to think being a night owl is a choice rather than something you can't help?

[lilypadpod]

Anyone else a night owl or live with one?

Frustrated with DH. He has always been a 'night owl'. In an ideal world he goes to bed around 5am gets up around 1pm. He still does this some weekends On work nights he goes to bed around 2am gets up 8-9am. He claims he can't help being like this, it's the way his brain is wired! He feels spaced out and grumpy in mornings even if he goes to bed early. By evening he's at his best.

I feel it's possible to train yourself to function well in mornings and get up early. I've always had to get up at 6am for work and feel a lie-in is a luxury! I'm fed up of living in different time zones and feel he should make more effort to get into a normal sleep schedule! I have to get up when baby is up (around 5:30am) and I go to bed at 9pm as he feeds 4x night. DH sometimes makes a big effort and gets up at 9am on a weekend but I still feel this is too late! More often it's 10-11am. And he's never energetic or enthusiastic in the mornings, he does everything in slow motion which puts a real dampener on the day. I suggested he get up at 7am sometimes so we can have a full day out as a family but he thinks this is very U! He faffs around for a couple of hours 'waking up' and having breakfast so if he gets up at 10 it's lunch-time by time he's ready... and I want him to take baby so I can get ready too!

AIBU to think he should/can adapt his sleep pattern to suit family life?

I believe it is a choice to some extent. I'm an owl and if it were up to me I'd stay up late and get up late. Pre DD I worked 10am - 6pm which worked really well - I routinely stayed up until 1/2am in the week and later at the weekends.

But that doesn't fit in with family life. I now have a child who wakes up early and has to be got ready for school. I keep "normal" hours and ideally go to bed by 11.

I think the preference will always be there for an owl - I do have to drag myself to bed - but it's a choice to be sensible or not.

He is going to take a couple of hours to get himself sorted because his brain is telling him that he should be asleep. Its like expecting the OP to stay up until 1am and then complaining that she is taking longer to do things, her brain wants her to sleep!

Its NU to expect him to get up at a reasonable time, but you are not going to get energetic and enthusiastic at that time. If he gets up then thats the best you are going to get, at least accept that he needs longer to wake up than you.

He feels spaced out and grumpy in mornings even if he goes to bed early
This rings a bell.Has he got a wide neck? Does he snore? If so he might have sleep apnoea.My dad felt the same and tests showed he was waking up 30 times an HOUR!!! His blood was low in oxygen which apart from making him knackered is really not good for your organs.As the day progressed an oxygen levels got back to normal he started 'coming alive'

I think it would be reasonable for him to keep to his work schedule on the weekends too. If he went to bed around 1am and got up at 8am it would be more acceptable. I suspect if he stayed in that pattern for a while he would start to cope better in the mornings.

I'm naturally a night owl too, my ideal hours would be bed at 1-2am, up at 10. Haven't been able to do it with work/children but even after years of brutally early (for me) mornings up at 7.30 etc it's still a struggle and not how I would naturally do it. Most of my family except my mum is exactly the same.

YABABU (a bit)
I'm naturally a night owl, my profession has meant that I've had to my fair share of 6.30 shift starts but even this never changed the fact that I'd be prancing around at 1-2am I've tried, I really have but I simply can't sleep earlier, if I could change it I would-especially with non sleeping babies and children so I disagree that it's an actual choice, however I do sympathise. I know I can be horrible by about 5pm until I get second wind about 8pm.

YANBU

The preference is not a choice but indulging it is.

I'm a 'night owl'. My natural sleep pattern would be about 3am until 10am.

But obviously, the world doesn't work like that so I can rarely do it.

I almost never fall asleep before midnight and often not before 1 or 2am. But I still get up in time for work and the children. Not doing so just isn't an option so I don't choose it.

Sometimes if I feel myself slipping I will set and alarm to remind myself to GO TO BLOODY BED!

I can see both sides of this.

I think your DH is being selfish because family life means adjusting to different time zones (effectively, for some of us). I am a night owl and have adjusted completely to the fact that my children wake up between 7 and 8 every single day. (It helps that between 7 and 8 is pretty reasonable, I know that some children wake up at 5 every day but for us when that has happened for a period it has been exceptional - and nearly killed me.)

On the other hand, it is not a real adjustment. When I could please myself I used to get up as late as possible to get to work on time during the week, and at the weekends used to adopt my preferred much later hours. the best and most fun and productive hours have been lost to me. I can stay up till 2am of course, but I won't get the benefit of those hours in the way that I used to because I will not have slept more than 5 or 6 hours ever.

