Tag Archives: bed time

Getting Up After Going to Bed

Bed time can be a challenge and we often talk here in the Parents’ blog about different ways to make a bedtime routine workable and make bedtime go more smoothly. One of the topics we haven’t really covered is what to do when a child starts getting up after going to bed. When you’ve done everything you can think of to create a consistent bedtime routine and the child pops up after being tucked in or comes up with a dozen reasons to get back out of bed once you’ve got her in there—what can you do? So, what is … Continue reading →

Do Kids in Single Parent Families Get to Stay Up Later?

I had a debate recently with a couple other single parents about whether we think our children got LATER bedtimes because of our single parent status or EARLIER ones. I argued that when my children were younger, they probably had an earlier bedtime than their peers because I had to get up early for work and during the years I was going to college, I really needed those nights for my study time. As they got older, however, I know that the bedtime got a little more lax so that we could have time to spend together over dinner, homework, … Continue reading →

Let’s Be Honest, Why Would They Really WANT to Go to Bed?

Wrestling with children over bedtime seems to be the parent’s right of passage or a national pastime of parents. We get so aggravated and agitated and ask ourselves what is wrong with us as parents because our children throw tantrums or don’t want to go to bed. But, let us look at this bed time issue with a little common sense—why on earth would the average child WANT to go to bed?! Life is so full of fun and pleasures and love and interesting new things that it seems to me a child is pretty darn smart to feel like … Continue reading →

Who Gets to Choose the Bed Time?

Since all my kids are now in high school, with the eldest being a senior, bed time isn’t so much an issue any more. They pretty much get themselves to bed and I’ll occasionally catch them taking naps again. Now, curfew is the big battle ground. But, it used to be negotiations and discussions around bed time… Ultimately, parents get to decide (or should decide) when a child’s bedtime is. This doesn’t mean that you will be able to make them go to sleep, as I wrote yesterday, but you can make sure that they have the opportunity to get … Continue reading →

You Can’t MAKE a Child Sleep

I think if you were to ask parents about what the big “issues” are in their families, bed time and sleeping habits would likely make each parent’s top ten. From the time a child is tiny; parents fuss and work to make the child get to sleep and stay asleep. BUT, in reality, we cannot really MAKE them sleep… I learned the “You can put a child to bed, but you can’t make him sleep” rule when I had my third child. My son was never a sleeper. After having two daughters who slept through the night and took great … Continue reading →