what time does your 7yo/1st grader go to bed?

[vtgirl]

my dd is SO tired and unwilling to get out of bed in the morning to go to school. she loves first grade and is always happy once she's finally at school but she comes up with one excuse after another when the alarm goes off.

as of now our schedule is 6:50am alarm goes off the first time.

7am alarm goes off again and we start talking - i say c'mon lets get up , she says no i'm too tired(or my tummy hurts, or i have a sore throat, its too cold - but mostly its "i'm still tired")

725am - at the last possible minute she gets out of bed and we get our stuff togethter and get out the door for 7:45 or 7;50 to arrive at school by 8am.


her bedtime is 8pm which i realize might sound late but the reason for the 8pm bedtime is that dh sometimes doesn't get home till after 7pm and she would not see him for days on end end if she was in bed by 7pm like most of her classmates.

any advice? any idea how much sleep kids need at this age? should we just send her to bed earlier and make weekends more "family-centric"?

any thoughts are appreciated...........

ps, she was never like this before this school year - she's always been an early riser but school starts 15 mins earlier this year for this grade

[canteloupe]

My daughter is in kindergarten (age 5) and she is asleep by 7-7:30 at the latest. We do have the same situation as you will her dad working late (he works until 9 pm every Mon and Thursday). Last night he had to have dental work done so she didn't seem him last night either. It is hard for her not to see him but she has terrible meltdowns in the morning if she doesn't go to bed early enough. She does get to see him every morning as he is the one that takes her to school.

I guess in the end it will be a decision you and your daughter have to make together.
Not sure if that helps or not??

[jempd]

My 6.5 first grader brushes teeth at nine, is in bed around 9:15 (it takes him a while) and is read to and is told stories or we talk until usually past 9:45. If he is asleep by 10:00 we are happy. He wakes up between 7 and 7:15. We are finally at a place with sleeping that is not wearing on his father and me. When he was younger he just could not fall asleep and the bedtime routine would go on an on, with dh and I switching off so that one of us could do something else at least. He has never gone to bed as early as your dd. There have been many times when I have fallen asleep before he has.

[socialworkmamma]

Just wanted to say I feel your pain. We try for an 8 to 8:30 bedtime, but with DD's superadvanced stall tactics, we're lucky if she's asleep by 8:45. We need to leave by 7:50 as well to make it. Needless to say, she has 14 tardies. We have a chart, as that is what she responds to, but sometimes it just doesn't seem to matter. For me the frustraing part is, if she wants to get up happy she does, no matter her sleep level. So we know it can be done. Basically, I know DD is sleep deprived, I know it's not healthy and it's not what I want for her, but at times I just don't know what else to do. We have cut back on activites, she was swimming 2 nights a week, with ballet one night. Part of the problem is she is naturally a night owl, and she starts to feel good when it gets late. She has been this way since birth, we always joked she has a college schedule, sleeping til' 10-11, having a late afternoon nap, then up and partying until midnight. That would be her ideal. Unfortunatly, I work part-time and also know I don't have the organization skills for homeschool. So we all solider on, and enjoy the good days. Looking at this epic post, I really think for us, we are just going to have to get her in her bed at 7:30 and if she quietly looks at books for a bit after that, so be it.
Good luck.

[CarrieMF]

8pm except Friday nights then it's 7pm becuase we have to be at basketball by 8:30. School doesn't start till 8:50 here, if it was earlier the kids would probably be in bed earlier.

[eclipse]

DS is a 1st grader who will be 7 in January. He goes to bed at 8 and gets up anywhere from 5AM to 7AM

[Pinkdiva]

I have 3 school aged kiddos, K, 1st grade, and 3rd grade. They go to bed between 7:30 and 8:00. 7:30 is like our lights out routine, pick up rooms, pick out clothes for the next day, brush teeth, but at 8 they have to be laying down with the lights off. My son is pretty easy, he gets up, gets dressed, does the bathroom thing, and eats breakfast. My girls have a bit more to do, so they have to be up at 6:30am. Here is their schedule
1. Make bed
2. Do bathroom duty(brush teeth, wash face, lotion)
3. Get dressed
4. Eat breakfast
5. Do chores
6. Get hair done(we're AA, so I have to do their hair still, unless they have braids in).
7. Get shoes on and head out the door.

That usually takes them about 45 minutes total, so they are usually done by 7:15 and we leave at 7:45 for them to get to school. HTH!

[Terrilein]

I'd definitely try to get her to bed sooner. You wouldn't want her performance in school to suffer from lack of sleep or getting off to a stressful start at home every morning. How about reserving a few minutes for a phone call with her dad in the evenings and having him take more extra time with dd on the weekends to make up for the missed time during the week?

[cottonwood]

My six-year-old daughter needs 10-11 hours of sleep a night, and that seems to be the average for this age.

