I was talking to some friends this week about our childhood bedtimes. I could only remember that by age 10 my bedtime was 10:30 pm on school days and pretty much open ended on non school days. (In practice I could only stay up until 1am, so I got to see SNL and the first half of Letterman.) That suprised many of my friends who said even at that age they went to sleep at 9 every day.
Do you remember your bedtime at any time in your childhood.
I remember it being 8:00 when I was 6 or so and then gradually moving up in 15-minute increments as I got older. Once I turned 10, bedtime was more of an “in your room and quiet so Mom and Dad can get some alone time” rule than a “lights out” rule and I was usually up until 11:00 or so. They didn’t care as long as I didn’t bother them.
Let’s see:
I remember being infuriated as a very little kid (probably 4 or 5) at being forced to go to bed WHEN IT WAS STILL LIGHT OUTSIDE.
This was Wisconsin, summer, so probably 7 PM.
By first grade (age 7), bedtime was 8 PM. My mom was cool though. I was a precocious and voracious reader, so the routine was “get ready for bed by 8 PM. You can read until 8:30”
By second grade (age 8) the “read-to” time was 9 PM
I probably “broke” the standard bedtime by middle-school (age 12). After that, my parents pretty much let me decide for myself (though had I ever been up past 11 PM they would have objected. I rarely did.)
By High School (age 15-18) it was up to me. Worked fine, since I often had to stay up late to study.
Oh, I hated going to bed when it was still light out! And the neighbor girl was much younger than me and was still playing outside (right below my bedroom window!). My bedtime was 7pm when I was young; I watched Truth or Consequences, then was allowed to sit up for the opening theme of Hogan’s Heroes, then off to bed.
When I was around 11 I had to be in bed by 9 on school nights, but could stay up as late as I wanted on weekends. I often watched Saturday Night Live and the Midnight Special in the darkened living room after my parents were asleep.
I remember having to go to bed when it was still light out. I also remember being pissed that I had to go to bed and couldn’t watch The Six Million Dollar Man, and this was in the Midwest, and prime time starts at 8 there.
My last kid at home, 12, has always been one to get emotionally unstable when he doesn’t get enough sleep, so he still has a strict bedtime of 9 on school nights (even in the summer) and 10 on other nights. He thinks it’s pretty archaic, but you try living with him when he’s sleep-deprived.
I know it was 8pm at some point because I had to go to bed before The Waltons started. When I was older (maybe middle school aged) it was 9:30, but I wasn’t allowed to watch TV past 9pm. By high school I didn’t have a bed time. I knew when I needed to go to bed and just did.
I think my bedtime was probably around 10. That’s when the evening soaps ended. I remember watching all of Dallas, Falcon Crest and Dynasty. I think the latter two were on Thursdays back to back starting at 8-ish. After watching those, it was time to get ready and into bed. On weekends, we could stay up as late as we could stay awake. I remember watching SNL with my mom and finding John Lovitz hilarious, even though I had no idea what he was talking about.
My mom was a single mom. I’m surprised she didn’t want us out of her hair earlier (she never wanted us around during the day), but she seemed to enjoy watching TV with us, probably because she had someone to talk to and didn’t need to be doing anything. She has never liked silence, but she hates it when people are in her way when she’s cleaning, and she has always been as anti-germ as anyone I’ve ever met.
Anyway, the only times I can remember going to bed when it was still light out was when we lost power for a week or two in the middle of summer during a bad storm. There was nothing else to do - we had exhausted our enjoyment of sitting outside under the stars and playing endless games of Go Fish and Uno - and we didn’t want to use up all of our candles and batteries, so we just went to sleep out of sheer boredom, even though it was sticky, nasty and muggy inside. I remember the morning the power turned on. It was one of those random moments that crystallized in my head. I had fallen asleep in mom’s bed with her and my sister (afraid of the dark) and woke up in my bed, feeling deliciously cool for the first time in ages.
I don’t remember the time, but I do remember that my dad always put us to bed, and the routine was that he gave my sister and I each a “magic pill.” Mind you, this was entirely imaginary. We each got to pick three ingredients for our pill, and they would be things like “good dreams,” “make an A on the math test tomorrow,” etc. My dad would then roll the “ingredients” between his palms and pop the “pill” in our mouths before he bid us goodnight.
That kind of shit would get you reported to child protective services these days, alas.
I don’t remember the times. I do remember being in bed with the sun still up and the neighbor kids still outside (I was the youngest of 5 kids on our street).
I know my brother watched those soaps like overlyverbose did but I didn’t.
