to think friend's dc should have been in bed?

[chillipickle]

Just done an overnight visit to friends, where the guests were OH/me/our two DCs (aged 6 months and 3 years), plus another friend and her two DCs (2 and 5 yo).

After a day entertaining the DCs, I was looking forward to packing them off to bed and having a nice meal, bottle or five of wine, and proper conversation with the adults, who we don't see that often.

Except my friend did not put her older DC to sleep. All evening. Until the adults started going to bed at 11pm. So all conversation had to be suitable for the ears of the 5 yo who was listening in, and occasionally returning to the table to chat to us.

I dunno, I wasn't expecting a wild party, but our social opportunities are so limited these days that a bit of alcohol-fuelled ribaldry would have made a nice change.

I do understand (from experience) the trials of trying to settle unwilling DCs in a strange house while the host patiently keeps dinner warm and guests gently fade from starvation. And I do realise it's much easier when both parents are there, as you can take it in turns to settle the kids and not miss the whole party.

So I can see why my friend preferred not to go there, but still, I found myself wishing she would just send the DC to bed so that we could have an hour or two of adult company.

AIBU?

think it depends on the child tbh.
If I am at others houses, DS2 will not sleep unless i stay with him - he is 3 and if i move he wakes up.

My favourite is when my sisters come to visit in term time and let their really quite young children (we're talking between 2 and 8 yo) stay up way past the time even my teenagers have gone to bed due to school in the morning, shrieking and stamping about and generally running riot. That really pisses me off. If I try to say anything about it, I'm picking on them. My children don't mind as they get especially tired, but I mind. It pisses me right off that my sisters seem incapable of picking up on not very subtle cues, and that it doesn't seem to occur to them that maybe there's a reason that my children have all gone to bed- it's fecking 11 pm.

Only yesterday, my 6yo nephew woke the baby at 10:30 by hollering as he left the bathroom. That was particular highlight in a fortnight of 3 hours' sleep (baby is teething big time).

Don't mind me, I'm just bitter. Don't get me started on the fact that my 3rd is upstairs puking her guts out because my stairs brought a D&V bug top us. Just waiting for it to run around the entire family now. Sister gone, fallout remains.

I'm with you! I'm quite happy to see other children, but there has to be a cut-off point, so the adults can get a chance to talk!

When our friends come with their dds (who are older than ours) we let them take the wee DVD players into the bedroom, so even if they aren't ready to sleep they are enjoying themselves elsewhere, so we can get a chance to neck wine talk

YANBU, I would be pissed off too.

YANBU In our house, once you get past 8.00pm that's designated 'grown-up time'. Means children can stick around by all means but the TV will be showing boring grown-up programmes, there may be ancient music to endure and boring grown-ups will be talking about boring grown-up things. Funnily enough, DS usually opts to turn in and read a book instead :)

I understand where you are coming from - it is nice to have a chance to catch up with frieds without children present occasionally - but I think YAB a bit U. Every family's routine is different. Some families live a continental lifestyle where children stay up later but have a longer siesta during the day. It would be U to expect a child in that sort of routine to understand that for one night they have to go to bed 3 or 4 hours early, just for the convenience of the adults present.

YANBU!

I went to a friends for a similar shindig one night and whilst we did all put our children to bed (ours are a bit younger) she had a 4 year old at the time who she still uses a baby monitor for. I'd kind of understand that at night maybe for toilet help etc but she actually has it downstairs in the evening too (the baby monitor). The girl, being 4, knows this, being practically school aged etc, so during the entire dinner we had to listen to her dulcit tones ringing out on this baby monitor, which was on volume 10, saying "mummy mummy mummy" and just generally horsing around upstairs.

Why didn't she turn it off so we could enjoy some adult conversation rather than sitting there going "ooh how cute" - no fecking idea ...

Chil1234 are we the same person?

Well.. and this is going to make me sound positively Victorian... I don't think the children should be running the show.

Gosh I just can't nderstand why people are not desperate to GET RID of the kids by 7.30pm!

Mine are 2 nd 6 and both are crackers and they knacker me just by TALKING ALL THE TIME in that loud kid voice

I also dont understand how these poor kids get up for school in the morning!

