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 disagree that it's not possible to train yourself out of it. I used to be a night owl (1am was my standard bed time) but then I birthed 2 children who won't sleep past 6am, and regularly had phases of 4.30/5am as toddlers.

I'm asleep by 10.30 now and would really struggle to stay up any later than that.

I think he's taking it a bit far, but I don't think it's necessarily something you can get out of.

I am a late bird. Ideally I need to go to bed after 11pm, get about 7-8h sleep and wake up around the 7:30 mark.
If I do go to bed before 11pm, quite often I'll wake up anytime between 2 and 4am, then be awake for ~2-3h, before being tired enough to go back to sleep. This isn't good for me.

DSs are both late birds as well, have been from the outset. As soon as they started sleeping for longer than 4h at a stretch, they would go to bed around 8:30/9pm. I tried and tried (thought "bad mum!") to get them to go to sleep earlier, but if I actually managed it (rare) then they would wake up an hour later, full of beans. And then not go back to sleep til gone 11pm. Not much point in that! So I let them go to bed at 8:30/9pm, and they'd sleep through til usually around 8am.

DH is the opposite. In bed by 9pm most nights, up at 5-6am. He can't break that habit either - before we had the DC, I used to manage to persuade him to stay up til 10 some nights, but not often.

Not a choice but not trying to do something about it when its affecting family life is a choice and a bad one.

I'm a night owl, always have been. The only way I can get to sleep at a reasonable time is with sleeping pills so I do that so I can sleep at a reasonable time and get up at a reasonable time. My DD is a night owl too, even as a baby she wouldn't start her longer stretch of sleep until after midnight. Now at 5 I put her to bed at half 7 and she's still awake two, three hours later, sometimes longer. Not her fault, but I'm dreading when she starts school and will have to get up early, its difficult to drag her out of bed at 9 to get to daycare for 10!

It clearly is possible to train yourself out of certain sleep patterns, because there are people who have. Doesn't follow that it's possible for everyone to do it, though.

I don't think OP has helped herself with the title or focus of this thread, though. It doesn't really matter if DH can help his body clock or not. The issue is whether it's ok for him to leave her to do the 5.30am start every weekend day. To which the answer is no.

I've been a night owl all of my life. I work better at night, my brian is more alert and I'm more productive. However, I have young children and my family have to come first.

It would be monumentally selfish of me to trill 'Sorry! Night Owl! Can't do a damn thing about it!' and not take part in our family life properly as a result.

So yes, my view is that it might not 'suit' me as much and ideally i could just do my own thing, but night owls can change. It might not be perfect for them, but I think it's a little indulgent to claim that there's nothing you can do about it.

I always wonder how many of you who are "wired that way" are having a nice cup of tea just before you go to bed.

Not me. I only drink caffeine before noon, but I can be in bed at 2am feeling like I've just downed a double espresso. When people have sleep issues the first thing they do is eliminate caffeine.

I'm an owl. Still can't quite figure out how I managed to do a year of getting up at 0500 M-F for a year, while acting as an area manager. Probably only survived the four hour sleep of a night by crashing at the weekend.

Yes owls can go to bed early but you just stay awake until about 0130. Fortunately I was in a job that did shift work so was able to compensate on the lates.

My sister is a lark but is still grumpy in the mornings, whereas I am quite OK even if I don't appreciate the hour.

Sneepy That was my MIL. She would actually have a coffee as a nightcap and wonder why she tossed and turned until the early hours. The thing is if you are retired and can keep whatever hours you like it's not really a problem. But I do think when you are part of a family and people have to be up and out it's a bit of a cop out to say "Sorry, night owl, can't do that". The obvious solution would be for a night owls to get a job where there is a night shift (after all real owls are up at night for a reason) and while there are people who do this and I've worked with them, I wonder how many more are just night owls for the purposes of watching box sets so it's more a case of not knowing how to switch off rather than wanting to make a commitment to nocturnal living. I think in the OPs case her DH is BU because he's using it as an excuse to opt out of doing stuff he doesn't want to. I'm sure the OP doesn't relish getting up at 5.30am and then hanging around until her night owl finally gets his act together, but when you have a small child someone has to do it.

I dont think the natural inclination is a choice - I naturally would be an owl, awake until the early hours - so I have to make a conscious decision to go to bed at a reasonable time in order to get up at 6:30 and not be wiped out and to function as a parent and as an employee. That's what grown ups do.

