Kids bedtimes for working parents

[MoonlightDream]

I sometimes hear from other mums and “online expert recommendations” that kids would come home from childcare or school, have an early tea/dinner around 5:30pm and start then start their bedtime routine and basically be in bed asleep by 7/8pm. Is this true??

I have a young toddler and by the time I get home from work around 6:30pm, I try my best to cook a quick dinner so the earliest we get into bed is 8pm (I do all the classic bedtime habits, dark room, soothing voice, keep it consistent etc). Admittedly as a new mum and doing it solo, maybe I'm just not catching the trick to this and I have a difficult toddler that didn't sleep through the night until 14 months old, and even then still sometimes wakes up, and still haven't learnt to fall asleep independently.

I get a lot of help on the days I'm working from grandparents, but toddler won't sleep with anyone (not without putting up a fight for 2 hours) unless it's with me. We tend to sleep around 9-10pm and wake around 7am. I'm just worried I'm stunting their growth with insufficient sleep.

You should do whatever works for you. Don’t worry about what other people do. Every child is different. I work long hours and have to depend on child care. Both my boys wanted food after nursery but I tried to do quick meals or snacks as they had eaten well during the day. Maybe don't always try to eat with them during the week. It can be quicker to eat after they’re in bed. They won’t miss out if you’re eating together at weekends.

When we are done!
We both work, kids have activities and there is no way I am playing best the clock to make it into bed by a fixed time. Everyone would be stressed and the evening would be terrible.
So we come in, make and eat dinner, have a bit of downtime and then bed. Calmly.

That’s quite a mix. My DC is still sometimes on 2 naps, but mostly one good 1.5-2.5hrs nap will keep them going till the evening.

We tend to wake up around 7/7:30am and I try to keep that consistent even on weekends, but then we would have nights like last night DC was in bed by 8:30 but only ended up falling asleep at almost 10pm.

I don't mind not having an evening that much, kinda got used to not watching telly in the evening and just do a bit of YouTube on my phone for a bit before I also konk out. I don't know if it makes a difference but we're still cosleeping half the time (I've basically removed one side of the toddler bed and parked it right up next to mine, added barriers to prevent bumping into the head and foot of the toddler bed) because it helps with settling them during night wakes. Occasionally DC would crawl over and try to find me in their half dreamy state or ask for water in the middle of the night, then go straight back to sleep in seconds otherwise burst into a bawling fit to find I'm not there (even if they can hear me outside the bedroom door) but that's usually if they sleep early enough for me to get some chores done before I head to bed.

Maybe I'll try that. At the childminder, they do their 'dinner' at 4:30pm but I find DC is still hungry and will still eat at 6pm. If I put them to bed early without the extra food, they will fight the sleep for ages or there'll be several wakes throughout the night.

When do you have time to batch cook? Weekends? I'm struggling to do all this on my own, barely keeping it together sometimes to make sure we're both eating on time and eating diverse ish, so not the same meals every day. My parents help out a lot to pick up and drop off on the days at the childminders, and look after DC on the other days so I can't possibly ask them for any more help.

DS is 6 and is still grumpy on less than about 11-12 hours, so he goes to bed at 7 hrs usually asleep by 7:30pm and gets up between 7 and 7:30am, I couldn't leave him to sleep any later as he needs to be in school by 8:30am.

DH and I both compress working hours so I can pick up at 3 on Mondays and DH on Fridays, the middle 3 days he goes to an after school sport or club and we get home between 5:30 and 6 at the very latest usually closer to 5:30pm. He has dinner we don't all eat together those 3 days and he will have something batch cooked spag bol, daal, veggie pasta sauce etc which I cook and freeze in silicone ice cube trays and pop out into freezer bags. It means his dinner is on the table within 15-20 minutes after we get home enough time to cook rice/pasta and steam some veg. He'll do his homework during cooking time. He also has showers not baths in the week to make it quicker. So if we get home at 5:30 he's done his homework and eaten dinner by 6:15. I don't worry too much about him having playtime etc on those 3 days as he's been to an activity/sport then to after school club where he has been playing and doing crafts etc with friends. We always read with him before bed.