The alternative hours that I get instead - the hours between 7 and 10 (or even 12) in the morning- are not creative, interesting, or exciting (for me). I often feel tired in the mornings, even if I have slept a reasonable amount; and if I don't actually feel tired, I feel functional and best, and never really alive. (I believe that for larks, it is the opposite and their true selves are awake in the mornings, whereas they later hit a point in the day where its just "dead time" and they may as well go to bed - they wouldn't like to swap either)

It is physically possible to live against the grain in this way, and if you have children, and you refuse to adjust, and you expect your partner to be the only one really available for family life - that is selfish.

However, it is a big adjustment and for some a huge loss. This is a huge part of me that has never been the same since having children. There is a piece of me missing. I can't be bothered to grieve it any more. I accept that I am just a fat functional boring person but I try to be a good mum.

I'm either an owl or an insomniac. It takes me ages to go to sleep (hours) and I wake up several times during the night. If I have to get up 5am/6am I feel physically ill the rest of the day. Natural times for me would be bed at midnight, get up around 8am/9am. My brain works best about 4pm.

When dc were small I just wondered around in a sleep deprived fog for several years. So for all the practice (I went to bed at 9pm and got up at 5/6am for several years), it never stopped making feel dreadful, largely because no matter what time I'd got up, I couldn't sleep before about 12pm/1am.

Maybe he should aim for in bed at midnight, up at 8ish? Whilst it's more comfortable for me to stick to my natural hours, if needs must you have to do it. I think I was quite grumpy and tearful through those early years however.

I think there are several ways to come at this. Is DH getting enough sleep? Does he feel rested and refreshed when he wakes up? There is a type of sleep disorder that makes you feel as if you haven't had much sleep and that you need to sleep more.

What wakes him? A natural light alarm clock might help to get him up in the mornings. It really helps me anyway!

If DH wanted to go on a specific day out at the weekend then yes I would get up at 7. But not as a matter of course.

I think you ought to ask him if he thinks it fair that you do 2 hours extra parenting every weekend. What solutions is he offering? I have had more success falling asleep using the easy sleep app. It has made getting up in the morning a bit easier.

7am is incredibly early for a weekend! 8.30 would be reasonable. They key thing is to get ready the night before so you can leave quickly in the morning. If we have a day out we'd usually be out of the house approx 10 til 4. That is usually plenty long enough for my 2 and 4 year old.

Dh and I are both night owls though not very extreme. We usually go to bed about midnight and hate the first hour or two in the mornings. It is hard to change and we have to get up at 6.30 during the week, so we have a lie in at the weekend. I can see it's frustrating when you have different patterns. Maybe ask Dh how he thinks he could join in family life more or help you out. Could he do some night feeds?

This is a very interesting thread. There was a thread a couple of months ago about people who are always late, and there were several posters who came on to say that they were just wired that way, that their conception of time was different. I didn't post on it, but I remember thinking that if I, a night owl, can manage to get up in the morning, as I have done for many years, then can't these habitually late people learn how to manage being on time?

I will say that my life has been made much easier now that I have a boss who is not a morning person. No more staff meetings at 7:30 in the morning.

I'm a night owl. It isn't a choice and has a profound impact on what jobs I choose to work etc. Having said that, I try to not let it impact my family life as much as possible. You can help yourself but at times it can become very much like a sleep disorder.

While there is undoubtedly something in this owls and larks business, I can't help thinking if he had to to get up earlier (ie as most of us do when we have children, have a job which requires us to start early etc) he would be ready to go to bed earlier. It's a bit of a vicious cycle isn't it - if you to don't go to bed until 5am you'll never be ready to get up at 7am. What is he actually doing at night when everyone else is in bed? If that's when he gets work done then that's one thing - in fact he'd probably be suited for a job which requires night shifts - but if he's just fiddling around, watching TV or on the computer then it's just self indulgence. Interested to know what night owl sympathisers tell their DC who can't get up for school. Do they just let them have the morning off and say it can't be helped? I think the most interesting post was earlier in thread by the poster who said how much easier it was getting up after coming back from a time zone which was four hours ahead - indeed I have experienced this myself - which shows it is possible to reset your body clock. Most people, in real life, who want to function in the world with other people (and not just anti-socially pass their time in a solitary existence at night) don't have the luxury of opting out (fine if you live alone, don't have kids, work nights). YABU.

