I am all emotional. GAH!
Okay. Anyway. I know I should do earlier bedtime and we've had earlier bedtimes at different points. Right now it's late because of the aforementioned reasons, and because it's still bright outside at bedtime, and because there are still kids playing outside at bedtime... Plus I have a dinnertime scheduling conflict.
Dinner is late because:
- Miss A gets off the bus starving at 4, so we have a snack, which generally takes until 4:30 because of the slowness. But then people aren't ready to eat at 5 or 5:30.
- I want to move straight from dinner to baths, because my kids are filthy disgusting pig eaters and I don't want to clean them that many times/day.
Should I say no snack after school? It seems cruel and unusual. Is it?
But then what if I feed them at 5-5:30 -- won't they demand another snack at bedtime? It's like my kids are infants who cluster-feed in the evenings. And I hate it. What would the Duggars do?
I don't allow free access to snacks because my kids are so messy, slopping food about and getting their faces/hands/clothes disgusting. And because they would waste the food like crazy. I don't think they have the maturity for self-service snacking yet.
So,
4 - Miss A gets home
4-4:30ish - homework
4:30-5:30 - play outside
4-4:30ish - homework
4:30-5:30 - play outside
5:30 - dinner
6 - baths
7 - bedtime
Now, my other conundrum is that they will not go to bed at 7. They play loudly in their rooms or come downstairs to torment me every 10-15 minutes, until after 9. If they go to bed at 9 and sleep til 7, that's 10 hours, which is the low end of the acceptable spectrum for the three older ones. Unfortunately, that seems to be what their needs are.
I'm depressed just writing about it. I hate bedtime so much.
Then what about summer? Do you have a different summer bedtime schedule? Seriously, there are kids my kids' age in our neighborhood who are out until after dark every night -- LOTS of them. And yes, I know my parenting isn't dictated by what other parents do, but I remember the magic of being out in the evenings during the summer, sometimes in my nightgown. I want my kids to have that, not some rigid schedule that gets them in bed at 6 (which I have done many times, and for many long time periods in our life, so I'm not hating. It's just that my kids actually remember things now.).
Whew. I hate punctuation with parentheses and I just don't have the energy for doing things right tonight.
HELLLLP!
Posts
I was sorry to see the earlier post deleted as well. It makes me unhappy when my friends cannot respect one another and agree to disagree.
ReplyDeleteOn to bedtime at my house. I have only three little monsters(8,7 &5) to do bedtime with here, but I don't think the number of children makes much of a difference because by the end of the day, most of us are ready to see those little angles off to bed.
I don't have much of a routine with anything, but I am the most consistent with bedtime. On school nights my kids are sent to their rooms between 7-730, depending on what time dinner was served and I can banish them for the night. They have t.v.'s because I am too lazy to lay/read/fight with them for hours to stay in their rooms until morning. Around 9 or 10 when I head into bed I turn the t.v.'s off. They are almost always asleep by that point.
Now, weekends and summer, I cannot help you there. My kids get sent to bed when I cannot stand to see them anymore. Some nights 8/9 some nights later, if it has been a trying day maybe 7/730:)
Please let me know what you come up with...maybe I will give it a try~
Good Luck!
Emily
Love to you...and I am a hormonal wreck anyway, so just give me until Christmas to be sane again...wait, nursing...BLAST!
ReplyDeleteI will share that for one of mine, Grayson, we now have had to remove the afternoon snack since he refused to eat dinner all last week. The girls don't walk in the door until 4, dinner is at 5/5:30, so it wasn't working for him. I know my sister, with her measly two kids :), gives her kids the fruit/salad side of dinner when they get home. It may not always be what we would think of as a tasty match, ie roast chicken and sliced apples...but the fruit/salad comes first, and then she offers the meat/starch and maybe more salad/veg/fruit at dinner. Seems to work for her.
I am super lenient about bedtime with my non-school-aged kids and during summers/days off of school.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a job or deadlines or anything though, and I can sleep when they do, etc.