Actually OP there are lots of household chores he could quietly get on with in the middle of the night - washing and ironing springs to mind (electricity cheaper at those times too). I wonder how happy he'd be staying up so late with a list of jobs to to occupy him - at least he'd be pulling his weight that way so you might not feel put upon while he snoozes away the morning.

Sneepy - not me. I don't drink tea or coffee. I rarely, and only in winter, have a hot chocolate, otherwise it's water through the day and wine in the eves.

Re. getting my DSs out of bed in the morning - Ds1 naturally wakes now between 7 and 7:30, so he's not a problem. We don't have to leave for school until 8:45 (latest) so he has plenty of time to get ready.
Ds2 tends to wake a bit later, most of the time, 7:30 or waits until the alarm at 7:45.

I always wonder how many of you who are "wired that way" are having a nice cup of tea just before you go to bed

Not me, and not my 5 year old either. Nor was I drinking tea or anything with caffeine in before bed when I was a child either.

'I always wonder how many of you who are "wired that way" are having a nice cup of tea just before you go to bed.'

No caffeine after noon for me, but of course, why not just assume people who are night owls are just ignorant of sleep hygiene and can just snap out of it or are too blame for being that way .

The issue here is that this guy is using this as an excuse to be lazy and shirk out of doing his fair share and that is what is not on.

There are plenty of chores he can do at night, even in a flat where you cannot run the washing machine, hoover or dryer after 11pm.

And he needs to take some of the early starts.

Do some reading OP - some people really can't help it or train themselves to sleep earlier. However there are things you can do to help the situation - having fantastic sleep hygiene, no caffeine/sugar, melatonin, blue light doses in the morning etc.

However it's really really not as simple as just 'get up earlier and you'll sleep earlier'.

And larks are just as fixed in their natural routine and just as unable to help it. The only difference is that the rest of the world is more in tune with them so generally it doesn't cause them the same problems.

Agreed. How many people on here say they hate staying up last 10pm or whatever!

Both me and dh are like this, we have one child who's a lark, the others are owls.
You can train yourself to get up earlier or stay up longer, of course, but you will only be your best at the best time of day for you, whatever you do.
So no, you can't really choose.
I can get up at 7am if I want but don't expect anything decent from me until about 10am, dh is the same.

This is a genetic predisposition thing. When travelling to america I get no jet lag because my body clock would naturally run at about 27 hours....when I travel east I am totally fucked.

Obviously if you have to get up early then you do though. What we deserve is sympathy for the fact that every single fucking morning is horrible. Day after day after day of dragging yourself out of bed about 3 hours before your body actually wants to be up.

What pisses me off is that somehow getting up early is tied to being morally superior. I don't think people with shorter natural body clocks are morally superior, I think they are genetically different.

I mean what would it be like if the night owls were in the majority and people were expected to do their best work in the late afternoon evenings and everyone who got up early was considered a bit of a lazy slacker?

Did anyone see the Terry Wogan programme about body clocks?

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/10557671/Secrets-of-the-Body-Clock-with-Terry-Wogan-BBC-One-review.html

Research shows that our body clocks are set at conception. How we manage it is down to individuals, but nothing can change the pre set.

I've struggled all my life being a night owl; some phases worse than others. DH and DD2 are both larks and DD1 is the same as me.
Work/school routine was challenging for DD1 and myself, but we just had to get on with it and try to catch up with sleep at the weekend.

Most of my friends are larks and always want to do things at the crack of dawn, whereas I would always prefer afternoon/evening meet ups. Instead of looking forward to a nice outing, I dread the early morning malarky. I'm ok once I'm up and ready, but the thought of it makes me anxious. I really wish I was a lark.

No you are NBU expecting DH to at least try to fit in with family routine, but I'm not sure you can train yourself to function earlier in the morning. I don't think he should be indulging in his preferred sleep pattern when things need to be done, but expecting a 7am start on a weekend would have me recoiling in horror

i have to get up when baby is up (around 5:30am).
The baby doesn't know what time it is. I've got an owl and two larks but they all woke at about 5.30 as babies, and because I regard 5.30 as the middle of the night, were fed and put back to sleep. Then we would all wake quite happily at about nine.

Poor martyred larks, being so morally superior must be very tiring