Sue wrote:
For the parents of older children, when did you stop telling your kids when
to go to bed and letting them decide when to go to sleep? This can be during
the school year and summer please.


I can't really remember (this is really straining my memory cells). I
know my mom called me in the morning all the way through high school,
and in college I had a clock radio and freshman year we had lights out
at 10:30. There was a girl in my dorm who didn't want to go to bed at
10:30, so she used to knit argyle socks in the dark until she wanted
to go to sleep. I found this unimaginable - even just knitting
argyles in the light was more than I would have been able to do.
Before I went off to college, and after freshman year IN college, I
did read and sometimes I wouldn't turn off the light until pretty
late. I still do that.

My sister is a night owl, and she has always been hard to get up in
the morning.

I'm pretty sure that my kids always got themselves up early. I think
we are all early bird types. DD#1 would get up to eat breakfast with
her dad (dh) when she was in kindergarten and he would leave about 6
or 6:30 IIRC. DD#1 (and also dd#3) needed their sleep, so although
they got up early, they took naps right up to first grade, and there
was never any problem with them going to bed at a reasonable time.

DD#2 would get up early and practice an instrument, and in hs she
would ride a motorcycle down to the barn (kids weren't allowed to be
out on the road in a car before 6 am but they didn't think of
restricting motorcycles) so that she could ride and groom the horse
and get back and shower before school. This was totally her own idea.

Most of the problems I observe with my grandchildren has to do with
their getting their homework done so that they can go to bed at a
reasonable hour, because some of them have so many after school
activities that they can't do it in the afternoon.

I do remember being friends with the wife of a co-worker - actually a
student in dh's PG school class who was a lark (early riser) married
to a complete night owl. Night owl doesn't do in the Navy. The Navy
is for larks. Anyway they had a very active boy and they had to tag
team him. He'd stay up until 2 am with his dad, and then his mom
would be up at 6 am with him.




grandma Rosalie