Appropriate Bedtimes

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My parents liked to have a lot of free time at the end of the day, so I always had bedtimes that were way earlier than my friends. As a result I have really bad instincts about what appropriate bedtimes are. My son is going to be 9, and I vaguely remember having an 8:00 P.M bedtime by then and thinking it was super early. Our son has an 8:30 PM bedtime now. (It is really 8 PM. but he gets an extra 1/2 hr if he uses it to read.

Do you think this is age appropriate or should it be higher when he turns 9. I vaguely remember other kids being able to stay up until 9:00 PM by then.

(I know something like this may be individual -- My son currently uses the word "sleepy" idiosyncratically to mean bored, so I can't really find out much. Aside from me randomly letting him stay up to different times and observing him, I won't really know until I change it, if it works.)

I want to be fair.

Hi ASDMommy. The topic of bedtimes is so subjective in many ways. I had a bedtime of 8 until junior high, probably for the same reasons your parents made young go to bed early. One objective measure is how he does in the mornings. Does he wakes up before he has to, or does he seem excessively sleepy? If the former, i'd consider pushing his bedtime back, if you don't mind having him hang around a little longer. If the latter, then he probably needs the extra sleep. Just my thoughts!

We have a routine, but not a strict schedule. You will probably think we are quite lax. It has never really worked for us to have an early bedtime, no matter what we tried. I gave up fighting it and for several years now, the boys go to bed at 9:30 pm. Our routine starts at 9:00 so that they are in bed with lights out by 9:30. They are currently 13 and 10. During school, they get up at 7:00 am. I've spoken with their doctor about this a number of times, convinced they aren't getting enough sleep, and he has said repeatedly that they are fine. He sees them every six months because of the ADHD diagnoses, so he has a good handle on their overall health.

My 13 yo, when we send him to bed, if he can lay still for 5 minutes, he's out. He's also easy to wake up in the morning. He takes after my husband. Our 10 yo, however, is a night owl. We can send him to bed at 9:30 or 9:00 or even 8:30, but it is not surprising to find him still awake at 11:00 or midnight (or even later). Sometimes he's snuck in a device to play with or a book to read, which get taken away. Sometimes he's just playing with making shapes with his fingers. Can't exactly take those away. He's simply not tired at night. But he's also hard to wake up in the morning. It's just his rhythm. He takes after me.

When the boys did organized team sports (like football or baseball), many times the practices/games didn't even end until 8:30 or 8:45. For 8 year olds. So that dictated later bedtimes as well.

DH and I have never found that we need much "us" time in the evenings, because we both work (me part-time) and communicate privately a lot through email and texting through out the day. (When I was a kid, my parents did not have that luxury, and we had earlier bedtimes, like you.) We also have a weekly date night, because the kids spend the night with their grandparents every Friday night. So we spend as much time with the kids in the afternoons (for me) and evenings as possible.

4000th POST!! ! WOOT WOOT!! !

I don't know what to suggest to you. I always viewed bedtime as a punishment for being a child. No, not acting like a child. I saw it as punishment for being young, much like college students see the drinking age. On top of actual punishments I deserved, such as for being rude or getting bad grades. What was interesting is that I took it in stride. I "knew" that being a child was a bad thing, so I had to serve out bedtimes until I become an adult. And every time I went to bed as a kid, it took me on average of 2 hours to fall asleep, in a dark, cavernous, ominous-looking room. The hyper-realistic nightmares I kept getting didn't make bedtime any more pleasant, either. So needless to say, it was a very severe punishment for something I couldn't even control, like my chronological age. (Naps, on the other hand, were a form of adults' sadism in my mind, rather than a warranted punishment for being young, and I fought them tooth and nail.)