ETA I don't batch cook as a separate thing, I just make double at least when I cook something easily freezable once or twice a week and you end up with a store of at least half a dozen dishes. The easiest one is what ds calls wonky veg sauce, get all the veg left in the fridge, peppers, courgette, aubergine, those tomatoes going slightly too soft for salads, bendy carrots etc chuck in some garlic olive oil and herbs, roast in a big tray, add some passata about 20 minutes before the end then blitz and freeze. Very quick pasta sauce from frozen, I usually chuck in some peas or sweetcorn with the pasta when it cooks.

Mine are 10 and 8 and in bed asleep at 10pm. I literally can’t get it any earlier, they don’t stop talking. Melatonin makes it marginally better.
Don’t beat yourself up, OP, we have to do what we have to do. I spent a lot of time in a country where no kids over 3 go to sleep until 9pm at the earliest, they all survive. Britain is obsessed with early dinner times and bed times, it becomes a sort of weird flex.

Also why are people with husbands commenting? It’s a completely different situation!

Mine are 7:30/7:45 latest at 6 and 5yrs. Wake roughly 6:30, but stay in rooms until 7am.

Because the title of the thread is a lot more obvious than the board title, so people answer not realising what section it is in

There is a lot of weird flexing on both sides of this. On the other side those with cool continental children who go to bed late and insinuate that this is because they like their children more.

It's a child by child thing - I really didn't particularly set out to have early to bed children, in many ways it was inconvenient. But they were up early every day whatever time I put them to bed, just more tired and grumpy if I put them to bed late. Tried keeping them on European time after holidays or clock changes, but something deep in their circadian rhythm clearly wants to be in bed early and up early.

We accept that adults are different on this, I think children are too.

With the OP's DD, I wonder if things might change after she drops her naps/shortens them. But her DD also sounds maybe like a lower sleep needs child generally or one with more general sleep issues - at that age after a full day of nursery, mine didn't take long at all to fall asleep.

I’m a lone parent of 3 since my twins were babies - TBH my son’s sleep took a huge backwards jump around the same age as yours OP so may just be a natural progression - 4 years later isn’t much better. That’s just the way he is. He seems to operate just fine on significantly less sleem than his twin and take about 2 hours longer to go to sleep.
I also work full time - even with coming in at 630 - dinner for 7 I’d have them in pyjamas around 730 starting bed time with the aim that at least one would be asleep by 8….

its hard doing it alone and also working those hours and you are in the trenches right now. No advice as I tried everything and nothing worked. Other than time!

Recommended average sleep needs for a 2 year old range from 11-14hours total inclusing any day sleep. Some benefit from less than that if they are low sleep needs. Does your toddler nap? My 2.5yo wakes at 6 (sometimes before these days) and is in bed for 8. He naps 1-1.5hrs. Bed at 7pm would be met with a lot of resistance. His sleep needs have slowly dropped from 12.5hours total to 11 ish in the last year. I think when he drops his nap he will need an earlier bed and to average 11ish overnight. They are all so different, we would find it hard to have him asleep before 8 as we don't get home till 5.30 and despite eating at nursery that's at around 3.30, either we all eat dinner together around 6/6.30 or he has something easy and we eat when he's asleep. I think it's quite normal for a late bed if they are not a particularly early riser.

I bought 20 or 30 little box tupperware from b&m or home bargains type shop , the really small rectangular ones that stack nicely and cleared a drawer in the freezer.

Don’t have to spend too much time batch cooking, either make a bit more when making something at the weekend or make a one off meal at the weekend. Then along with some frozen veg. We eat pasta a lot at the weekend so will keep any spare sauce or portions. Anything that I used to throw away I just chuck in the freezer in a tiny Tupperware now.

