Kids staying up late during the summer - Page 3

[two raising two]

i think that because you are seeking out other opinions, you already are leaning towards letting them play later than you originally thought was an acceptable time frame. i think your willingness to rethink your position (whether you change your mind or not) leans towards excellent parenting. i do not want to tell you what i think is right for your family, as i have no idea. in my family, we have all been seeing later bedtimes (which is working well for us). we live in maine (where summer is precious and short). staying up later has just been a natural progression (with all the extra hours of daylight). as summer starts to come to it's end, i will get my daughters back into their routines for school. i'm sure this won't be easy since it will still be light out at 8pm come mid-august. right now, i am just following what seems like a natural reaction to the season of sun (more time in it). that said, i don't believe in one size fits all plans for children/families. there are so many factors to consider like personalities and work schedules of parents. as i tell my kids about new foods, 'try it you might like it'. maybe you could let them have a night or two with later bedtimes and see how it works in your family. one last note, my kids kept getting up at 6:30 -7am when they first started going to bed later. after a week, they were sleeping until 8am. Now they are waking up between 8:30 and 9. i think it takes them a bit to shed the internal clocks they have from their regular spring/fall/winter routines. i hope this was helpful.

[love being mama]

My daughter just turned 6 and I her summer "bedtime" is very different than winter. She needs a good 11 hrs of sleep, but will slowly adjust her sleeping in time to get that. There is def an adjustment period though. We don't have any kids running around our neighborhood. I'd give just about anything to have that. You are lucky! ;)

[Susan Kunkel]

We keep to the same bedtime .My two ds 7and9 get up early no matter what tme bed is.The oldest does not function well with lack of sleep.

[xzaviers_mama]

Originally Posted by Tigerchild 

I let my kids stay up later in the summer (since it's sunny--well, WHEN it is sunny--until 9 PM or later!); but primarily when they're interested in getting more outdoor time.  :)  I don't let them just stay up playing video games, ect, in the house.  There's really such a short opportunity for them to play long periods of time outdoors with the weather being dry and mild that they really eat it up when they can get it (and I am happy that they do).  We don't have other kids in the neighborhood, but as long as it was daylight it wouldn't bug me.

I kept a tight lid on bedtime even during the summer until I realized how much fun DD (9, and my oldest) in particular had with the extra freedom to run and play.  Here in the PacNW there's pleny of cold, rainy, dark, almost wintery days this summer so far so the kids have breaks from being tempted to be running around every night until the sun sets; maybe your kiddo just needs some 'break days' as well as 'late days'.  But really, the time that your DD is going to be interested in running and playing in the neighborhood on summer days is speeding away so quickly.  To me, that's one of the essences of playing hard during the summertime, and that softened my stance a bit.  We had to tighten up on behavior guidelines at home (if she wanted to have later nights she would have to work through strategies of what to do when she was grumpy or needed more rest, she wasn't going to be allowed to take it out on me and her brothers and still get to do that).  It did take a week or two for her to adjust, but she did.  I'm finding that she thrives with limited, structured 'bending the rules' during the summer over stuff like this.  YMMV.  :)

Same here.  We're in Bellevue, and I totally want my kids to eat up the daylight and non-rainy weather when they can!  I'm a SAHM, and as long as we don't have any early morning obligations, I don't really care how late they stay up.  DH and I are night owls as well, so it's no biggie for us.  

We get such a short summer here... we've all got to live it up!

[mattemma04]

My kids usually go inside at 9pm when we lock up the chickens.Bedtime is at 11pm.During school it is 9:30pm.We had a fire last night so we were outside till 10:30pm. We are not in a neighborhood,so no issue with kids coming over. I would not want anyone coming after 8:30,and anyone over would have to leave at 9pm.

[katieh]

I am a stickler for early bedtime even in the summer, simply because my son (5) needs his sleep and does not sleep in the next morning if he stays up late.  A few special times we have let him stay up late--for fireworks, a day at the lake in super hot weather, or when relatives are visiting--but it takes him a few days to recover from it.  There is some evidence that we all get better and more nourishing sleep in the hours before midnight than in the hours after.  I myself follow the "early to bed, early to rise" dictum and wake up naturally (no alarm) by 5 am, and have been like that for most of my life, and my son seems to be the same way.  However, we live in northern Vermont, and summer here is so short and so very sweet that I often find myself longing for more time outside just when it's time to begin the bedtime routine.  I guess that will come when he gets older.  It helps that we continue to spend a lot of time outside all winter and tend not to hibernate.  We have lots of afternoons and evenings in the dead of winter when our son and other kids are using headlamps in the yard so they can continue to play--especially when we have lots of snow for making caves and hills--and it's a struggle to get them in for supper and bedtime.  We have friends who follow a later bedtime schedule in the summers and it seems to work for them, but it wouldn't for us.

[kayleesmom]

we allow my kids to be out until about 7pm but not later.