This again is just pandering though xmasbaby. Why is it OPs responsibility to ask DH how he thinks he could join in family life more? He ought to be doing it of his own volition. And no, taking a fair share in the care of his son is NOT 'helping OP out'. It's just doing what he's supposed to do as opposed to taking the piss. Under no circumstances should she be asking him how he thinks he could help her out. That just reinforces the idea that all the 5.30am wakeups, every single one, are her responsibility and any minimal effort he might make is helping.

This book is interesting
www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674065857

Internal Time by Till Roenneberg
(Till Roenneberg is Professor at the Institute of Medical Psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich)

"Early birds and night owls are born, not made. Sleep patterns may be the most obvious manifestation of the highly individualized biological clocks we inherit, but these clocks also regulate bodily functions from digestion to hormone levels to cognition. Living at odds with our internal timepieces, Till Roenneberg shows, can make us chronically sleep deprived and more likely to smoke, gain weight, feel depressed, fall ill, and fail geometry. By understanding and respecting our internal time, we can live better.

Internal Time combines storytelling with accessible science tutorials to explain how our internal clocks work—for example, why morning classes are so unpopular and why “lazy” adolescents are wise to avoid them. We learn why the constant twilight of our largely indoor lives makes us dependent on alarm clocks and tired, and why social demands and work schedules lead to a social jet lag that compromises our daily functioning.

Many of the factors that make us early or late “chronotypes” are beyond our control, but that doesn’t make us powerless. Roenneberg recommends that the best way to sync our internal time with our external environment and feel better is to get more sunlight. Such simple steps as cycling to work and eating breakfast outside may be the tickets to a good night’s sleep, better overall health, and less grouchiness in the morning."

7am is incredibly early for a weekend! 8.30 would be reasonable.

I know! That's what I always said to my babies, but they never listened. 😂

They have a baby. Household hours, in a happy family, will be determined by the most dependent person.

Not the laziest.

Thinking about my kids definitely have a body clock they struggle to over come.

Ds from being a baby would have his longest sleep from 6pm to 11/12pm.

Not great for us.

Dd would have her longest sleep until 1am then sleep until 8am.

Desire both having regular bedtimes for years. Both are still the same. Dd takes ages to get to sleep and sleeps in at weekends. Ds can't keep his eyes open past 8am and is always up before 7am. The only day he has slept in is (inexplicably) Christmas Day where he usually sleeps in until about 8.30-9am.

Dd can't fall asleep early no matter what so I would expect she can't be rained out of either. She is almost 12. Over 10 years of early bedtimes should have changed this.

He claims he can't help being like this
Has he even tried to go to bed at 11, up at 7?

"Interested to know what night owl sympathisers tell their DC who can't get up for school. Do they just let them have the morning off and say it can't be helped?"

no of course I would not, nor do I tell myself it doesn't really matter whether I make it to work or not, nor do I tell myself that it doesn't matter when my babies or children wake up because I feel like sleeping another few hours, so I'll just let them cry.

But it's not just about what you have to do but what makes life feel ok. when you have a baby or an over demanding job then life feels completely rubbish, all the time. You can hack it for a handful of years but I do think it is reasonable as a long term view to think about having some periods of life that you actually enjoy, and what you might be able to do to make that happen.

When I was 22, graduate, didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life, I looked at, among other things, graduate schemes in retail. It seemed that a lot of people who thrive in retail love early mornings; an 8.30 start is standard but it is was also fairly normal for people to be turning up around 7 in preparation for an 8.30 general start. That was enough informatino for me to know that it wasn't the career for me. (knowing a lot more about retail now there are many more reasons than that!)

If someone had said "well if you have a baby you will have to get up when the baby wakes up. If you have any job at all that sometimes involves travel, you will be getting up early on those days to catch flights. even if you want to go on holiday once a year, you will probably have to get up early! SO FORGET IT AND EMBRACE EARLY HOURS EVERY SINGLE DAY OF YOUR LIFE" - it would have been terrible advice. It would have been like telling someone who can't sing "well if you have any friends or family you will be singing Happy Birthday several times a year, so you might as well try to be a singer"

No it isnt a choice and I dont think its 'disordered sleeping'. Some peoples body clocks are different to others but unfortunetly we live in a 9-5 world where if you don't conform its seen as 'disordered. I loved DS1's baby days when we could sleep when we wanted (when he slept) and before he went to Pre-School we were naturally waking at around 9.30am.

Yes you can train yourself to be an earlier than you would like riser if you need to, but its not nice

Lark loons and their weekend 8am lawn mowing.

Best part of the day

Fuck. Off.