YANBU

I have a slightly different take on this, coming from Sweden where children attend grown-up dinner parties as a matter of course. But where they are expected to be able to let the adults talk. In the summer no child in our extended family goes to bed before 11, but they are capable of entertaining themselves and are very independent from an early age. I expect that's how Spanish families probably cope too: yes, the kids are allowed to be part of the 10 o'clock paseo, but they are also expected to behave.

If you have kids who have to run everything or need constant monitoring, then they should go to bed nice and early.

YADNBU.

Evenings are sacrosanct. [hgrin]

I would love to get rid of DS earlier than he goes. At the moment, I seem to waste about 2 hours of the evening getting him to bed and sleep. It's not deliberate, though.

YADNBU.

some kids are a nightmare to settle though and can take hours to do it, especially if there are guests and they are excited, maybe she went for the easier option rather than dealing with the stress. Stayed at friends recently and her 2 yr old screamed when put to bed and had to stay up very late in the end while my 2 (older monsters) slept no problem - my how days have changed.

YANBU. There is a reason that most people go for a 7/8pm bedtime. Actually there are two, the first is parental sanity. The other is that youngsters seem to need around 12 hours sleep and if you do the euro style hours it makes life quite challenging when they start school I imagine.

I have to confess that I agree with Chil - the kids shouldn't always be running the show.

YANBU. I think at family parties and weddings etc. it's ok ( saying that my 5 year old has rarely got past 8.30pm without falling asleep anyway) but if the only reason the children are there late in the evening is because there wasn't another babysitting option then they should be in bed.

bek x

One of my stepsisters does this. Her DCs NEVER SLEEP. They are a permanent fixture in every evening social occasion. They're nice kids, but you just can't switch off and relax.

Well, last night at about 9.30pm 2 women and a baby in a pram knocked trick or treating and im not going to lie to you, i was

Felt sure this baby should have been wrapped up warm in its cot at that time of night.

each to thier own i spose.

I had hearded my family and thier kids out buy 8pm as it was bed time for all of them. Luckily we all agree, bed time is bed time in my family.

I need to add that sometimes despite everyones best efforts it doesn't work and toddlers will just not settle.

It happens.

Interesting, Cory! But how does it work if the adults want to talk about stuff that they would rather not discuss in front of the DCs? Or do Swedish people have different standards for that?

And same for Chil1234, it's one thing to bore the DCs with grown-up conversation, but there are some things I wouldn't choose to discuss in front of someone else's 5 yo.

I'm not even necessarily talking about 'adult' topics. Maybe just letting off steam about the DCs, or asking advice from parents with older ones. Or gossip about other friends that you would rather not have repeated. Or whatever.

The DC in this case was extremely quiet and well behaved (and would probably have fitted in perfectly at a Swedish dinner party), so it wasn't a case of anyone running riot and ruining the evening for the adults. Just that I felt we were having to pick topics of conversation that would be suitable for all.

With hindsight perhaps the sleeping arrangements could have been organised differently, so that the older DC could have gone to the bedroom to read/play/watch a DVD or something, but in this case the younger one was already asleep there.

I think that Cory made a very valid point- if the children are easy to have around there's no need to shuffle them off to bed. If they're being whiny, badly-behaved, demanding and generally hard work, Bedsville beckons.

And fwiw two of my four have never needed anything like 12 hours sleep/24.

YANBU I agree that the kids should be packed off to bed at a reasonable hour so the adults can open the vino and have some uninterrupted chat.

I am lucky though - DD (2.4) will sleep really well almost anywhere as long as we do the routine of bath and story etc before bed. We have some friends whose DS is the exact opposite - same age but a terrible sleeper. If they come over for a night I do find it wearing that there is still a toddler bouncing off the walls and demanding our attention at 10pm. But I appreciate that this is the least worst option for them - the other choice would be for one of them to spend the whole evening trying and failing to settle him, so we just go with it and hope that one day he'll get the hang of the whole bedtime / sleep thing

YANBU. My SIL keeps her children up until she wants to go to bed and it drives me insane when we're visiting. They're very demanding and always around.

My two go to bed at 7.30 and I look forward to relaxing and not playing games all evening. When I was pregnant with my first the boy was 4 and still running around at 11pm when I was dreaming of my bed. Apparently "he doesn't get tired, he just gets livelier and livelier".