Do you struggle with your children’s bedtimes? There are many parents that do.
Some of the best advice that I got from my mother-in-law was about bedtimes. She said that her kids always had a bedtime and they didn’t get out of bed again until morning. It didn’t matter if they were asleep or not as long as they were in bed.
My kids go to bed and usually stay there. Sometimes they don’t go to sleep right away, they sometimes chatter away or play with their stuffed animals, but at least they are in bed.
I’ve heard many stories from several different mom’s who constantly struggle with bedtimes. We’ve all heard the stories of moms who have had to use their vehicle and drive around for hours to put the child(ren) to sleep. For some, it takes hours to get the child to go to sleep, with the child getting up out of bed every five minutes needing something (water, toilet etc.) I know I would get very frustrated with that. There are some that have different bedtimes for their children – for example child ‘a’ will get up at 6 am and go to bed at 8 pm and child ‘b’ will get up at 8 am and go to bed at 10 pm. In this case the mom is parenting from 6 am until 10 pm at night. And granted the job of parenting never ceases, we all need a break from the action of parenting – this mom would never get that break. Maybe this works for these moms and their families, I know it doesn’t work for me.
Like I said, my mother-in-law said that her kids were always in bed at a certain time. Looking back, I know that my mom had a set bedtime for us kids as well. I’ve implemented that with my kids too. Kids being kids will occasionally test the boundaries. When this happens they lose a privilege the next day. I try to keep the privilege associated with sleep time. Such as, they lose the privilege of getting a story and a song before naps/bedtime the next day.
My kids all have a bedtime routine and they do not like a change in the bedtime routine at all (which is why they don’t risk losing it very often!).
Bedtime is the one thing that I’m pretty firm on. Not only do children need sleep to grow, heal and stay healthy but I’m exhausted by the time their bed time rolls around as well and I need my parenting break. Not to mention that I still have hours of work to do!
**Please do not take offence if you are using any of the bedtime situations I mentioned. If it works for you and your family – great! I only mentioned them because I know of some moms who were struggling with those particular situations.
