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.

And if you have a child who wakes at 5am regardless of what time they go to bed I suspect you too would put them to bed at 7-7.30.

The time they wake up isn't always related to their bedtime.

”ironing”…..?

Aside from that I’m totally with you. Aaaaaall the jobs once they’re in bed. All except ironing. That gets done on the 3rd Sunday of Never.

And yes to complaining when they wake early! I have friends complain of ‘early’ risers at 5/6 but they put them to bed at 630/7 so what do they expect!! I’m sure someone will come on to say ‘my dc will wake at 6 regardless of what them they go to bed’ but it takes a while for sleep patterns to change…

My 2.5 year old loves his sleep and is a ratty bum if he doesn't get enough. Bed time is between 7 and 8pm and his natural wake up time is 7.30 to 8am. He still has a two hour nap after lunch as well 😂

When I get him up for childminder days at 7am I have to really try hard to wake him up versus weekends when I go in at 8 and he cheerfully says 'Good morning!'

Our day begins at 6am, so a 7pm bedtime for two primary aged school kids isn't that crazy. They are in the go all day, have dinner 4pm, supper 6pm, bath, teeth, stories then bed.

I need time to unwind on my own in the evening,and rest before the next day begins.

@Bunbuns3 i don’t think it’s necessarily true that it’s beneficial for family life. That’s very dependent on each individual family I think!
I have a 2.5 year old who stopped napping just before turning 2. He goes to bed at 7/7.30pm. And wakes up at around 6am. We need to leave the house at 7.30am. If mine goes to bed any later then he wakes later and our mornings are a nightmare!

Ours has to be up at 6.30am through the week for nursery so 7.30pm latest is an appropriate time for him to be asleep for the at least 11 hours he needs. This translates to a weekend naturally as he’s 4 and doesn’t understand a lie in. And when he does go to bed late (holidays / events) he doesn’t sleep in any later.

So basically he needs to go to bed ‘early’. Plus I like my child-free evenings!

Like a PP, I don't have any local family support so I need to look after my own emotional well-being which requires respite time whilst they are asleep.

Some people need to get their children up earlier than others- we drop dh for an early train then do two school drop offs. The two younger kids go to bed after 8 and take a while to fall asleep so it’s almost cruelty to drag them out of bed in the morning. Personally I regret that we didn’t get a routine of 7/7.30 but with dh’s work it would have been horrible that he’d miss bedtime. Personally I think whatever works works

I don't actually think it's that common, compared to other parents with kids the same age (both under 5) we seem to be the unusual ones in that we put our kids to bed at a similar time each day 7:30 ish. I love it though, I get time with my husband in the evening. They don't get up early in the morning either. Maybe it works well for us as my husband works from home and I'm back from work by 5pm most of the time so we get plenty of time with them before they go to bed.

"only" 12 hours of sleep?! Primary age children, especially those 10+ don't need 12+ hours of sleep a night.

Mostly I think people do what suits their work schedules and priorities, but some people do seem oddly obsessed with early bedtimes.

It amuses me when people say I'm so lucky to have 'lie ins' to 7am because they're up from 5 every day, insert martyr look here or pause seeking admiration. I have to bit my tongue to avoid pointing out that if they weren't obsessed with 6/6.30pm bedtimes they might not be up from 5.

We allowed ours to choose their own bedtimes from year 5/6 because we were happy for them to be up as long as they were well behaved. I would never admit that in polite society as it would be considered negligent.

As it happened they self regulated perfectly well and were always up ready for school (and were high flyers). We sometimes had to prompt and say ‘you need to go up now, you look tired’ or ‘come on, up to bed, you’ve got an early start’ but generally they were good about going up at a reasonable time to read for 20 mins and then lights out.

The people who are twitchy and rigid about bedtimes ime don’t enjoy being around their children when they want to be ‘off duty’. We never had that differentiation.

I often used to feel sorry for those young kids who were not put to bed when they were clearly exhausted.

But there are also clear sleep patterns that are just hardwired. I’ve got a lark and an owl and they’ve been like that all their lives, literally since they were babies.

Most adults are the same. Whatever time I go to sleep I rarely wake later than 8. DH would go to bed at 2am and wake at 11.

For your family life, it wouldn't work at all for mine, but that's fine people are allowed to do things differently 😉

It depends entirely on the child but children need a certain amount of sleep and letting them go to bed late if they can't sleep in the next morning seems a bit silly to me.

My 5yo needs 11-12 hours a night to function properly and has a 7am wake-up for school so we target between 7-8pm for bedtime. On weekend and holiday nights, this often slips to 9pm as they will sleep a bit later in the morning and naturally wake up around 8. When we're away on holiday, they can stay up as late as midnight and will sleep late the next day.

We're lucky that DC is quite flexible and just gets a bit silly/naughty if tired, but some children turn into screaming overtired messes if they stay up beyond their usual bedtime and still wake up at silly o'clock the next day.

But yeah, consensus’s is that most kids don’t get enough sleep so I think OP’s “ concerns”
are probably unfounded. Think those kids will probably turn out ok long term.

I agree. I hate seeing little kids slumped with their faces on tables on holiday when they should be tucked up comfily in their beds.

I've never set a bed time as such. As a result the kids have self regulated. 8 year old is in bed by 9pm on school nights, 10pm weekends and holiday. 14 year old is in bed by 10pm school nights, 11pm holidays. Both sleep well and wake naturally around 7.30-8.00 am on school days

I have 3 boys, youngest is 8. None of them were ever put to bed at 6.30. 7.30 was story and lights out time when they were toddlers. Now the 8 year old reads until 9pm then lights out. Functions absolutely fine. We get up at 7-7.30 most mornings.
I know every child is different but if I had put any of mine down at 6pm then a) they would have taken hours to go to sleep and b) would be awake at some ungodly hour of the morning.

As a mum of 2, we’ve tried all sort of bedtimes… and guess what they still wake up early, or woke up early. They are older now so have later bedtimes but it didn’t matter what time I put them to bed they’d still wake at 6am… ds15 goes into his bed at 10, sometimes plays on his phone etc… he has asd so his routine is everything
dd10 is currently 8.45 but getting raised when she turns 11.

My dd goes to bed at 10pm, always has done. I laugh at the posts on here of the parents crying because their child wakes up for the day at 5am but yet are insistant they are in bed for 6.30pm lol!

Yes I agree. And all these people having dinner before 6pm. What? Do you work?

My kids are 2 years old and 5 months old and they are usually asleep by 8pm, which is on the early side in France where we live.

Only 12 hours of sleep. Only? How much more than 12 hours' sleep do you think primary school kids need? A few kids might need that much sleep, but not all of them, not by a long way.