Do you do "bedtime"?

1611 Views 40 Replies 34 Participants Last post by mamasaurus, Apr 16, 2006

luckylady

Discussion Starter · Apr 10, 2006

We always have with our DD - she is in bed at 7:00 and up around 6:30 or so.

She turned 4 yesterday - and the last week or so it has taken her a long time to fall asleep - past 8:00, and while she will stay in bed, she is in there playing with her stuffed animals. I feel bad about it!!! It's not an "issue" but still...this is time she could be up playing or whatever.

Many of her friends do not have a "bedtime" - they just go to bed when they are tired.

At night right now I am SO pooped that I can't do anything, but I get up early and would love to have some more morning hours! Especially with a second baby coming! Most of her friends sleep until 8:00 or so.

What are your thoughts on this? Am I interrupting her natural sleep patterns by forcing a bedtime on her? I know she would not stay all night if we had no bedtime. Plus going to bed so early DOES put a damper on wanting to do anything at night, like summer BBQ's and such...what do you think?

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chel

· #2 · Apr 10, 2006

my dd doesn't have a set bedtime. dd likes to fall asleep with someone so dd goes to bed when Dh or I do (around 9-10pm). This is later than most of her friends, but it works for our family. dd normally needs 10hrs of sleep so I do get some alone time with Dh in the am. dd will usually sleep till 7:30am. Plus Dh often doesn't come home till 7pm and neither do I when I join him at the gym so I don't ever see dd have a bedtime earlier than 8pm. Plus our long summers has it light till almost 10pm though in winter I can go to bed at 6pm.
To OP, you basically need to decide if you want "alone time" in the evening or morning. Though if your dc will be starting school you might want her up early. Next year the school bus pick-up time will be 7am and I'm barely up and dressed by then.

mommy2cias

· #3 · Apr 10, 2006

Yep, I'm a strict 'bedtimer'. He needs his rest and mommy and daddy need quiet time. His bedtime is 8, no later than 8:30(dh doesn't get home until 7:15-7:30 or it would be earlier). It's 7:20 now and he's still asleep. He wakes up anytime between 6-8 a.m. We have a wonderful bedtime routine that he knows so well now that he tells us what is next, including getting into bed.

LoveBugMama

· #4 · Apr 10, 2006

Yes, Noah has a bedtime.

I (or his daddy) will lay down with him every night. Never before 7pm, and rarely after 8 pm. He has always gotten tired in that time. Some days he falls asleep in 10 minutes, some days it takes 30 minutes. Most of the time he thinks this is totally ok. The 2 little boys I watch 4 days a week usually comes to our house at 8am, and that wakes him up. If he hadn`t gone to bed around 7-8pm the night before, he would get to little sleep. He needs between 11 and 12 hours of sleep.

I go to bed around midnight, so I have plenty of time for myself in the evenings.

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mammastar2

· #5 · Apr 10, 2006

Dd is 4 and yes, we do 'bedtime', although the exact time varies depending on our day. Sometime after supper we say it's time to go upstairs, we do so, we do a story or 3, brush teeth, pj's, a song, a pat to the cat, and sleep.

She does have one perpetually overtired little friend who puts himself to bed whenever - I haven't seen anything about it to recommend it to me, and I like what we do. I think that enough sleep and a ritual of some kind are both important for us.

homebirthmama2four

· #6 · Apr 10, 2006

Our children all have a bed time. 9:00. they are 10 through almost 4. Our almost 4 year old still takes a nap in the afternoon for about 2 hours. Otherwise they all get up around 7 am. If any of them are tired during the day, they get a nap too.

For our family, bedtime is a must. I need that alone time to regroup and think about the things that went well throughout the day and things that I need to improve on.

If your 4 year old is having a hard time falling asleep, maybe bump her bedtime back an hour. How long do they need to go to bed so early? You can always impliment a nap time especially with the new baby coming, you will probably want a nap time too,

There is nothing wrong with being flexible and trying out a few different times and see what works best. Especially now that summer is coming....you may want to have a little more le-way.

