"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
I completely wouldn't worry about the "it's not fair"
charge. It's *FINE* for older kids to have more privileges,
and it's *FINE* for kids who have earned a privilege with
appropriate decision making to have a privilege not granted
to kids who have not made good decisions and thus not earned
the privilege. Now, it may be more than it's worth to deal
with the fuss over the perceived unfairness, but to some
extent, I think it's *important* for kids to go through the
process of earning privileges along with commensurate
responsibilities as they get older and more mature.

Oh I understand that and the older ones have gotten privledges, but with
this particular issue, I am not going to go there because we already have
enough sleep problems with this particular child. Her room is on our level
and her sister's rooms are upstairs. If they are up and about, she will
never go to sleep and it would be a nightmare.

On the other hand, I also wouldn't feel one bit
guilty about not allowing things to go haywire in the
summer. As you point out, *you* don't get a summer break
and still need a decent night's sleep. I also think that
it just isn't good for anyone to muck with their sleep
schedule too much. As they get older, every day they
sleep in until whenever encourages a behavior that becomes
harder and harder to break when it comes time to get in
the groove when the school year starts. It also starts
a pattern of thinking that says I *deserve* to sleep in
whenever I don't have to go to school/work/whatever, which
leads to a lot of wasted mornings. I think lie-ins should
be special occasion sorts of things (late nights too). So,
even in summer, and even with older kids, and even if they
didn't have any morning obligations, I'm still not on board
with unregulated bed times/wake times if the result is that
they embark on a relatively consistent pattern of staying
up late and sleeping in. If they self-regulate well, and
just occasionally stay up late or sleep in, that's no
biggie.

Thank you Ericka. I feel much better about not letting them stay up to all
hours in the summer. For some reason, I was feeling bad about having them in
their rooms at 10 pm during the summer, but as long as they are quiet and
don't keep hubby and myself awake, I don't mind if they read or listen to
music. I work at home, so they don't necessairly have to be up and about at
any certain time, but as past summers have been, it seems everything is just
so chaotic because we don't have our routines in place. My oldest sometimes
says that she can't wait for school to start because then we have a good
routine. So that's my clue that I still need to have our routines in place.
I was allowed to sleep in until I wanted and so far I have let the girls
sleep in until they want. It usually goes that dd1 is up first, then dd2 and
finally dd3 gets up much later than everyone else.

Again, thanks everyone for your input. I feel much better about this.
--
Sue (mom to three girls)