Okay, so I am watching Wife Swap on the Lifetime channel, which I believe proves how desperately boring my day is today. But one of the points of contention at “rule change” time is the children’s bed times. The new wife doesn’t like that the children must be in bed by 8:00 PM and the husband is fighting her change to “in bed whenever they want”.
So here is my question for y’all. Do you or did you have strict bed times for your kids? What about when you were a kid?
When I was young I had a 9:00 PM bedtime and I clearly remember when I “graduated” to being allowed up until 10:00. It was a big deal for me at the time and meant I was growing up…then somewhere in my teens the bedtime rule went out the window altogether and I was left to my own devises, which worked fine.
For my own children I have been all over the place as far as bed times. the oldest had a loosely enforced bedtime of 9:00 PM when he was in the lower grades of elementary school. As a baby/toddler I put him to bed when he was tired, he woke up when he was done sleeping. When he had a bed time, there were times he needed sleep earlier or later and it was always a chore to enforce the time so I eventually gave it up and he went to bed when he was tired (or when I told him he was) which turned out to be around 10:00 or 10:30 every night- he got up for school with no problems and every one was happy.
By the time subsequent children came along, I was a more seasoned parent and let them pretty much figure it out on their own. They slept when tired, sometimes that was 9:00 PM, sometimes 11:00 PM. As long as everyone woke up on their own (or at least my minimal involvement) and got themselves to school on time then all was well.
Now my children are 20 (almost 21) 18, 16, and 13 and they take care of their own schedules. As long as they are in the house by their curfews (town curfew for the younger two, and no longer a curfew for the older two, but I need to know if they are coming home that night or not) and at the breakfast table on time the next morning (not really a set time, but when I call them sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 on school days) then all is well. They have all developed their own habits and are in bed around the same time every night.
So was I missing anything? Would I have raised better young adults if I had enforced a “sun is down and so are you” bedtime policy throughout their childhoods?
My kids have a time at which they need to be in bed, which is dependent upon the time they need to get up. On school days, the 8 year old goes to bed at 8:30 and gets up at 7:30; the 10 year old goes to bed at 9:00 and gets up at 7:00. I have never really had to enforce it much. If they consistently wake up earlier, then their bedtime gets adjusted based on that. When they go to sleep is entirely their decision, but too many mornings of my having to drag them out of bed prompts a conversation about the relationship between that and the whole sleep thing. On the weekends I rarely bring it up but they go to bed anyway.
Twice a year at daylight saving time and its termination things get dicey, but we are far enough north that it makes a difference and both my kids are sensitive to the length of the day so I have just gotten used to that.
Honestly, I think this is a very individual thing. My kids have a bedtime because I like a certain amount of predictability and order in my day and neither of them objects particularly. My mother does not care about those things so much adn it caused some unnecessary trouble between us when I was younger, which neither of us really understood. Whether you missed anythign with any of your individual children I could not say. Probably, most people do. But I think there are very few parenting issues for which there is a one size fits all solution, as the solution has to meet the needs of each family and also of each family member at any given time, and will do so to a greater or lesser degree.
I used to put my kids to bed at a set time because I was heavily involved in their bedtime routine (teeth brushing, story reading, etc.) These days, they’re thirteen and eighteen years old, so I strongly suggest they go to bed when I do (around ten), but if they don’t, no big deal. They are responsible enough to get themselves up for school and do what they have to do.
However, my stepson is also eighteen and frequently misses school because he’s too tired from playing video games all night. On weekends, he stays up until dawn and sleeps until twilight, throwing his schedule off completely. Were he my eighteen year old child, he would have an enforced bedtime, because he is not responsible enough to take care of his own business.
Since both my wife and I work early (I wake up at 5, out the door at 545; her, when she gets called in (she’s an on-call paraprofessional) works school hours and is usually up around 7) we have to make sure the kids (ages 7 and 5) have a routine for bedtime.
As far back as I can remember (probably going back to when they were old enough to have bedtimes) the bedtime has been 8. That has seemed to work (and the oldest has said most of her peers have a similar bedtime). I also think she’s old enough to go to bed a little later, since she’s good at waking up in the morning (whereas the youngest is like his daddy, likes to stay up at night and sleep in in the morning) - she also has activities like Brownies that keep her up past bedtime (Brownies ends at 8). I don’t want to outright say that she has a later bedtime than him, because of course the sibling rivalry will start. Instead, we jsut make sure he goes to bed first at 8, and she reads to him, then gets ready for bed and goes to bed herself, that results in her being up later (8:30 or 8:45) but we don’t make a big deal for her (we do if he’s up late). Perhaps when he’s 7, and is better at waking up and going to bed, the official bedtime will change for both.
My kids are in bed by 8:30. Well, actually 8:32, which my older son (6) negotiated with us because he wanted to go to bed a little bit later. My boys share a room and they often lie in there and chat, which is fine. On weekends or school vacation, we’re a little looser and if they’re behaving well and in the middle of something, they can stay up a little later. Honestly, the regular bedtime is more for my husband’s and my sanity. We need a bit of quiet wind-down time before we go to bed. Whatever time they go to bed, I have to drag them out of bed on schooldays and they’re up at the crack of dawn on weekends.
When I was in elementary school, my bedtime was 8:30, which pissed me off because it meant I missed half of Little House on the Prairie. It was moved to 9 in middle school and 10 in high school. My parents didn’t care if I stayed up and read or did homework or whatever after “bedtime”, but I had to be in my room and quiet.
I do remember when I was about age twelve, being made to take a nap after school in order to be allowed to stay up that night and watch Gone With the Wind on TV. It was on from about 8 to 11, two nights in a row.