I do remember watching TV at night. Dukes, A-Team, Muppets, Benson, Webster and when we got older “TGIF” 
I would always stay in bed reading for a while, regardless of when I was put to bed. As long as I was quiet, my mom didn’t come in and check on me. And since my preferred hobby at the time was reading in bed, even during the daytime, it didn’t seem to matter. I was usually already reading in bed when it was time to start reading in bed.
I was not a big tv watcher. We had one, but I liked books better.
The longest stretch of my little kidhood I had an 8:00 bedtime. Probably around my tenth year it pushed back to 9:00. 10:00 for a year or two and then 11:00 when I was in my later high school years.
The only thing about it that I was upset by was that there were shows on at my bedtimes that my older sister got to watch. She’d make a big deal in the morning about how funny or ggod whatever show it was had been, and how glad she was not to have to go to bed at [whatever time].
My son rails at having a bed time. His is 10:00, which is earlier than mine was at his age but at the beginning of this school year we tried 11:00 and he had a miserable time getting up in the morning so I made it 10:00 again. His best friend has no bedtime, and as far as we know never has had one. His family found out last week that he will need to repeat the 8th grade. talking to my son about what led up to that, he said that his friend never does homework, plays video games in his room all night and sleeps through most of his classes. I think bedtimes are important.
I was the older sister who was allowed to stay up later. I know that when I was 12, my bedtime was 10:00, because as a special treat I was allowed to stay up until 11:00 to watch the miniseries Eleanor and Franklin, while my younger siblings had to go to bed.
My parents didn’t enforce a bedtime. I went to bed when I was tired.
Now that I think of it, we didn’t have any real set rules at all. My parents made it clear that as long as we acted responsibly and they could trust us we could live rule free. As soon as we abused that privilege we lost it. My older brother ended up having some rules, since he was the wild child of the bunch, but the rest of us stayed rule free.
The only bedtime I ever remember having was 9:00, and I don’t remember precisely what age range that applied to. It was probably earlier when I was younger, but I don’t remember that. And I don’t think it was ever later: It just sort of faded from 9:00 not being enforced much, into no official bedtime.
Mom just took it for granted that I’d be lying in bed reading until she came up to bed. I thought I was so clever turning off the lights and pretending to be asleep as soon as I heard her coming up the steps, but of course I wasn’t fooling anybody.
I don’t remember any specific bedtimes but I know I had them. I do remember going to bed when it was still light outside and I thought that was stupid.
I don’t remember having a bedtime until I started kindergarten in 1974. Because it was so traumatic, I very vividly remember my father announcing my new 8:30 bedtime. He chose that time because it was the same bedtime he had as a child. It was especially upsetting to me because I was used to staying up late to watch my favorite show, Cannon starring William Conrad. Yeah, I know, strange favorite show for a kindergartner to have. I was a strange kid. I don’t remember what time it came on, but I know I missed it every week from then on except in summer reruns.
My stated bedtime never got later as I got older, but it was enforced less and less often. That was especially true after I reached middle school (third grade) when the start time for school was 9:15 AM instead of 8:30. It was a long time before it went entirely unenforced, though. I distinctly remember one occasion when I was in the fifth or sixth grade that my father made me go to bed because it was after 8:30, even though it was a Friday. Boy, was I mad.
My bedtime was 8:30pm throughout elementary school. This meant going to bed while it was still light out during the summer months, but it wasn’t very light for very long after bedtime even in late June and early July.
Yes, my parents made me go to bed by 7:30 until I was 10 or 11 and enforced it militantly (constantly checking to see if I had my light on, punishing me if they caught me with the light on or out of bed or reading in the dark etc). I almost never was able to get to sleep before 9 pm or so. It sucked!
Finally when I was 11 or 12 until age 14 (8th grade) they moved my bedtime to 8:30, which still sucked. After that there was too much going on in my family (and my dad was in the hospital for years) for my parents to be hard-asses about my bedtime, and I finally got to do as I pleased as long as I stayed in my room (no tv or computer in there).
Right after Jeopardy, so 8PM.
At age 14, my parents got divorced, I was shuffled around for a bit and my bedtime became 10PM. I was another one who stayed up surreptitiously to read and daydream.
Pretty much 9PM on school nights even thru high school, altho we were allowed to read in bed for a while after 9. My mom was not going to hassle with 5 tired kids who stayed up all hours and try to get them to school on time.
Weekends, we could stay up later, but I rarely did. In fact, to this day, I’m ready for bed around 9. Of course, I get up for work at 5…