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hottmama

· #7 · Apr 10, 2006

My kids go to sleep when they are tired. For my 3 yr. old, this could be anywhere between 7:30pm and 1 am, depending on when he gets up, whether he naps and how active our day was. I never hesitate to go out at night, because he is so flexible about bedtime he can easily stay up, or fall asleep when we're out because we've always done things this way.
I would personally hate being tied down to a schedule and the few times we've tried it my kid has hated it more than me. Plus, I like days like today when my kids sleep til 11!

joesmom

· #8 · Apr 10, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by hottmama
My kids go to sleep when they are tired. For my 3 yr. old, this could be anywhere between 7:30pm and 1 am, depending on when he gets up, whether he naps and how active our day was. I never hesitate to go out at night, because he is so flexible about bedtime he can easily stay up, or fall asleep when we're out because we've always done things this way.
I would personally hate being tied down to a schedule and the few times we've tried it my kid has hated it more than me. Plus, I like days like today when my kids sleep til 11!

:

Joe is seven & has never had an enforced bedtime. When he was little he would nurse to sleep when I went to sleep. As he has gotten older, we just go to bed when we are tired- usually between 11:00-1:00am. He wakes up at 10:30 most days, although the time change hit us hard this year.

My sister's boys are in school & they go to bed between 6:30-7:00... That schedule is SO not for us!!

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luckylady

Discussion Starter · #9 · Apr 10, 2006

Thanks for the feedback!

We do have a routine which takes about 1/2 hour - we look for the moon, brush our teeth, read stories and then make up a story and then little snuggles and backrubs (she sleeps in our bed). Then after all of that she is spending all this time falling asleep - I will try to push it back an hour and see what happens...last time I tried she woke up even earlier, and she doesn't nap (REFUSES! She would rather pass out than take a nap!) so by 6:00 she was exhausted...and we started a vicious cycle of too early to bed, too early to rise!

:

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Meli65

· #10 · Apr 10, 2006

We didn't have a bedtime for ds1 'til he started preschool this year. Before that, he usually went to bed around 9:30 or 10:00, and slept 'til 9:00.

It didn't take too much work to move his schedule to bed at 7:00 and up at 7:00 and it does have its plusses and minusses -- it is somewhat constricting and few of our friends have such early bedtimes. But I have to say that I looooooove having our evenings free for adult time.

We're going to homeschool after this year but I like the new schedule enough to keep it -- although we've been pushing it back slightly with the longer days. Ds1, like me, has a lot more energy in the summertime and we'll both need less sleep, I think.

darkpear

· #11 · Apr 10, 2006

We didn't use to, but dd1 was staying up later and later (and we are SERIOUS night owls in this house). That wasn't working well, and then when dd2 came along it just wasn't working at all. Maniac 3yo up till all hours = no sleep for tiny baby and postpartum mommy. So we have implemented a bedtime. It's supposed to be midnight - dp is really horrible at that whole consistency thing though, and it's currently his job since I'm usually nursing the baby. We put her in PJs, brush her teeth, read a story or three and snuggle, then she can play quietly in her room as long as she likes. She fought it at first but now it goes fairly smoothly. She gets up around ten or eleven in the morning.

hipem

· #12 · Apr 10, 2006

My kids are naturally early risers (wish I was)...dd turned 4 1/2 yo the other day and in all that time I can count on one hand the number of times I've woken up before her. If there is a speck of sun in the sky my kids are up...So we do a bedtime routine for sure. During the winter they were often asleep by 6:45, since dst started it has pushed back a bit since they are sleeping a little later in the morning. We do brush teeth, stories, etc. then a story on tape as she falls asleep. If she struggles with falling asleep, she can get up and have a snack or another story, then we try again.

cottonwood

· #13 · Apr 10, 2006

I'm a little confused -- if her body is telling her she doesn't need to go to sleep until later, and doing so would help her sleep later so you could have some early morning hours to yourself, and it would make social events easier to plan... I'm not sure I understand why you're conflicted about whether to allow her a later bedtime. Is there a reason you think she *should* be going to sleep earlier?

To answer your question, we've never done enforced bedtimes because I don't want to interfere with their ability to self-regulate. The kids are usually ready to go to sleep by 9:30, and they wake up around 7:30. (I get my "me time" in the early morning hours, too.)

Drummer's Wife

· #14 · Apr 10, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by hottmama
My kids go to sleep when they are tired. For my 3 yr. old, this could be anywhere between 7:30pm and 1 am, depending on when he gets up, whether he naps and how active our day was. I never hesitate to go out at night, because he is so flexible about bedtime he can easily stay up, or fall asleep when we're out because we've always done things this way.
I would personally hate being tied down to a schedule and the few times we've tried it my kid has hated it more than me. Plus, I like days like today when my kids sleep til 11!

