My niece has had one since she was 6. She has to be in bed at 9, whereupon her mother kisses her good night, turns the TV on and leaves.
My kids are 10 and 13 and have gotten up early their whole lives, like 6-6:30. If we let them stay up later then they still wake up the same time, then have one cranky-assed afternoon. So we try to get the 10-year-old in bed with lights out by 8:30, 9 at the latest, and usually a half-hour later for the older one. Although she has been known to stay up to 10:30 panicking over homework she forgot until the last minute. But generally kids that age need 9-10 hours of sleep so we try to make sure they get it.
“The experts” seem to recommend against TV at bedtime, whether it’s in your room or not. We don’t let our kids have TV or computers in their rooms.
I asked this 'cause I was wondering how different things were now than when I was little. I did have a TV in my room, but I wasn’t allowed to watch it. I could read if I wasn’t tired. For some reason reading put me out, if I was tired while, if you watch TV you can kind of be half awake / half asleep type of thing.
When I got a clock radio of course it was cool for having the “sleep timer,” to put you to sleep.
For some odd reason it still amazes me that kids still want to do things I did when I was little. I would think they would have so much more to occupy their time now.
Yup.
Look here
and here
and here
Kinda hard to believe unless you’ve been an elementary teacher and have had contact with lots of kids.
Wow. I’m so glad that my kids’ favorite thing in the world to do is reading a book.
Oh, I think my niece does suffer from chronic sleep deprivation. I think my sister does, too. I think a lot of people do and do not realize it.
I also think they are pretty often engaged in a dynamic wherein she is tired at the end of a day and so is my niece, so my niece drives her nuts demanding attention and my sister gets mad, then feels guilty for being mad and lets the kid have what she wants to make up for it, then decides not to be mad the next time so lets her have what she wants from the get-go which only results in another round because what my niece really wants is her mother’s attention which she cannot have because my sister is already tired and has a number of things she has to get done before she gets to go to bed…I think it happens a lot and people do not realize it.
My sister asked me about my kids’ bedtime once and I told her I set their bedtimes based on this notion: they should wake up at the time they need to without an alarm clock (or being dragged by me) most of the time. That is, they should not need to catch up on their sleep during the weekends. This was somewhat more difficult with Eldest, whose internal clock gets him up at 7 no matter what, but we have worked that out. She thinks I am nuts, that’s what weekends are for.
This is how we set bedtimes too. My oldest just turned 5 and he needs a lot of sleep to be happy. He wakes up on his own around 7:30-8am and goes to bed at 8pm. My youngest is 19 months and we just pushed him back to 7:30pm. He takes longer to settle down and fall asleep in the summer when it is still light out but he also wakes up around 8am. He still takes an afternoon nap, but not a long one.
We won’t allow tv or computers in their bedrooms. I wonder what kinds of new devices will be out there by the time they are teenagers though! You will probably be able to get online with your shoes by then.
My four year old does not sleep more than seven or eight hours at a time, so if she doesn’t go to bed as late as ten we’re up at four in the morning. Up and running.
I’m hoping when she starts school in a few weeks (she’ll be in CDC preschool) she may need more sleep, but I honestly don’t see how she’ll exert more energy than she does at home.
When her big sister was young she had a bedtime of eight until she was twelve. She wanted to watch some show…probably Dark Angel, so I let her stay up until ten then.
That was the case with my two year old, until about twoo weeks ago. We took a long car trip to San Antonio and borrowed a friend’s portable DVD player to keep her entertained. Now she’s addicted to DVDs of Barney and Elmo. But we still read at bedtime and other times throughout the day.
We have a firm bedtime of 9 PM. The little Torqueling takes at least one nap every day, usually 2 hours long (I say “at least one” because she’s been sick these past few days and took two naps yesterday). I remember having a firm 9 PM bedtime for a long time; in particular, I remember Dad not letting us stay up an extra hour to see Robin’s baby be born on the V: The Final Battle miniseries. School was abuzz the next day with the surprising news that she’d had twins. And we’d missed it.
The previous owner of my house installed steel roll-down shutters. I still think they are ugly things, but they are great when you have babies. A shutter can make it instantly dark, cool and quiet in his bedroom, and that helps a lot with sleeping.
This just in:
The last couple of days Junior has not been awake when I’ve left for work. We’re going back to 9:30. (with some leniency about lights out until the last 2 weeks or so before school starts)
As an aside, he does NOT have a TV in his room, and won’t for a very long time.