My weekday bedtime was 9:00 PM in grades 1 thru 4, 10:00 PM in grades 5 thru 8, no hard-and-fast rule in high school, and I don't remember what it was before 1st grade. I always thought it was too early, and tried to delay it any way I knew how. Heck, I first stayed up for New Year's Eve when I was 3, and always thwarted my parents' efforts to put me to bed before midnight every year thereafter. Why? I suspected they'll "forget" to wake me up.

I most strongly recommend trying melatonin. I still minor sleep problems as an adult, and I didn't discover melatonin until I was 22. Oh wow, what a difference! It knocked me out within 10 minutes, with a normal falling-asleep time of half hour. And I got a really good night's sleep every time I took it, provided that I slept full 8 hours. I would sell my soul to have had melatonin as a kid. Over a decade of nightly misery could have been avoided with a banal over-the-counter pill (in the US, at least). However, melatonin's side effects include vivid dreams, some of them quite nightmarish, so take note. Have you tried melatonin? Did it work?

Interestingly, the best sleep I ever got in the 31 years of my life to date, was on a cruise ship. With alcohol sloshing around in my brain, and the ship gently rocking and swaying like a baby's crib, it was the only time in my whole life when I fell asleep the minute my head hit the pillow, no melatonin needed. Although it could also be because I was tired from walking, swimming, and dancing non-stop from sunrise until late night. If your family ever went on a cruise, how did your kids sleep on the ship?

Growing up my bed time was very very early. 7 or 7:30. GUESSING the parents liked freetime.

ANYWAY.

my kids are in bed by 8:15. They are allowed to read or play with small electronics for a bit. My little one, dd4, will often play or look at books for a bit and then voluntarily go to sleep 8:30-8:45ish. dd6 will go to sleep at a variety of times. I usually cut her off around 9pm though. If I forget she will sometimes stay up WAY TO LATE reading and be really really tired the next day. Weekends they get to stay up (out of bed) later, but not past 9pm.

Thank you, everyone for your helpful comments. I will have to think about this.

pddtwinmom,

I had an 8 PM bedtime for a really long time, just like you. I thought my oarents were the only ones. That is why I have no perspective on what is usual. We gave him a stopwatch that he uses as an alarm in the morning. (He hates the sound of regular alarms.) He keeps it set even when it does not need to be (rigidity) and sometimes he wakes up 20 minutes earlier. I don't know if I should wait to bump it a half hour until he is regularly waking up a half hour earlier?

He gets enough sleep as far as I can tell, He says he is sleepy when he is bored, or has something he does not want to do, but I don't see actual signs of sleepiness. I think he actually does feel something like being sleepy at those times, but the causes have to do with brain stimulation levels. He would complain about feeling sleepy at school, but come home and be excited and awake to do his special interests.

Odetta

I don't judge anyone's sleep schedule. When our son was little, his sleep cycle was way off the usual, and he would naturally want to sleep at 11:00 P.M and he would wake up late in the morning. We basically let him until it was a year before school started and we started transitioning him to something a regular kid would do. He makes shapes (letters, I think, because he is hyperlexic) before he goes to sleep, too. So his actual real sleep time probably is closer to 9 PM. It once took him a half hour of that to get to sleep, but now if he is really sleepy, it maybe takes him 10 minutes. That makes it even harder to judge b.c I don;t know if I should factor in playing with fingers and talking to himself time, or not.

Aspie1

Congrats on post 4000. We have never used melatonin. My brother does, for himself, and as far I know has no ill effects from it. I was pondering using it when my son was littler and he had a lot more trouble sleeping, but I was afraid to give it to a a child that young. Now he sleeps through the night almost all the time. He never used to have any recollections of dreams or nightmares. Now he does, so if that is a side effect, that might be an issue. The main times he doesn't get a full night's rest is b/c of nightmares and the vividness really frightens him, maybe especially b/c he used to not have (or remember) dreams. He does need to self-soothe himself to sleep with finger movements and self-talk, which is OK by me, as long as he is OK with it. He seems to be, at this point.