:

We don't have a set bedtime for our kids, ages 1, 3 and 5 years. They stay up until they are tired, and they sleep in until they are ready to wake up on their own. Like Hottmama said, some nights they are asleep early, some nights late. But they always sleep in, I think the earliest they have woken up on their own is 9:00 ish and that is what works for our family. DH works from 9 am - 6 pm so I couldn't imagine putting my kids to bed at 7 pm. They'd never get to see their dad, and most nights we haven't even had dinner by then. We are planning on homeschooling, so getting the kids on some type of schedule isn't necessary, though sometimes I would like more time alone in the evenings.... and some nights it works out that way, other nights they are up late but we get to sleep in. And it works out if we go out in the evenings, we can hang out with friends and not have fussy tired kids, they can go atleast until midnight, I couldn't imagine not taking them somewhere because it would interfere with their bedtime. To me the most important thing is that they are healthy and get enough rest every night.

Personally, I don't like to be told when to go to bed and I realize that young children are not as capable of making that decision. But you can watch their signs, if they are having a hard time falling asleep... maybe they just aren't tired. And if my kids are fussy and cranky... I can start the "going to bed" routine earlier cause I see that they are tired. I would love for sleep to be something that they self regulate, like eating and such. I read recently that america has the highest rate of sleep problems for both adults and children and funny thing is that we are the country that has "bed times" for our kids. Makes sense to me.

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Alkenny

· #15 · Apr 10, 2006

We've always had a bedtime, as early as 7pm when the older two were smaller to 9:30 now (on school/work nights...during the weekends, there is no bedtime).

darkpear

· #16 · Apr 10, 2006

I am curious about one thing. How many of those who don't do bedtime have high needs kids?

My oldest is very intense, high needs, stubborn and a bit high-strung. I really really philosophically did not want to do a bedtime with her - we keep late hours (dp works 11-8), we plan on homeschooling, and I have vivid memories of being put to bed far earlier than I wanted as a child and being quite angry about it! And indeed we had no bedtime with her until dd2 came along. Honestly, though, I wish we'd done it sooner. She would stay up late but was wound up and generally miserable for hours before finally collapsing from exhaustion... and then she'd sleep poorly and quite possibly wake up too early and the whole cycle would start over again. She's a much happier child now.

Mere

· #17 · Apr 10, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by darkpear
I am curious about one thing. How many of those who don't do bedtime have high needs kids?

My oldest is very intense, high needs, stubborn and a bit high-strung. I really really philosophically did not want to do a bedtime with her - we keep late hours (dp works 11-8), we plan on homeschooling, and I have vivid memories of being put to bed far earlier than I wanted as a child and being quite angry about it! And indeed we had no bedtime with her until dd2 came along. Honestly, though, I wish we'd done it sooner. She would stay up late but was wound up and generally miserable for hours before finally collapsing from exhaustion... and then she'd sleep poorly and quite possibly wake up too early and the whole cycle would start over again. She's a much happier child now.

Ditto. Our high needs child was dd1, so we have always been happy to have a bedtime. We have gone through periods of trying to let her self-regulate more, but it never went well; we were cranky and she would stay up too late claiming she wasn't tired.

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momma2mingbu

· #18 · Apr 11, 2006

You mentioned her having problems for the past week.
Do you live somewhere that Daylight Savings Time is observed? Maybe her internal clock is still off from the change to DST? It is light outside much later which makes getting kids to bed harder!

mythreesuns

· #19 · Apr 11, 2006

I don't really enforce a bedtime until school age. My older two go to bed at 8pm during the week, and the almost 4yo goes down when he gets tired. I have to choose my battles with him, and bedtime isn't one of them.LOL
This summer I will probably start enforcing a betime of 9pm for all of them, only because I know they will all be outside running around more, and probably ready by 9pm.

LunaMom

· #20 · Apr 11, 2006

Yes, DD (7) has a bedtime. She starts getting ready for bed between 7:00 and 7:30, then I read to her, and sometimes she reads in bed herself if there's time. Lights go out at 8:00 p.m. She needs to get up at 7:00 a.m. on school days. On weekends she'll sleep a little later - I guess she needs a lot of sleep compared to some kids!

We used to be stricter about bedtime on weekends and holidays - even sort of uptight, as though she was going to turn into a pumpkin or something if she was up past eight. It was kind of silly, I guess, and I'm not sure why we were like that. She still goes to bed at eight most nights, but if we're out on a weekend or she has a friend over at dinnertime we don't watch the clock, and if we're reading an especially good book we may keep going until - gasp! - 8:30. Can you see I'm making fun of myself?

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