I also had to lower my expectations re mid-week toddler dinner. I was finding that when I was cooking specifically half the time she wasn’t eating it, which is then such a waste of time and then I’d feel really stressed and annoyed that it was a waste.

also I should have said in my first response, you will absolutely not be stunting your toddlers growth by lack of sleep! Some toddlers just simply need less xx

Same here. Home from nursery or after school clubs around 6.30pm. Some down time and then a meal and then bedtime routine. Everyone was fine - you get use to it without any issues.

Don't beat yourself up about something you have no control over. I grew up on a farm with a SAHM and we didn't go to bed as early as some people on here despite it being theoretically possible. I think the 'adults eat later' concept is attached to this early bedtime for childen, we always ate as a family, both when I was a child and with my own DC (who were never in bed before 8pm because by the time you get home from work, make dinner, eat dinner, do bath time and story time it's hard to make it any earlier). Now they are teenagers and go to bed after me but still seem to be happy, healthy, and working hard at school so I don't think it has done them any harm.

Toddler age was the hardest for me with regard to dinner and bedtime.

Like you, at nursery age I would get back home and start cooking at 6.30 when the kids were tired and hungry. It was hellish.

Apart from batch cooking/slow cooker/packed tea in the car on the way home etc, I don’t have any advice except to say that when they go to school the timings change, and of course the kids get older.

This too shall pass ….

Just finished another long work day and now reading all your comments on my commute home. Really appreciate everyone's take on this and sharing your routine. You're right every child is different and I'm really trying my best to get DC to sleep as much as they need. Even on rare days when they do sleep early, usually after long crazy days at the childminders, they tend to still wake up within their usual window. They're on the lower end of the sleep requirements guidelines for their age, 8-9hrs at night and around 2hrs during the day, that's about 10-11hrs, but they've almost always have been since birth. Maybe this will stay the same for a while, or the rest of their life, who knows!

There’s some really useful meal ideas. Hadn't thought of just roasting then blitzing all the veggies, maybe that's where I waste time during food prep, finely chopping everything to make it DC friendly (still no molars and doesn't like big chunks with the exception of bananas). I’ll take all that on board.

Coincidentally I just so happened to invested in some new BPA free freezer tupperwares over the weekend, (shows my age but this is exciting in my current world haha), I thought they were a nice upgrade from using old takeaway containers that crack over time. Perfect timing to test out your suggestions and clear some freezer space when I next find time.

Bit off topic but the other guilty thing for me is juggling spending quality time on the weekends when I'm not working e.g going to the park on sunny days vs catching up on house chores, or planning our meals, food shopping, food prep etc. Feels like there's honestly not enough hours in the day for everything

If you would like him to have more overnight sleep (although it sounds like this maybe wouldn't fit for you as a family) you could cut the nap to an hour and he may then be more tired to do an earlier bed. But if the balance right now works for you, keep it! Most of my friends with early bedtimes have toddlers who aren't napping at all (and do 11hrs overnight as a result) whereas I appreciate the daytime downtime!!

Also for some context as it prob wasn’t clear in my previous posts, I’m working full time but really lucky my parents still healthy and active, they help out on those 5 days a week that I’m working.

I do sometimes wonder if DC just had some anxious attachment with me from my work arrangement (I went back to work when DC was 9months) or because I struggled a lot mentally during pregnancy and PP with all the uncertainty, and that’s affecting how long it takes for them to settle to sleep? I’m in a much better place now, absolutely love DC to bits and watching them grow.

That makes sense. I did try that once on an exciting day out to the zoo, DC didn't want to nap at all. By the time we got back, DC was so grumpy and hardly ate dinner, we did have an earlier night around 7:30om but then woke up super early at 6am and wanted naps that morning at 10:30am ish. It took a few days to settle back into a regular routine, so I don't think they're quite ready for no day time naps yet.