I don't give him a bedtime as a power play. I know what you are saying and I did not view it in a positive light as a child/teen either. I always attributed that to the unfairness of it as opposed to its very existence. I had the same bedtime as my much younger brother, and I was allowed to be awake but had to be in bed. It was supposedly out of fairness to my little brother, but it was clear that is was mainly so my parents did not have to deal with either of us at night and could have private time. I am sure my son would rather not have one, but when we do let him stay up as long as he can manage (New Year's Eve) he tends to end up cranky the next day. He isn't ready to decide on his own.

I have not been on a cruise as an adult, with my current family. I was on one as a teen with my mom, dad and brother. Now that you mention it, I think I did sleep better. Of course I was up later, and may or may not have had mixed drinks with alcohol, so I cannot really isolate the pertinent variables. Speaking of alcohol, when I was a kid, parents still gave kids alcohol to help them sleep when sick, and it always worked. Later when in college and I had more umm time to study that effect I noticed that the sleep did not seem as restful. There is probably an optimal level of alcohol that should be consumed, and maybe surpassing it has a negative effect on sleep or it just affects REM sleep in some way.

My inlaws swear they put their kids to bed at seven o'clock, seven days a week, all year. For free time.

I said, GEEZ!! !!

I think my bedtime was nine growing up, and "Shoot for eleven, but whatever" as a teen. I NEVER remember having a bedtime on non school nights. I KNOW I was the only child who had this, and I LOVED it. Looking back I realize that I was probably a feral spoiled brat, but it is still something I appreciate.

I put my little ones to bed at 9 on school nights and do not have a bedtime on non school nights. I figure nine allows ten hours, and we all enjoy the non rushedness of the evenings with no bedtime. Thecondition for that is that they have to not fight and cant get TOO rowdy. If they make themselves a giant high maintainance annoyance that wrecks it for everyone, then they all have to lay down.

I have been told (by my inlaws) that I am lax and permissive to the poijt of being a crappy mother. Screw 'em. It works for us.

Footnote-- My oldest is always either indifferent or crabby, no matter what. My son takes 20 to 30 minutes of being awake to actually wake up no matter how much sleep he gets. I read that this is an ADHD thing, that more sleep wont help, because he has to get up and function in order for his brwin to makenthe dopamine it needs to get up and function. So I annoy him for the first half hour-- I nag him every few minutes for 15 minutes to get him out of bed ("Get up, Little Bear!" "Rise and shine, Son!!" and such in that comically cheerful voice until he gets up just to shut me up) and then pester him in the same vein for another 15 until breakfast is ready an dhis clothes are on. Once that is done, he is self-running and will brush hair and teeth, find shoes and backpack, get coat, and wait by the door pretty smoothly.

Nagging me out of bed would have come to profanity. Saint Alan preferred the method of BLASTING David Allan Coe on the stereo half an hour before he wanted me out of bed. Every morning of my high school life, I woke up to "COUNTRY DEEJAYS KNOW THAT I'M AN OUTLAW..." At five in the morning. Loud enough to shake the window frames.

We lived in the boonies. I fantasized about breaking the CD (and I LOVE David Allan Coe).

Sometimes if my oldest wont get up, I threaten to sing...

Oh, another horrible thing I do is cuddle them to sleep on bedtime nights. Read, sing, and cuddle. Because I remember that I COULD NOT fall asleep until I was dead tired as a kid. I would just lay there stuck in perseverate mode. Eventually I learned to tell myself stories about things like being a wild animal curling up to hibernate. That helped, and eventually led into being able to meditate myself to sleep...

...but even now I can only lay for about twenty minutes, and then if it does not work I HAVE to get up and distract myself or I will spend hours perseverating in the WORST ways, lose.most of then night, nd have the next day be a total loss too.

Since you're homeschooling, bedtime should be whatever works best for his sleep habits and your need for adult time.

