It is not uncommon for the average single parent to have sleep issues. I think most of us would confess to NOT getting enough sleep on a regular basis but are there things we can do to try to minimize how tired we feel all the time. Perhaps it is just a simple case of staying up too late or waking or getting up too early…
It is amazing to me how little decisions like whether or not to stay up and watch that television program can affect a person’s entire sleep schedule and then have influence over how we perform our attitude and our health. The same goes for getting up too early in the morning. While I have found as a single parent that getting up before everyone else in the morning can give me a window of efficiency and add to my productivity during the day, getting up too early or shaving off too much valuable sleep can have a disastrous effect.
There are realities in every single parent’s life that are out of our control. We cannot help it if a child wakes up with nightmares or we have an early morning meeting scheduled. What we can help is the things we do to accommodate and adjust in order to make sure we get plenty of sleep. Staying up late the night before that early morning meeting is just asking for trouble! Of course, we are only human and I know that I do not always want to be the perfectly responsible person getting to bed early every night. I realize, however, that I do need to pace myself and that means putting myself to bed early on some nights when I’d rather stay up. Sure, it might be boring, but we single parents have to keep an eye on the big picture.