The Firebug never thinks he’s tired when we turn out the lights, but usually drops off pretty quickly once we put him in his crib. (And frequently falls asleep during the cuddling/lullaby period I mentioned between lights out and being put in his crib.)
So, strange as this may seem, I think we have a better idea than our toddler does of when he’s tired.
Also, during the week, we need to get him up at a fixed time in the morning, so we can get him to day care, and us off to work. We want him to get to bed late enough so he’ll usually sleep until we need to wake him, but early enough that he’ll wake up quickly, rather than our having to drag him into consciousness when he still clearly needs more sleep.
A parent can figure this stuff out. A toddler can’t.
I can’t imagine letting my 12 year old go to bed at midnight, or even 10:30 seems late to me. I have a 12 year old son who goes to bed at about 9 every night and wakes up at 6:30 ready for school.
My daughter is just turning 1 in the next couple of weeks, but she’s had a strict bedtime of 7:30 for months now. She basically set that herself, and she sleeps about 10.5-11 hours at night, so she wakes up right when we do, unless she’s teething or sick.
My daughter is 2 years and 9 months old and her usual bedtime is 8pm, with the routine started by 7:30pm or earlier, depending on if it’s a hair-wash night. She usually sleeps from 8pm until 7am, but rarely naps during the day. If she does nap, it’s never earlier than 3pm and any length of naptime will adversely affect bedtime - I have had plenty of nights when my husband has let her sleep for 30 minutes in the afternoon and as a result she won’t go to sleep until 10pm or later (but she will still wake up at 7am)!
One thing which affects how long my daughter sleeps is her bladder, since she has been day and night toilet-trained for about 6 months - she has to pee before she goes to bed at night and then I have to put her on the potty again just before I go to bed (about 10pm), so she can sleep through without wetting the bed (she hasn’t got the knack yet of waking up to go potty).
That article mentioned a bed time of 10:00 pm or earlier vs children who were “allowed to stay up until midnight”.
I found with all four of my children given the option (that is not telling them to go to bed earlier) to choose when to go to bed, all were almost always in bed by 10 or 10:30. Now the two that are adults stay up later, the younger two rarely do.
My son, who is 2, doesn’t always realize when he’s tired. For example, he likes to resist nap time. He’ll get more and more hyper as he gets tired. But if I grab him and we rock in the chair for a minute or two, he’s out like a light and sleeps soundly for 1-2 hours. So… he’s tired but doesn’t feel it. You can’t treat each kid the same – and some really do need help from parents when they don’t understand what their own bodies are telling them. If he genuinely doesn’t seem tired in the afternoon, then I will occasionally skip the nap, but this happens rarely.
(Slightly different case in point: it took me, and my parents, years to realize that my hunger signals don’t work. I really ran into problems during adolescence when I grew very quickly. Sometimes I felt hungry in time to keep my blood sugar on an even keel. But most times I couldn’t tell if I was hungry or not. So my mom kept a really regular eating schedule for me. I still do, to this day.)
Anyhow, my son has a bed time of 8:00 pm, or 7:30 if he seems extra tired. He sleeps until about 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning. This fits with our work/day care drop-off schedules at the moment, but if we had to get up earlier then bedtime would be earlier. He thrives on having a schedule, by the way. Even if I forget to look at the clock, he ends up in bed at 8:00 anyway because that’s just his regular wind down time. He tells me he’s done with stories and asks to go to bed. Incidentally, as new parents we didn’t really know what was a good bedtime, and let him stay up far too late when he was an infant. Finally friends recommended an earlier bedtime and it made a huge difference.
p.s. I know it sounds contradictory between my account of nap time and bedtime. But he’s always been a dicey napper and a great nighttime sleeper.
If they had stayed up till midnight - and were really difficult to get up the next day - I bet you’d have instigated a bedtime for them. Many kids who are allowed to stay up as long as they like often do stay up past midnight and end up knackered.
I wonder if you had a natural night time routine when your kids were younger, that told them that it was bedtime. Otherwise I find it surprising that you never had any problems with any of them - though I guess the ones you weren’t with when they were babies might have been taught about bedtimes.
I know what I would do: I would resent you and grow to hate and fear bedtimes.
I used to think I had mental problems or some other kind of emotional issues. The reason was that I could never just fall asleep. I would be forced to go to bed then toss and turn and stay up for at least another 30 or 40 minutes more. I hated it, I envied and hated my friends who could just fall asleep when they went to bed, or anyone who had that ability for that matter. Yes, I thought it was actually like some special ability to be able to do that.
When I started dictating my own bedtimes and going to bed only when I was tired, I found out that suddenly I wasn’t so different from other people. I could fall asleep, and quickly, as soon as I went to bed. Never had I been so happy to go to sleep as when I found this out. I still am annoyed at my parents for putting me through that for the first decade or so of my life
Sorry but I have to ask: You have a kid named Fang? :eek:
Yes, as I have mentioned a few times now, we did bath, brush teeth, read stories, etc. and I did often tell them to go to bed when they were too young to know for themselves to do it.
My point at the beginning of the thread was that we had (and have) no exact time when it is X o’clock the kids MUST be in bed no matter what. They always were (and are) in bed at a reasonable time, and they almost always have gone to bed at the same time (or close to it) each night- give or take half an hour. But we never stopped what we were doing, hurried home, or even thought “Oh it is X o’clock…time for bed!” Instead we did our evening routine and when the kids were ready for sleep they went to bed. Easy. The kids always had structure, always had support (bedtime stories, hugs, tuck-ins) and always had enough sleep, it just was not dictated by hands on the clock.
The 3 that were not with me as infants came to me at 3 (niece) 2 (step-daughter) and 7 (step-son) so only the older one would have had any realistic experience with clock-based bed times (and he didn’t, we got sole custody because of his bio-mom’s neglect). It was just normal and routine for them to go to bed when they needed to (the times changed from earlier to later naturally as they grew) without fuss or without needing the clock to tell them to do so.
As a high school teacher, I had my students do a brief assignment where they wrote, amongst other things, what time they go to bed. Unsurprisingly, the ones with the later bed times (as late as 2am! :eek:) are also the ones with the most behavior problems.
I can’t say definitively of course that too little sleep causes misbehavior… but it sure as hell can’t help!
Not having a set time for bed, does not mean staying up until all hours. I would consider the parents of such teens to be neglectful in their duties. If their parents had instituted a “sleep when you are tired” (even if Mom and Dad have to tell you when you are tired) bedtime instead or “anything goes” I would bet money that those same children would be sleeping at a much earlier time each night, and would have fewer behavioral problems as a result.
Yes you can definitely say that too little sleep causes all kinds of problems.
“Insufficient sleep among adolescents may not only contribute to lower grades and a lack of motivation, but may also increase the odds of serious levels of emotional and behavioral disturbances, including ADHD, according to a research abstract”
This kind of thing has been studied extensively. It has been shown over and over that lack of sufficient sleep causes kids to have worse grade and more behavioral problems.
And you have perhaps just done me a serious favor! You see, I teach at a school (charter) for students with learning challenges, and ADHD figures prominently amongst them. I figured in my gut that there was not just correlation but also causation, but didn’t figure that there were actual studies to prove it. So. I may just have to take what my students wrote, toss it together with the above article and send it all to my admin to then hopefully get this message across to the parents in question.
Otherwise, I will just have to anonymously mail article copies to the parents myself.
Unfortunately I fear that the parents won’t care anyway (else why would they let their kids stay up so late?! These parents are also the ones who no-show parent/teacher conferences). Le sigh.