My DS8 doesn't leave for school until 8:45am. His bedtime is between 9-9:30, although sometimes he stays up as late as 10. He wakes on his own around 7:30. As long as he is up by 8:00, the morning routine is not a problem. As long as the morning is smooth and he seems well rested, I don't care what bedtime "should" be.

I remember a 9pm bedtime as a 1st grader and then I remember the night it switched to 9:30. I asked if it could be up later and they said yes for 9:30. I could stay up in my room even later as long as I was reading. And that was the thing, mostly after dinner I was expected to either entertain myself or do whatever everyone else was doing. Pretty basic, but I mean that my parents didn't have to entertain me. I either watched TV, read a book, played, or did whatever they were doing (playing cards, washing, painting the house, whatever).

It was 9:30 until around 7th grade when it just sorta drifted off until whenever-ish. Meaning most nights I would go to bed when the family went to bed (9:30!) lights would be turned out and a parent would say off to bed and I would go to bed. But then around 7th grade say if I was watching a movie or reading or something it became "good night, we are going to bed. See you tomorrow." And then I was like uh, guess I have no bedtime now. But if I stayed more than another hour or so a parent would show up saying "it is late, go to bed." That was over the 6 to 8th grade range. Once high school showed up there was no bedtime within reason.

Now my cousins had a 7pm bedtime until like junior high school and that was terrible. I would laugh because they would be in bed and it would be light outside and they could hear other children playing. On the flip side I go food shopping around 9pm now and I see kids up (babies, 2-5 year olds) and at the super market with their parents and am like why are those kids still up?

My own kids? 8:30 for all. Usually no complaints other than I need water, or I need a snack, I have to go to the bathroom again and other minor delaying tactics/possible actual needs.

I think it must be a bit different in the UK, and bedtimes are generally earlier.

Lamb, at 4, goes to bed at 6:30pm, and Mim, at 8, goes to bed at 7:30pm, and this is about average I believe. I think we may have to raise Mim's to 8pm next year.

Now when they go to sleep is a whole different ball game. Lamb can go to sleep within 15mins, if he hasn't had a nap during the day. Today he had one so now, at 8:46GMT, he's still messy around and getting told to get back into bed. Mim doesn't sleep easily. She finds it really difficult to turn her brain off, and will often still be reading when I go up to bed at 10:30. The worse the day has been for her, the harder it is for her sleep.

Hi AsdMommy. It sounds like he would do fine with a later bedtime, so it's really just your call. The only thing I would add to what's already been said is that you might want to be sure when you pull the trigger. If it doesn't work out, it could be hard convincing him to return to the earlier bed time. Or, maybe you could talk to him about having a week-long trial period to see how he reacts to the change. If you think he's not getting enough sleep, then maybe if he agrees up front to the trial, he'd be willing to go back to the old bedtime (I kinda doubt this, but I'm just throwing out ideas!). Either way, he'll be fine, and I don't think he'll end up on a therapist's couch talking about it. whether you move it or not! (Might end up on one, like many of us do, but bedtime probably won't be the reason!) Good luck!

The earliest bedtime ever here was 7:00pm. At 9 years old, it was probably around 8:00, maybe 8:30.

My kids wake up at the same time every morning, regardless of when they went to bed, so I tend to err on the side of early. My younger son (12 y/o) is such a terrible sleeper though (and can't have melatonin due to interactions with his other meds) that I just put him to bed at the same time as my older son (almost 15 y/o), which is 9pm. My 12 y/o usually sleeps closer to 10:30pm, wakes up around 2am, sleeps again around 3am and wakes up finally at 4:30am. I think my 15 y/o would sleep longer except at 4:30, my 12 y/o is running around the house like the Road Runner so it's kinda hard to sleep. Anyway, that's a bit of a digression, sorry.

As the for UK thing- maybe it depends on your latitude position. The UK is more northern than the US, so therefore it gets darker sooner there in the winter (I lived there briefly many years ago and I recall it being dark around 4pm sometimes- could be wrong though).

Edit for clarity.