Bedtimes… Yours and there's

I go up with the babies around 7:30, read a story, say prayers, and then say goodnight.

DS, 4, is sometimes staying up until 8:30 while we do Family Bible…sometimes he’s going up with the babies.

DS 7, DD 9 and DD 12 are up doing Bible until 8:30.  Our son then goes to bed, but the girls stay up to read or journal until 9:45.

Books on CD are usually turned on for all until they fall asleep.

…HOWEVER…waking time has always been an issue for us.  My girls would probably sleep until 7:30 or 8:00am everyday…but the boys (all 4) have always gotten up WAAAY too early.  We are always up by 6:15, and they’ve been known to get up before then.  Most of the time DH gets up at 5:15 just so he can read his bible in quiet.  Another issue we have with them that was not an issue with the girls, is that they get up READY TO GO!!!  There is not sitting on the couch snuggling, no time to wake up, no slow motion…it’s just GO, GO, GO…

DH and I usually go to bed around 10:30 or so, unless he is going to school…then he stays up until he gets his work done, and I’ll doze off and on reading in bed waiting on him.  Our 15 month old is also still waking 2-3 times a night, and sleeping with us the last few hours of the night (which was not an issue with the first 5 children), so I’m feeling a little sleep deprived too…curious as to what methods everyone else is using….??…??…???

Kathi

Iamsahm – our schedules sound exactly alike. My oldest son is 4 and my twin sons are 2 – they all go down about 7:30 and wake up around 7-7:30. I need to be in bed by 9:30 because when I wait until 10 or later I can really tell it (so can everyone else) the next day. I usually get up around 6. 🙂

I was never very good at convincing my kids to go to bed very early.  Our usual is about 9 p.m.  When they were babies if I got them down at 11 p.m. I was doing well.  🙂  The children get up at 7 a.m. (I have a 15, 13, 9 but we’ve done essentially the same thing forever)  I go to bed at 10:30 if my dh is ready (he likes to stay up later) and I wake up at 6 a.m.  I’d love to go to bed earlier, but I probably wouldn’t sleep anyway, lol.  I’m not very good at sleeping, and I’m afraid I passed it on to the children.  We’re all, um, very alert.  LOL  OK, actually, my dh says we’re all wound tighter than clocks on Sunday.  He thinks it’s funny to make a small noise while we are sleeping and watch us leap out of bed. 

I have almost 5 and 2 year old girls.  As soon as possible with them (about a year or so), I began pushing their “out of bed” time to 7am.  They are almost always awake well before then.  It has varied, but is usually between 5:30 and 6:30.  I cannot change that time by more than 1/2 hour.  But regardless of when they wake up, they are not allowed (except special circumstances such as illness, thunderstorm, etc) to come out of their room until 7am.  This gives me a few quiet moments in the morning to have my quiet time and Bible study (and cup of coffee to wake up enough to interact effectively ).  I need to be in be by 10 in order to be effective the next day.  Earlier is even better.  They were in bed about 7 until just recently.  When the 5 year old gave up napping a year ago, she was too pooped to be up later than 7 and the youngest was ready for bed at that time as well. 

I feel bad putting them to bed so early when we eat dinner about 6:15-6:30 when hubby comes home.  He doesn’t have a whole lot of time to spend with them.  But we do have dinner together almost every night.  And he usually does bath or bedtime book.  But he has lots of professional reading to do at night anyway so if they go to bed too late, he doesn’t get to read.  He needs to be in bed by 10 also as he gets up earlier than I do.  I so look forward to when they sleep later in the morning.

You also talked about exercising.  I find that the ages of the girls right now make it extremely difficult to exercise when they are up.  I have found that my body is not ready to exercise at 5:30 or 6:00am.  I have tried and I do not feel that my workout is as effective.  So I reserve that time as my quiet time.  Some days I am able to get in a walk with them around the botanical gardens or zoo.  We might get a short nature walk in as well.  But I have some training issues to deal with for the 5 year old.  She can easily walk 2 miles at the Botanical Gardens or Zoo and 4.5-5 miles at a theme park without batting an eye.  However, if you ask her to walk .5 mile and it’s not her idea, she says that her legs hurt.  So the point is that getting any aerobic exercise by going for a walk with them is not very feasible.  (She’s too big for a double stroller.  She is 45 lbs and the 2 year old is 35 lbs so to get a double stroller that would hold them would be too expensive.) 

The weather recently has been gorgeous so we have been planning dinner picnics.  Either the 5 year old rides her bike for practice to a close park and we have a picnic dinner.  Or I pull a bike trailer with the younger one and my husband pulls a bike trailer with the older one to a park for a picnic dinner or for an ice cream dessert.  It has worked very well that I get my exercise and we have an enjoyable evening.  When it gets too cold for us to do that routinely, I’ll have to use the elliptical at home after they go to bed.  It’s not my favorite option as I would prefer not to exercise so close to bed time.  But I have not have found any other viable option.  I would love to hear how others accomplish this goal.

I’m feeling the guilt now.  My kids, ages, 9, 8, 5 and 3 go to bed between 9 and 10.  Mostly because it’s so hot in TX during the day and we let them go out and ride bikes and play after dinner.  They wake up between 7 and 9 in the morning.  Which means our day gets started very late.  But it’s almost criminal to wake a sleeping child.  I go to bed between 11 and 1.  That’s bad.  I’m working on it but I struggle with insomnia and most often just use that time to “get stuff done”.  Or read.

crazy4boys – no guilt allowed!!! Every family is different!  We’ve considered letting everyone get up on their body’s clock, but we have such a wide difference in times that I was feeding someone in the house every 20 minutes all morning as they woke up.  And of course that made the ones who had already eaten want a snack… and you get the idea.  It was crazy. 

As for bedtimes – yeah, we go later some nights, and even earlier sometimes.  I hear you about hot days.  We like to play outside after dark on the weekend with dad as a treat and it is SOO much cooler.

Has anyone been able to adjust when your kids wake up time to later?  Even by pushing bedtime off 1.5 hours later in the evening for the past two months, it has only adjusted wake up time by about 30 minutes.  I wouldn’t have as much of an issue with letting my girls stay up later if they slept later.  But if they don’t get their sleep, they are CRANKY and no fun to be home with all day.