So I'm wondering if the problem is more that the period of time she has to transition from sleeping to rushing to get out the door is too short for it to be comfortable for her. I know that I (maybe it's different for people who drink coffee, my husband seems to do okay!) need at least an hour or so gentle transitioning into the business of the day, to feel calm and centered. Less than that is like a shock to my system, and I never seem to really recover throughout the day.

So instead of giving her an earlier bedtime in order to have her sleep longer, I'd give her an earlier bedtime to have her get up earlier and so be able to have a gentler morning routine.

I sympathize with her not being able to see her father for days on end... modern schedules are so anti-family. But in order to have her in school, i suspect it's going to have to be either that or an unpleasant morning routine.

[Heather30ish]

My 1st grader is 6 and he goes to bed between 7:30 and 8pm. We aim for shutting his light off at 8 and we try to start the jammies-pee-brush teeth process no later than 7:30pm. He has to get up no later than 6:30am to catch a bus at 7. Evenings are always super rushed, but what can you do? As it is we have almost no time between dinner and bedtime, but the only way to have him eat earlier would be to sacrifice the family dinner, which it may come to.

[pibblestiltskin@ma]

I try to get dd into bed by 8 so that she is asleep by 8:30. She needs 10+ hours or else we are all miserable. Most of her peers go to bed around 8 as well, some are allowed to read for a while after that. I too struggle with getting her up in the morning - sometimes I think I should pour her a cup of coffee when I make mine in the morning, then we can both sit and drink it until we become human again . She does seem to need a bit of time to fully wake up in the morning - never was the type to bound out of bed ready to go. Being in school all day also makes her even more tired.

My dh gets home between 7-7:30 so the kids really don't get much time with him anyway because he is usually starving and wants to eat dinner! He gets a chance to ask about our day, but anything more than that ends up with a later bedtime and cranky kids.

I find that having her in her pj's and teeth brushed by the dh gets home helps because it is one less thing to do before bed.

[Marcee]

Barrett just turned 8 and is in 2nd. But nothing has change since last year. School here starts at 8:05. He gets up at 7:00 and takes a quick bath, gets dressed, eats, and brushes his teeth. He and his brothers are out the door by 7:45. (we only live 2 blocks from school) He goes to bed at 9:30. Dh does not get home till 8:45 on most nights and I have to pick up his older brother at basketball at 8:30 so there is no way he could go to bed sooner.

[teachma]

My seven year old second grader is asleep by 7:45 on most nights. He seems to need less than the average amount of sleep, however, because he happily wakes up before 5:30 each morning! I wish for one day that I could "drag him out of bed." It would be my pleasure.

[LynnS6]

Apparently, my child needs less sleep than everyone else's too. My ds (6 1/2) goes to bed between 8:30 and 9. He's usually asleep by 9:30. He's up by 7:15 or so. Sometimes dh has to wake him, but mostly not. And he's always easy to wake. He has to be at the school bus stop by 7:55. On weekends, he's asleep by 9:30 and up before 8.

If he went to sleep at 7, he'd wake up at 5. On the rare days when he is in bed by 8, he complains that he can't fall asleep, and doesn't until after 9.

To the OP:
Can dh see dd in the morning?
Is there any way dh can get home earlier? (Bring work home?)
What time does she usually get up on weekends? That's probably a good sign of how many hours her body usually needs.

[gretasmommy]

My 5.5 year old is in bed by 6:45 - 7 pm most nights, and gets up around 6/6:30 usually. She needs a lot of time int he mornings to "get ready". She can't just get up, get dressed, eat and be off to school. Rushing is awful, and even worse with a cranky,overtired kid.

I agree with the PP's suggestions - often I have DD ready for bed *before* dinner (bathed and in pj's) so that things are a bit more speedy once we're done. Usually it's right upstairs for a story and the bedtime routine. Also, could DH get up with her in the mornings and see her then? Nighttime time together really isn't the quality time you are looking for together if she's going to be too tired to get up the next day - we all know how awful that can feel.

[kate~mom]

lights out at 7, usually in bed reading as early as 6:30. she needs a LOT of sleep.

[Ok]

9pm. Ok, sometimes later. He gets up around 6:30am.

[Mary]

My son has a bedtime of 8, but in reality it's more like 8:30. He must wake by 7 to get to school by 7:55. He needs about 30 more minutes of sleep. If left to his own devises, he would probably wake at 7:30 with the above bedtime. Ideally he needs about 11 hours of sleep. He gets between 10 and 10 1/2 hours on school nights.

[ecstaticmama24]

My 7yo/2nd grader goes to bed between 8:30-9:00 (takes a while to fall asleep after that) and wakes up around 7:00... My 5yo/K goes to bed at about 8:00 and gets up around 6:30-7:00... and my 20 monther goes to bed anywhere between 8:00 and 12:00 (it's absolutley rediculous), but will sleep in as long as we're there to snuggle.. we cosleep with him.

[annethcz]

My 7.5yo and almost 7yo DSs go to bed between 8pm and 9pm. We homeschool, and don't have to get up early in the morning. If my kids had to be somewhere by 8am, they would probably be going to bed around 7:30-8pm.