7 & 5 year olds are lights out at 8 PM, the 9 year old has to be in her room at 8, but can read until 8:30. This is school nights, and all kids get up at 7:00. If any of them were consistently up & dressed before 7, we’d reconsider, but that hasn’t become an issue yet.
Weekends - they have to be fully ready for bed (pajamas & teeth) by 8, but can stay up till 9. The youngest generally requests being put to bed or falls asleep by 8:20 or so anyway.
I’m with my kids all day long, so we have a pretty strict time for them to be in their rooms. First they have half an hour or so of quiet reading time, then it’s lights out at 8:30 (which is called “squishing the kids”). I don’t object to them staying up and reading quietly, as long as I don’t have to deal with them any more–after 8 pm I am Off Duty, that’s just necessary for survival if you’re a homeschooling mom.
I think it depends a lot on when they go to bed. My kids have to wake up early, 6 o’clock. So in order for them to get enough sleep the 6 year old goes to bed at 7:30, the 8 year old goes to bed at 8, the 10 year old at 8:30, and the 12 year old at 9ish.
My 6-y.o. loves to go to bed and happily plunks her head down at 8:00, lights out. She’s asleep probably 10 minutes later. My 8-y.o. would stay up reading until midnight if we let her, so she’s in bed by 8, lights out at the later of (i) 8:30, or (ii) when we remember to tell her to turn her light out, which is usually around 8:45. Sometimes she’s still up at 9:30. We’re hesitant to push her light-out time though, because it’s tough to get her up in the morning. She’s somewhat nocturnal, like me, unfortunately. I fear that she’ll be plagued with sleep problems all her life, again like me.
Weekends, vacations, holidays… it’s more loosey-goosey.
Plus, my wife and I need to clock out at some point, which is tough if we know the kiddies are out of bed and active upstairs. Or worse, downstairs.
Yes, I enforce a bedtime for my daughter. It’s 9.30pm on weekdays (she’s 11 years old). Today I sent her to bed at 9 because she’s been tired a lot at school lately.
When she was a baby, I had a strict bedtime for her and a pretty long bedtime routine, and she slept through the night no problem. She’s never actually given me a single sleepless night. Among my friends, the ones whose kids didn’t have a solid bedtime routine were the ones whose kids had trouble staying asleep. I’m sure that doesn’t happen to every family, but it makes sense that it’s easier to stay asleep once you’re completely settled into ‘sleep mode’ rather than just dropping off.
When adults have insomnia, some of the best advice is to have a bedtime routine and keep distractions away from your line of sight when you’re lying down, so that everything around you makes you think ‘sleeeep’ when you’re first going to bed and if you wake up in the night. It makes sense that that would work for kids too. But then, every child is different and I’m sure that some kids would be stifled by a bedtime.
There’s no way I’d give up sending a kid to their bedroom to do quiet stuff (and hopefully sleep) at a certain time, at the very least - we need grown-up time!
It’s probably easier to have an unstructured bedtime with one kid if they have older siblings who did have a structured bedtime so have learnt to regulate themselves - the younger kids learn what’s expected of them and can follow their older siblings’ example.
Our kids (5 and 3) are usually in bed by 8. But neither of them can tell time yet; so if they’re acting tired/cranky, we’ll just say at 7:15 “Time for bed!.” Sometimes if things are going on they’ll be up to 8:30 or even 9:00. They get up when they get up, usually between 7:30 and 8:00 but sometimes later.
Next year the older child starts kindergarten, which means getting up a lot earlier every day. We’ll probably try to stick to 8:00 for him (he needs a lot of sleep) at least until we’re sure he can handle the early morning routine.
They’re too young for “go to bed whenever you want.” First of all, they would stay up playing until they fell asleep on the floor; and second, the few hours after they go to bed are the only relaxing time that my wife and I have together and we hate to give that up.
Hmmm…I think I must have gotten lucky with my kids and their sleep patterns since all of them have been pretty much self-regulating without headaches for me. When they were small we of course did the bath, brush teeth, read a story bit, but that was not bedtime per se. Sometimes they stayed up after their stories, sometimes they didn’t; and all have always been early risers no matter what time they go to bed (much to mommy’s chagrin- I like my sleep in the mornings and am difficult to wake).
My oldest learned early to sleep through the night. As a baby he would go to sleep for the night (not counting naps of course) at 10:00 or 11:00 and not wake until 8 or 9:00 AM. Now as a nearly 21 year-old he stays up half the night when he doesn’t have school or work in the AM and still gets up around 9. If he has to be someplace early (school) then he is at the breakfast table with everyone else around 6:30.
The younger kids weren’t mine as babies (steps and a niece that I have raised) so I am not sure what their routines were, but as elementary school children they seemed to go to bed on their own fairly early and have never required more than either their own alarm clock or me standing at their bedroom door telling them it was time to wake up.
I myself seldom go to bed before 1:00 or 2:00 AM and naturally find it difficult to be up cooking breakfast at 6:00, so I am glad they didn’t model their habits based on me.
It has just never really been an issue around our house. Like I said, maybe we got lucky. So when it was such a huge sticking point to the family on Wife Swap it made me wonder why it would be such a huge issue (especially when the new rules were only for a week).
Up until I was 10 I had to be in bed by 9pm. But that didn’t mean asleep. I just had to be ready and in my bed at that time. My mum wouldn’t care if I read or petted the cat or drew in bed. I don’t recall many times when it hit 10pm and I was still awake.
After I turned 11, I could go to bed whenever, but I had to get up at 6:30am, regardless
But one of the points of contention at “rule change” time is the children’s bed times. The new wife doesn’t like that the children must be in bed by 8:00 PM and the husband is fighting her change to “in bed whenever they want”.