The first memory I have of an actual bedtime was actually when I successfully campaigned to get it bumped from 9 to 10 at night. I was probably 10 or so, and I wanted to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV.
Bedtime was waived for occasions like parties, which my parents had about every other weekend or so for quite a while (adults played board games, kids ran amok until we all kind of dropped and slept wherever we fell), and holidays. I never had that much interest in staying up until midnight on NYE, but since there was inevitably a party going on then, nobody would have objected.
I do remember one year where my sister and I were allowed to stay up and play as late as we wanted, in honor of someone’s birthday. Except our parents didn’t announce this – they just never came into our playroom to tell us it was time for bed. I remember looking at the clock, seeing it was something unprecedented like one in the morning, and wondering if we’d been forgotten! :eek: In retrospect my poor mother was probably trying desperately to stay awake while she listened for signs of trouble from out in the living room with her book, but at the time it was quite eerie.
I never had a bedtime in high school. Nor a curfew. The first couple of times 14-year-old me stayed out with friends until 2am Saturday morning, my parents noted that I came home sober and uninjured, deposited on our doorstep by the other teenagers and not by the local authorities. After that, they quit waiting up, and just told me to try not to wake the dogs when I came in.
ETA: I’m 30, high school class of 1999. I have no idea what sorts of rules my parents had when they were kids.
We had EARLY bedtimes. 8 latest on school nights, 9 or maybe 10 on weekends. Didn’t change as we got older, I just read a lot after hours with a flashlight, lol.
This was the 70’s.
Up until I was 6 or so, my bedtime was 8. After that, I didn’t have a bedtime, I was allowed to go to sleep whenever I wanted. Sometimes I stayed up as late as 9, sometimes I went to bed as early as 630. As years went by, my family got to the point where all of us were asleep by 7 in the evening. It’s not like we intentionally set out to do this or anything. It just worked out that way.
It had the nifty side effect that I was waking up naturally between 3 and 330 every morning. It was nice having 3 hours in the morning to bathe, eat breakfast, watch tv, get some reading in, etc before heading off to school.
I actually did not have a bed time that I can remembre. I have always been a night owl. My parents would ake me get in bed with my dolls and books and told me I didn’t have to go to sleep but I did hve to get in bed. The say they would here me talking to my dolls when they went to bed.
Sophie is in the 4th grade and goes to bed around 9:30, 10:00pm. I would like it if she were to go to bed earlier, but then I’d miss the time with her. It’s a lose-lose situation.
As for me, I don’t recall. I stayed up late on the weekends even in the 2nd, 3rd grade, to watch the creature features, but when I was Sophie’s age back in '77, I probably went to bed around 9pm.
8:30 for a long time. It was hard because I was, and am, a night person. I used to think it took me hours to go to sleep. Nope. It was just that I wasn’t tired when they sent me to bed. We weren’t allowed to read after it was time for bed either (which was probably good as we would have read half the night). Yikes, wheresmymind, that is bad!!! I also have awesome parents and so my complaints about them are similarly un-earthshaking, but still, that really must have sucked in the summer when it was still light especially if you were a night owl. Argh!!
I’ve always been a night owl and I don’t remember my brother and I ever having a bedtime. My parents usually didn’t care what we did as long as we didn’t bother them. That (not bothering them) did mean that we had to at least be in our rooms at some point before 10ish, because the way the Kansas farmhouse we grew up in was laid out, we both had to go through their bedroom to get to the stairs going down to the living room, and mom was a light sleeper. My dad worked nights and I’d turn the light off when he was due home just so he wouldn’t yell at me, but then like many others I’d read under the covers. My older brother desperately wanted my room because right outside the windows was the roof over the front porch and he could sneak out by climbing up and down the trellis. My parents refused to let us switch because they knew that I was terrified of the trellis and wouldn’t climb down. I’d sit on the roof to read or watch the stars but sneaking out wasn’t going to happen.
I remember watching one of those health films that schools love to show and envying the kids because they were/had everything I wasn’t/didn’t. Not only was their posture great, they ate well, had nice parents and a great home, they actually looked happy! I did feel sorry for them when it said that their bedtime was 7:00pm though. They’re probably much healthier and make more money than I do. In retrospect I guess I would have traded in my no one cares bedtime for their (or wheresmymind’s) life.
Didn’t really have one. I had trouble sleeping when I was very young and I have memories of watching rodeos on television at like 3am when I was like 6-7.
I recall it was around 9 when in grade school and it was 11 in high school, just on school nights, but otherwise no restrictions; I’d stay up much later on weekends and completely lose any sleep schedule during the summer, as in staying up not just late at night but also having extended sleep/wake cycles (e.g. wake up at 4 pm and go to sleep at noon the next day) and staying up for 24+ hours. I also did that, though not as extreme, in college, as long as I was awake when going to class (shorter class times and not always every weekday helped as well). Not that I do this anymore, though I still tend to stay up late when I can.
Incidentally, this is the “How to Tell Time” bookI referenced in my previous post. It was first published in 1957 so the copy I had in the 70s was obviously a later printing. I thought the interactive hour and minute hands on the cover was a neat feature but even when I first read it, I noticed it took place in a world where television didn’t exist.
When I was very little it was 7 pm and then at some point it moved to 8 and then to 9. By the time I was in high school 10 was the unwritten bedtime rule with the town curfew standing in for a parental one for weekends and summer.
I’m the oldest and I was definitely held to the bedtime standard. My brother who is 8 years younger than me was staying up til 10 when he was in 5th grade. Yes, I was irked.
Have kids yet? Reason I ask is that I always resented having the earliest bedtime out of all my friends. But now that I have a kid, I realize he’s just a disaster if he doesn’t get a ton of sleep. Made me rethink things quite a bit. So maybe one day you WILL understand. YMMV of course.
I guess it was 8 or 8:30 when I was very young. But considering my parents went to bed at 9 pm on most nights, I had no bedtime after age 10. I stayed up as late as I wanted, which was not very late because I had nothing to do. essentially I was only child way out in the country. (older sister had already moved out of the house).
I don’t really remember early on, but my family was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise family. I recall that my bed at age 8 was 8:00pm and I tried to reason that at age 9 that my bedtime should logically increase to 9:00pm. It didn’t happen for a while. Once sports kicked in in middle school, I didn’t have a bedtime- just a pass out from exhaustion time.
No kids (that I know about), but I accept that when that day comes I could very well become the worlds biggest hypocrite.
I have no doubt that my early bedtime was part of a larger strategy on my parent’s part to keep their sanity. I’m sure those extra hours of me being in bed, quiet and not running around the house were a godsend to them. But they’re kidding themselves if they think I got any extra sleep from it. I’d daydream, read, concoct elaborate fantasy worlds populated by my stuffed animals, etc for hours before I actually fell asleep.
It’s amazing, but it still feels good to go to bed whenever I want, it’s one of those simple pleasures that makes growing up almost worth while. So I do have to admit I have gotten something out of it.