Are UK parents obsessed with getting their kids to bed early?

[RosieLeaLovesTea]

Am I the only one that thinks UK parents are obsessed with getting their kids to bed early? I see posts of 7pm/7.30pm, some as early as 6pm.

I work full time and don’t get home until 6.30pm. We don’t eat until 7pm. So generally 9pm is bedtime. Plus it means that if we do go out at weekends our kids are used to going to bed a bit later.

Yes DD2 has slept through since 7 months after being an awful sleeper to start, so I am not meddling with anything unless I have to!

I do 7:30pm simply because I want some child free time to myself in the evenings. I'm not regimental about it though

My DD is only 1, but goes to sleep at 6.30, normally wakes up between 5.30 and 6 (which is fine because of the time I go to work). We weren’t ‘obsessed’ with getting her to bed early and actually preferred when her bed time was a bit later, but anytime past 6.30 and she gets over tired and won’t sleep for a long time and then it’s broken sleep and she still wakes up at 5.30. I luckily finish early but DH is sad because he only sees her about 45mins before bed, everything is very much DDs terms though and she can nap up until 5pm. Girl just likes her sleep!

A lot of children have to wake much earlier than that for school. My dd goes to a senior school in a nearby town and she needs to catch the bus at 0720. Her school starts at 0830.

Mine go to bed at 730 to give me a chance to do a few jobs and shower before bed. My 8yo is up at 6am with me, we're early birds and my 5yo sleeps until 730. Saying that 8yo reads to herself until 8ish

I like to bed in bed by 9. I also wouldn't eat after 7pm, I have reflux and suffer badly if I eat after 6pm. No problem with them being up early

Yes! Mine is only 6 months and he has a little 45 minute catnap for his last nap during the afternoon but he is always awake by 4 to be sure he's ready for bed at 7.

Depends on age of child, how knackered they are, how active they are and how early they have to be up next day.

So yes, i like my youngest two (4 and 6) in bed by 7 30 at the latest or I know the next day will be a struggle. They get up at 6.45am. I don't think that bedtime is unreasonable.

It's a bit of a luxury to be in this position tbh. Most kids who have to get up for school or nursery have to get up earlier than this.

Mine go to bed around 9-9.30 usually (20 months and almost 6) and sleep until 8ish in the morning! Gives us more family time in the evening after school/work, no early rises and flexibility to do things in the evenings too ☺️

I bet you thank your lucky stars that you don’t need to use childcare before school in order to work

Yes, I am very lucky that I work flexibly and live 5 minutes from school to be fair x

When mine were younger bedtime was 7:30 they were always early risers which I never found a bad thing once we got past the 5am wake up I personally think it sets them up for a good routine saves the dramas when they start school as your not having to drag them out of bed I would much rather have early risers than tired little ones when having to do school drop offs would you really want to be woke up made to eat breakfast get dressed and sent in to work when you hadn’t fully woken up or had enough sleep because I know I wouldn’t.
My two have just left secondary school their bedtime was 9pm and I have never had an issue getting them up for school.

I'm glad I saw this thread. I have felt like such a failure because I can't get my kids to sleep before 9, sometimes 10. They wake up 7-8 depending if its a school day or not.

I’m not obsessed by it, I think different children have different sleep needs and that’s what decides the best bed time. My children need 12 hours sleep a night and their bedtime is 7pm, so that we’re up in time for the school run. In winter they often need 13 hours so it’s an even earlier bedtime.

When my DC were at nursery, bed-time was very similar to yours - get home at 7pm, dinner 7.30-8, play time and bath, bed at 9ish or later.

When they both started school we managed to ease bedtime forward a little to 8pm so that DH and I could have a bit of time to relax.

Now they're teens and go to bed later than we do.

Doesn't matter if your kids go to bed early or later than the norm if that's what works for your family. And it's going to change over time anyway :)

Depends what time they have school? Healthy sleep habits mean they shouldn’t need to sleep super late on weekends to make up the missed sleep during the week so wake ups should be consistent. DC (4.5) goes to sleep at 7:15 every night, wakes up around 6:30-7am. Needs to leave for school around 8 and does best with kind of a slow morning. When DC start primary school (not UK), will need to be out of the house closer to 7:30 so will continue to need an early bedtime. Most kids also do not get the recommended amount of sleep and this does have a huge impact on functioning. I think a lot of parents are in denial about the impact of not enough sleep.

That's part of the issue though - we also ate as a family as much as we could, but none of us were even home by 6.30pm. DH would get home around then and start dinner prep, I'd arrive around 7pm with the DC, we'd probably eat closer to 8pm and then the kids needed baths and a little time to wind down before bed. So 9pm bedtime at the earliest, provided everything ran like clockwork!

I don’t want him to sleep at 6 or 7. If he did that I would literally never see him. I think I was just clumsily trying to say. We work his bedtime to suit our lifestyle / our work commitments. He still gets enough sleep. We see each other. So it works for us. As a family we probably need to worry less about all the folks who are merrily getting their kids to bed at 6 or 7 and just realise we are happy and so are our kids and doing what works for us while other people do what works for them.

I think it can get a bit self fulfilling - we didn't feed ours dinner after nursery at all, they got a small snack if they needed it. If we kept them up for hours after nursery, they might have got hungry again but otherwise eating at 4 at nursery was fine.

They now get a hot meal at after school club 3 days a week and so still don't need dinner at home on those days.

I can’t keep my little boy up. He can be asleep for 6 on a rare night, but usually between 7-8pm other nights. Bedtime is pretty much dictated by him I don’t force him to bed if he isn’t tired. Hes nearly 2 and he’ll either just say “bed” and up we go or I can tell when he’s tired and ready to go up. He’s also an early riser around 6-6.30 but that’s not because he’s in bed early, whatever time he goes to sleep he is up early it makes absolutely no difference so tbf he may aswell be in bed early so we get a bit of time on an evening! Were quite early risers so don’t mind being up.

I can’t understand people putting them to bed an hour before they go themselves!

1 - kids need more sleep than us, they need 2-3 hours more ideally.

2 - don’t you want to watch adult tv or just sit in relative peace? 🤣

It didn't bother me if DS was awake in the evening, or stop me from doing much other than watching a film I didn't want him watching. He walked in on World War Z at age eight after I asked him to read in his room as it would give him nightmares (it did). He was active in the day so evenings were quiet. I only had one child though!

I used to enjoy the time in the morning to myself when he was a toddler, to have a coffee on the back step in the sun, get a load of washing out etc. If he was awake he'd be very awake in the mornings, while evenings were calmer.

1 - I woke an hour before my child as well

2 - Occasionally a film he couldn't watch, I liked my time alone in the mornings

Yes!! It seems so odd to me too. I’m 2nd generation and we never really had bedtimes, ate and spent time playing around with adults and went to bed whenever the evening was over.
Didn’t seem to do us any harm, all of us were A grade students.

Perhaps, but ours were both ravenous by 7ish when we got home, which isn't surprising since nursery lunch was 11.30am and then a small 'tea' at 4pm.

It worked well for all of us at the time to have a much later bedtime than 'normal.' We moved bedtime earlier once they started school though, as I changed my working hours to be home rather than have a childminder.