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Sleep and older children



 
 
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  #1  
Old April 20th 06, 03:06 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children

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.
--
Sue (mom to three girls)


  #2  
Old April 20th 06, 03:17 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children

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.


When they can make responsible decisions? Personally,
I don't change things much for the summer. I think it just
drives everyone nuts and makes it difficult to get back to
things when school starts again. I'll make allowances for
special occasions, but not on a regular basis.
My oldest is 11, and we're nowhere near where I'd
say he could go to bed whenever he pleased. He clearly
needs to go to bed on time to have a successful day. On
the other hand, he doesn't give me much grief about it, as
he knows quite well he needs the sleep.
I think my parents relaxed things a little bit
when I got to high school in that I didn't have a specific
bedtime, but there certainly was an expectation I'd head
up to bed around 9:30-10pm and be heading for sleep shortly
thereafter. I'm sure if I started staying up too late and
having trouble functioning the next day, I'd have found a
limit real quick. I knew my ability to have some choice
in when I went to bed was dependent on my exercising that
choice responsibly.

Best wishes,
Ericka
  #3  
Old April 20th 06, 04:02 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children

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.



My oldest is 12.5, 7th grade, and right now we still have a bedtime.
We're thinking that at the beginning of next school year, we'll let her
set her own, as long as she can get up. When/if she abuses it, she'll
lose the privilege for a while.

In the summer we stick with roughly the same bedtime, though she can
leave the lights on and read. Mostly we want grownup time. :-)

Lesley
  #4  
Old April 20th 06, 04:05 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children

In article ,
"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.


It wasn't an age, and it was different for each of them.

I told them that when they could get up on their own with an alarm
clock, and get ready for school and out the door on time without ANY
help or interferance from me, and do it every day for two weeks, they
could set their own bed time.

One did it fairly young, the others not until they were 13 or so. (And
the one who did it young is a morning person, anyway -- he always went
to bed about the time I'd have sent him, anyway, and got up easily.)

Once they were doing that, I let them set their own bedtime during the
summer, too.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

  #5  
Old April 20th 06, 04:34 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children

In article ,
Lesley wrote:

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.



My oldest is 12.5, 7th grade, and right now we still have a bedtime.
We're thinking that at the beginning of next school year, we'll let her
set her own, as long as she can get up. When/if she abuses it, she'll
lose the privilege for a while.


With my kids, I decided to let them self-regulate.

That is, as long as they were still getting themselves up in the
morning, they could go to bed as late as they wanted.

They each "abused" this a few times, and stayed up all night. However,
the natural consequences of not getting enough sleep were enough to
convince them to not do that very often.

It seemed to work fairly well, and when they hit college age they knew
how to make sure they had enough sleep. (An astonishing number of
college kids have NEVER been responsible for their own sleep, and really
have a hard time the entire first semester, or even longer.)

In the summer we stick with roughly the same bedtime, though she can
leave the lights on and read. Mostly we want grownup time. :-)


I did, on occassion, announce that it was time for them to go to their
rooms -- that their Dad and I needed some time alone. However,
eventually, we put a TV in our room, and WE were the ones who went to
the bedroom for grownup time!
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

  #6  
Old April 20th 06, 04:57 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children

In article ,
dragonlady says...

In article ,
"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.


It wasn't an age, and it was different for each of them.

I told them that when they could get up on their own with an alarm
clock, and get ready for school and out the door on time without ANY
help or interferance from me, and do it every day for two weeks, they
could set their own bed time.

One did it fairly young, the others not until they were 13 or so. (And
the one who did it young is a morning person, anyway -- he always went
to bed about the time I'd have sent him, anyway, and got up easily.)

Once they were doing that, I let them set their own bedtime during the
summer, too.


I've been doing that for my 13 year old, and he *does* get up and ready
(including breakfast) and out on time each and every day. But I'm reconsidering
since some reports have come back about nodding off in class.

Thing is, we're both nightowls by nature, and he tends to want to stay up with
me.

Banty


--

  #7  
Old April 20th 06, 06:10 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children



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.


My oldest is not quite 10, so that's probably younger than you have in
mind. I send her off to bed by 8:30 p.m., but I don't regulate how late
she can stay up. If she wants to read before going to sleep, that's OK
with me as long as she doesn't have any trouble getting up by 6:30 a.m.
If she did have trouble getting up, we'd have lights out at 8:30 p.m.
too.

By the time I was a teenager, I didn't have a specific bedtime, although
I normally went to bed by 9 or 9:30 because I like a *lot* of sleep,
and we had to be up by 6 a.m. I'm sure if I had started staggering
around from lack of sleep, my parents would have given me a bedtime, but
it wasn't necessary.

Clisby


  #8  
Old April 20th 06, 06:38 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children

"Banty" wrote and I snipped:
In article ,
dragonlady says...

In article ,
"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 told them that when they could get up on their own with an alarm
clock, and get ready for school and out the door on time without ANY
help or interferance from me, and do it every day for two weeks, they
could set their own bed time.


I've been doing that for my 13 year old, and he *does* get up and ready
(including breakfast) and out on time each and every day. But I'm
reconsidering
since some reports have come back about nodding off in class.


I was thinking similarly because of my experience with my SD. There are
other impacts of not getting enough sleep than not getting out the door on
time in the morning.

SD is 16 in 11th grade, and we're finding she is more likely to go to bed
based on when her friends say they go to bed than when she needs to in order
to get enough sleep. She'll do things like skip breakfast or not walk the
dog so as to get out the door in time. (The last time she missed the school
bus was years ago.) She'll nod off at school or act grouchy at dinner if
she's not getting enough sleep. It seems she has an expectation that teens
at her grade level can go to bed whenever it pleases them with no
repercussions to the rest of their day.

There's a balancing act because we want her to get enough sleep yet to learn
these consequences for herself. So, she currently does not have a fixed
bedtime and hasn't for a few years. We do, however, make a comment if we
think she's up too late or hasn't been getting enough sleep lately. I think
about how she'll be fully in charge of her day-to-day life in less than a
year and a half. Most times I'm sure she'll figure it all out. Other
times..... well.

-Patty, mom of 1+2


  #9  
Old April 20th 06, 08:47 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children


dragonlady wrote:
In article ,
"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.


It wasn't an age, and it was different for each of them.

I told them that when they could get up on their own with an alarm
clock, and get ready for school and out the door on time without ANY
help or interferance from me, and do it every day for two weeks, they
could set their own bed time.

One did it fairly young, the others not until they were 13 or so. (And
the one who did it young is a morning person, anyway -- he always went
to bed about the time I'd have sent him, anyway, and got up easily.)


My 4 yo currently goes to bed on her own. I've done this for the past
year with her, and I do this with her 2 yo brother. I send them to
their room, after doing all the bedtime stuff, and whatever they do
there, is up to them. If we've had a really busy day, they usually just
crash. Sometimes they'll stay up a bit, and play or read, but when
they're ready, they put themselves down and go to sleep. I think I
developed this when I used to have a bedtime routine that ended with
them in bed and supposedly ready to go to sleep. Inevitably they
wouldn't stay there and I'd be so exasperated with sending and
re-sending them back to bed. Now they have the control, and since
there's no game to play with mom, they feel free to go to sleep.

Stasya

  #10  
Old April 20th 06, 10:32 PM posted to misc.kids
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Default Sleep and older children


"Sue" wrote in message
...
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.


DS is 10.5 and in fourth grade. We don't plan to stop setting bedtimes in
the foreseeable future, although we do occasionally accept requests to
extend a particular evening's bed time for a good reason well-presented.

-Aula


 




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