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)

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

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

As a parent of three i think a bed time routine is paramount to the
survival of parents, by that I mean that they are in bed having had
wind down and story or quiet attention from me or dad they then have
the responsibility of going of to sleep on their own, my youngest is
three and it works really well for us.
Ericka Kammerer 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.

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

Older children need the responsibility of deciding when to go to sleep
but parent's responsibility is getting them to bed and teaching them
how to go to sleep. My three children all did this at their own pace.
They are all in bed by 7.30 but go to sleep at different times without
the need for me or their dad, my youngest is usually asleep by 7.45 if
not before while the eldest is asleep by 9pm at the latest.

from Katie
Ericka Kammerer 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.

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

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

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

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

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


--

"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