact that you can tell your child that it is bedtime. He or she might groan and moan about having to ‘hit the hay’, but this beats the negotiation that comes when a kid is old enough to tell time. In my experience, there are three stages that occur in regards to bedtime...
#1. Keep Him on a Routine or We’ll Be up All Night! The initial stage of the kids-meet-bedtime pattern occurs in infancy. It’s that period of time when you don’t expect a full night sleep and you’re lucky to get one every couple of weeks or so. This is a time when many new parents are doing all that they can to establish a sleep routine, with the desperate hope that it will lead to the occasional five hours of uninterrupted sleep. Suddenly, the decision of whether or not to go out with friends for dinner must also take into account how it will disrupt the beloved routine. How many times have you had this conversation?
“But, he’ll fall asleep in the car.”
“We can just carry him in quietly.”
“You know that will never work. He’ll wake up and it’ll take us forever to get him back down.”
#2. It’s 7:05PM… Close Enough Once a child starts school, there is a definite need for a bedtime. Initially, with each of my kids, I found myself wanting to extend the bedtime. I missed them while they were gone and I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t denied any more time than absolutely necessary. However, as the school routine wore on, it became quite clear that keeping them up was not wise. Mornings could be absolute torture and, more than once, a child was dozing in his dinner. So, we set the 7:30 bedtime and held fast to it… and, there might have been a few times when we took advantage of the fact that they couldn’t tell time yet. We were known to whisper to each other, while they continued their bickering matches in the background, ‘It’s only 7:05… is that close enough?’
#3. You’re Going to Have to Turn the Clocks Back… Then, one day, those teachers will do something so absolutely evil that it will make you wonder what sort of vendetta they have against you… they will teach your child how to read time. Ahhhh!!! Worse yet, the little buggers will TALK to their friends, and suddenly ‘bedtime’ becomes ‘negotiation hour’. You just might find yourself counting the ticks of the second hand, because there is no chance that you are going to get that eight year old to climb the stairs to his or her room when that clock reads 7:59. After all, bedtime isn’t until 8:00, and even that is questionable, because Landon or Aubrey or Aiden or one of their other friends doesn’t have to go to bed until 8:30.