Also, we don't bathe the kids every day. They get wipe downs before bed a lot instead. Do you bathe them individually or throw them all in together? My two girls (just turned 8 and 5) shower together and my older one helps wash the other's hair and stuff. We don't really supervise them much anymore, other than to tell them to hurry up and get out LOL
Bedtime is 8 on school nights. Sometimes the girls are up for another half-hour giggling and whatever, but they usually fall asleep fairly fast.
As for snacks, we don't do them once Lili is home from school. Mia can snack until then, and Lili gets an afternoon snack at school. Then they wait until dinner. They don't get a snack after dinner either, but if they were hungry and had eaten their dinners, I'll offer them an apple or a yogurt or even a bowl of cereal.
We've always had dinner between 5 and 6, and I have never fed the kids a snack afterwards. They just don't need it. If they insist they are starving, offer something they don't like (I offer baby carrots).
ReplyDeleteOften, I bathe them at 5 or 5:30 and then do dinner. You can offer to let them stay in the living room until 7:30, but then they have to stay in their rooms without coming out. If they come out, then the next night they go in at 7:00. Also, you can have them go to their rooms at 7:30, but lights out at 8:00. I always make sure that each kid has a nighttime cup (with lid); that way, they don't bother me for water.
I have to be done taking care of children by 7:30, or I would go mad.
Sometimes they stay up later in summer; but if it is all the time, then it isn't special.
I am lost about the deleted post/comment. I always miss out.
ReplyDeleteNanny 911 says if the kids come out of their room, quietly take them back to their room. Don't say a word to them just put them in their room and leave. There will be screams at the beginning but they will learn.
As far as summer goes I can't help.My girls have to get up early to go to the sitter every day (which totally sucks) so they have to go to bed at the same time every night.
If you keep them up late, they will want to sleep in which starts the cycle of not going to bed early blah blah blah.
You need your time too so you have to do what is right for you.
What kind of after school snack do you make? Maybe cut the portion in half? What about eating dinner at that time then having a snack around 7-7:30 as a group then maybe that will calm everyone down for quiet time?
Ironically, when I read your first bedtime post, I had just been wondering what I must be doing wrong to make bedtime so miserable at my house. I had just convinced myself that kids are just cranky when tired and moms are just cranky when kids are cranky...then I read what you wrote and realized, no, I'm probably doing something wrong.
ReplyDeleteI only have 2 kids, one of which isn't old enough to stall or protest...well, unless you count uncontrollable crying as protesting? On top of that, she doesn't really eat prepared dinners yet and we have no neighborhood friends mucking up our schedules. That said, bedtime is still horrid on most nights and I do have an early bedtime...usually between 7:30 and 8.
Kids eating habits are whack, so...to snack or not to snack? Who knows. I guess you just have to weigh the hour of hungry child stress against the bedtime nonsense stress. I mean, does Miss A eat lunch at 10:30 or some obscene time like sometimes happens at school? I'd be starving too.
As for staying up late during summer. Go for it, I say. You (maybe?) only live once and it's torture to be laying in bed awake listening to the neighborhood outside having fun. But if you don't let them, chances are they'll forgive you eventually...maybe when they have to do bedtime for their own kids? Hah.
I guess my point in all this not-really-advice is that I feel ya. And good luck. :)
Also, I'm new to blogland and not too familiar with posting etiquette...Should I have introduced myself? And that was possibly way too long to be acceptable...
ReplyDeletemaybe just give them sth very light when they arrive (fruit? juice?), sth they can eat on the go so you immediately release them to go play (no messy kitchen!) and they will not remember to ask for more because they will be busy. Then you can have early dinnertime before they get cranky. Even if you decide to let them up late, at least it will be only one routine with cranky kids, not both dinner and bath&bed.
ReplyDeleteMy kids are much smaller (18m) and there are only two of them, so what do I know, but I think if I were you Id let them go late on weekends, and make it strict early bedtime on weekdays. For their sanity and health, too, not just yours. I think this will show them you acknowledge their need and pleasure of playing with friends and also make it clear that discipline (ugh!) and organization (ugh, ugh, I know! who am I kidding?) are important.
This probably won't make you feel much better, but since my kids are older, I have to tell you that based on some of the parenting I see with our kids friends and the neighborhood kids, you may as well get used to being more strict than your neighbors now. The things they are lenient with get so much bigger than bedtime once the kids start getting older.
