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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
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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 |
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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
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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
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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
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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 -- |
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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
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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
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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
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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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