AIBU not to wake my 20-year-old for early shifts?

You're not selfish and your sister needs to wind her neck in.

I wouldn’t be getting up at 4.30! I might buy him an additional alarm tho

tell your sister that millions of teenagers go to uni at 18 and manage to get themselves up for lectures at 9 despite being out in the clubs until past 2am. If I can do that then your son can get himself up- at least he will be paid for it!

I think this kind of thing is a much better idea - chat through with him why the current alarm system isn’t working and problem solve together. There’s a whole load of different alarms out there for people who struggle to wake up/get up.

Yes, YANBU. He's 20, no-one likes getting up that early, but unless you are also getting up at that time, he needs to wake himself. I resent having to get my daughter up (she's 16) as I feel like a human alarm clock reminding her every 10 minutes, and it's not even especially early as we live near the school. I feel she should be doing it herself. I certainly wouldn't be doing it that early on a weekend for a grown adult.

I would probably help him for a few weeks while he gets into the rhythm of the early wakeups but I think I would be fairly rigid about only doing so if he was willing to stick to a schedule that allowed him to get to bed early too. If he wanted to do late nights out with his friends and then wanted me also to disrupt my own sleep to wake him up, I would not be willing to do that. He needs to be at least as invested in his own life as you are invested in his life, if you see what I mean.

Hopefully his body clock will get on a schedule of being able to wake independently after a few weeks, or he can start looking at other strategies like the vibrating alarm or whatever.

Things are rough for young people right now so I would probably provide more of this sort of support than if the job market were good.

If he can't get into a regular rhythm of waking up early, even with some (limited) scaffolding by you, then maybe he just has a night owl chronotype and early jobs are not going to be his thing. I think it would be better if he has a few months of work history at his current job, showing an ability to meet expectations, build a good reference with his boss that he can use to help get another job (with a schedule more suited to him) before he jumps ship to a job with a later schedule. But if it doesn't work out and he has to quit this job earlier, so be it. It's his life, he needs to do the work for it.

How do you think millions of 18 year olds at university get themselves up at 7am for their morning lectures each day?! They don't have Mummy around to jostle them awake and make them a bacon sandwich. We are talking about an absolute basic minimum baseline level of competency here that people that age should be able to do.

No but getting up at 7am for a lecture is very different to getting up at 4.30 am for a long journey on public transport to do a full days work in a factory .

Please don’t do this. He’s an adult. In a few years time is he going to have a wife/husband who has to wake him up? If he was my partner I’d be so put off by that. Get him ready for the real world.

He signed up for it.

Nobody likes getting up at 4.30am but it was his choice to take the job.

There is no way on this earth I'd be waking a 20 year old to get him up for work unless they had some kind of neurological issue that prevented them from taking responsibility for it themselves. This is independence, presumably he wants the up sides of it and not the downsides? I'd say that 20 if not before was a great time to learn, that's life, and mummy isn't going to be there walking behind you with a dustpan and brush forever.

There are plenty of young people out there who will work out one end of an alarm clock from the other, if he can't.

@aloris

Things are rough for young people right now

especially ones that can't get themselves out of bed

This is wild. You know your duty as a parent is to grow him into an independent adult, why on earth would you let anyone tell you otherwise. You know what’s what, you got this.

Tell your sister that you have a solution. You will wake him up at 4.30 but because you are a heavy sleeper, and apparently adults need to be woken by other adults, you will need her to wake you up so you can wake him. It would be cruel and selfish of her to not help her sister.

@itsmeitsyou one of mine didn't always wake to an alarm so he got an alarm intended for people with hearing difficulties. Ithas a bed shaker to make sure. He's reliable since he got that. He may need something else, like the alarm across the room so he has to get out of bed to turn it off, but I'm sure you'll find a solution that takes you out of the equation!

I think the better option is to do it for now, while his body clock adjusts, but also to be trying to instil healthy sleep habits. If in a month or so, he still hasn't adjusted then I'd be advising him to try and find a different job!
I work shift work, so I know how awful it can be. I set about 20 alarms starting an hour before I desperately need to be up when I am on the early. I also spend all night not being able to sleep because I panic about getting up on time 😂

He’s 20 an adult ! If he can’t set a simple alarm to wake him up as most of the country’s workforce do then he’ll just have to face the consequences of his actions!

Once their out of primary school they should be getting themselves up

That's normally why people who have to work early shifts or labour-intensive shifts need to a) get into a routine of going to bed a couple of hours earlier and b) making sure they own an alarm clock that awakens them. Being tired the first few days whilst your body adjusts to the shock of getting up that early is normal. Loads of people go to very difficult jobs very tired. He will get used to it - he's an adult.

If you are someone who cannot get themselves up independently even with the loudest alarm on earth or cannot for whatever reason wake up that early to do a job of that nature then you probably shouldn't accept a job which you have to get up that early for. You're already living the life O'Reilly by working whilst living with your parents which minimises or gets rid of a large amount of life stressors the rest of the workforce have to deal with, the least you should be able to do is wake up for your job unaided.

My son is the same. 19 and an alarm does not wake him up. I don't know what to do either.

Yes do it for him now whilst his lazy arse adjusts to you getting him up !

The thing is that if you take on the job of waking him up, his subconscious brain will ignore the alarm because ‘mum hasn’t knocked so I can snooze’.
He needs to train himself to respond to the alarm as part of learning how to be an adult. If you or your husband step in then you are effectively sabotaging his learning curve.
Ditto snack, drinks and sandwiches. Think about what kind of partner you would like him to be.

Fgs I was living on my own when I was 20! He needs to be able to sort himself out. He’s not a child. Even my children set alarms for school and get up themselves.

Aaah l love it when people are the “best” at parenting but don’t actually have any children!