ReplyDeleteStart practicing that mom phrase, "I don't care what so and so's mom lets her do. I'm your mom and I say no."
Hang in there, at some point bedtime becomes way less of an issue. Once B could start taking a shower without supervision was a wonderful day at our house!
I don't understand the deleted comment comment. Did someone tell you you needed to put your kids to bed sooner? Well, here...want to feel better?? Z is almost 6 months and SHE goes to bed at 9:30 most night. She takes a long nap in the afternoon and isn't ready for bed at 7. She cries and fusses and such and gets up and is hungry until then. Alert Alert...BAD MOMMY! Oh well...she sleeps until 7 and is bright and happy and laughing. She seems fine. Hopefully things will get earlier, but if not, it is what it is. (My other girlfriends put their infants down at 6:30 or 7--wow.)
ReplyDeleteI like all the other poster's ideas. I would do a super early dinner on weeknights, maybe skip some baths (girls on X days and boys on Y days, etc), and initiate an early get-on-your-bed time. Maybe have a quick snack right before the get-in-bed time. Then after getting in bed, maybe 20 minutes of reading or playing with dolls or whatever as long as you are quiet and in bed, probably with a lamp or some not very bright light. Then lights out, shut the door. Then mommy gets out the drinks or other kid-free resources.
ReplyDeleteFor weekends and all summer, they have all day to play w/ or w/o friends, so you can tweak your schedule accordingly. I'd go for a later bedtime in the summer for the older ones. Like every year older gets you an extra 10-20 min of later bedtime or later playing-around-on-the-bed up to a certain time cap. I would definitely try to put down the youngest one first. I know it's rambling, but I hope it helps. Don't feel bad about shaking up what is "normal" at your house and finding something that fits better. I'd go mad if I had 4 little ones up past 9 or 10. I totally look forward to bedtime every day, starting when I wake up, and I love my munchkins plenty.
OK -- is it just A that needs the snack in the late afternoon? If so, could you pack her an extra snack only to be eaten after school before she gets on the bus? (Or on the bus itself if that's not verboten?) You could sell it as her special big girls-only snack that G, P, and H don't get because they're not old enough yet. That way, she's eaten and done by the time she gets home and that's an extra half hour of play/whatever time for her. Then dinner's at 6 or 6:30, baths after that (and I say fill the sucker up and throw them all in), and bed by 8/8:30. No?
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as letting them play outside because it's awesome to do that when you're a little kid... yes, I totally see your point there, but if it's coming at the cost of your general sanity, is it worth it? There's plenty of years to make those kind of amazing memories, but you're losing your mind *now*.
But what the hell do I know? I have half the number that you have and am still befuddled by how to run anythign, so pay no attention to me if I've oversimplified things. It's just so much more fun to do this for someone else than for myself.
I'm not reading all the other comments - I'm too tired after losing sleep from the Lost finale last night. So I may be repeating advice from above. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteMy advice is this: when the kids get a little older, they can have all the twilight memory making in their nightgowns that they want to have. Like when they're 10 or 12. But for now, get them to bed for your own sanity! And if they can hear other kids playing outside, get some sound machines and use the white noise setting to drown out the fun makers. Darn kids having fun outside ruin it for all of us strict routine oriented parents! Ugh.
Lastly, start making the kids pay when they come downstairs and torment you after you've tucked them in. Do some sort of incentive like a marble jar. My kids get a marble for good deeds and lose them for bad deeds. When the jar is full (20 marbles), they get some sort of prize or reward - usually a trip to the donut store.
Another idea - give them four quarters at bedtime and every time they get up and come bother you, take one away. It's like a monetary hall pass. Whatever they don't spend, they get to keep in the morning. Then they can buy something with it! (Donuts?)
Those are just my lame ideas that came to mind. I hope they help.
And, by the way, I had your blog up for two days this weekend, trying to make a comment about the whole sex issue that you were writing about. I had some really REALLY good insight, I promise. But now I'm too freaking tired to even remember what sex is. Darn LOST! It has fried my brain.
Elizabeth, I love your ideas! Quarters, marble jar, yes!
ReplyDelete