Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

If you or your child are night owls, how the heck do you deal with the morning?!

3 replies

Nightowlprobs · 18/09/2023 09:44

My dc (age 9) is a classic night owl. Has been all his life. Even as a baby / toddler he would wake up a little later (which felt great for me then!).

But now (and for the last four years) I have to nag him to go to sleep (sneaks a torch under his blanket to read, gets out of bed to play). Sometimes I’m asleep before him! And every morning he’s groggy and moody. He’s a really happy-go-lucky person during the day, but cries almost morning because he’s rushed out the door (he wakes up after cajoling at 8:15, giving him 15 mins to get ready and go!).

How do I help him? Night owls, how do you cope with a culture that needs you to be a lark?!?

He’s also not hungry at breakfast but RAVENOUS after he’s gone to bed! I don’t know what to do about that either.

Please help. I feel like I’m getting it all wrong and it’s heartbreaking having him cry every morning. Really struggle to get him to go to sleep early and not sure what to do.

OP posts:
WrylyAmused · 18/09/2023 10:01

Not sure there is a lot to be done about it tbh.
It's as natural as, for example, sexual orientation, just the way some people are.

I still can't sleep before 2am, even when I need to get up at 5 (thankfully rarely!). And the same with food, rarely eat before 4-5pm, then dinner around 10-midnight.

Exercise helps a bit if I time it right - need to finish the exercise about 2-3 hours before I want to sleep, so I get a post workout boost, then drop.
Ditto hot shower about 30 mins before sleep, then your body is cooling at the time you want to sleep.

Yoga nidra/sleep meditations help a bit, but not sure how useful that would be for a 9yo.

But it's all pretty marginal, sorry!
Carbs can cause sleepiness in the daytime, but I don't experience that when I eat them at night, so that hasn't helped.

9 is old enough to understand and have the conversations linking sleeping late and feeling rough in the morning, so at least maybe you could get him intellectually on board with why sleeping late causes him problems for himself (i.e. you're not just trying to make him sleep because you want to stop him playing etc) - and see if he's willing to try some things himself to help with it, but if he's wired like that it's probably just going to be a bit painful living in a lark world. And with the hormonal and circadian rhythm cycles of a teen, it probably won't get better. Sorry.

On the plus side, you do learn to cope with the sleep deprivation, so as long as you let him catch up with sleep in the weekends, it's survivable.

That's a balance too though, cos left to my own devices (esp as a teen in holidays), I naturally sleep around 6am & wake around noon.... so best not to completely destroy the rhythms...

Hope you find something that works for you both!

Nightowlprobs · 18/09/2023 10:25

Did you struggle to get up for school when you were a child, wryly?

It’s so tricky because it’s clear that his body clock is strong and he has all this energy at night! And in the morning is a mess. Poor kid!

OP posts:
Nightowlprobs · 18/09/2023 19:11

Bumping this to see if anyone else has any advice too!

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread