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[smackapacca]

Just realising that we're in for a few dreadful days/nights.... Clocks changing, fireworks and stinking trick or treaters.

Fireworks upset the dog, but we can keep the TV on. I take the batteries out of the doorbell on Halloween (again - can't be doing with the dog barking) but then there is THE CLOCK CHANGE.

My DC are just under 2 & 4. The 4yo has a sleep clock which works OK but not perfect. This week they have started the day at 6.30am but not come into us until 7 which isn't too bad. They can entertain themselves noisily for 30 minutes.

But next week I can't hope for anywhere near this kind of pattern.

Anyone got good ideas/plans? What does everyone else do??

Well we are having our first-ever long weekend away without DCs, so if anyone wakes up horribly early it will be Granny getting up, while we get a lie-in [hgrin] [hgrin]

We didn't plan it for that weekend on purpose, honest [hwink]

I've always found that my kids didn't notice the time change. I just doing everything at the "new" time and it all just seems to slot into place. Was really worried the first year with DS1 but it ended up being a non event.

Fingers crossed it continues like that.

Like lots of others, I ignore the clock change during the night and DP and I mentally do the change at 11am on the Sunday and then do the day as normal. DD is 3 so she will stay up later quite easily though. We generally make sure we get out for the afternoon and put her to bed as normal at 7pm. Then if we do have any pain, it's on the Monday morning when we all have to be up for work anyway. I find waking very early on a Sunday more painful than a work day.

Yikes this is our first year with DD (8 mo) and I'm dreading being up at 5.30am on Sunday. I'm going to try and run Saturday's meals/naps etc. at the 'new time' already, including bed at 8pm instead of 7, and hope for the best. FWIW, she adjusted fine when we went to Spain and back, although both travelling days were completely out of routine so that might have helped.

D

I know I'll be a lone voice here but we always look forward to it!

Three days a week (the days I go to work) we all get up in the dark and have to wake DDs (aged 2 and 5) at 6am to get them to nursery/childminder/grandma's. It makes me feel horribly guilty.

When the clocks go back, they get to wake up naturally, it's not still pitch black and we're all happier!

I love it when the clocks go back- i love it when the evenings are dark early, and I can be in my pjs by 4.30pm. It was what we used to do when I was little, and my dad worked away, me, my mum and sister ready for bed in time for Blue peter

I have 3 dcs, and can't say I have really ever noticed a difference in their sleep (or in ds's case lack of it). I think I have been lucky, or just not made the connection?

It makes me feel less guilty that I have never got around to lining dd1's curtains.

Ironically, i have suffered from depression for almost all my life- yet it isn't affected by the seasons. I am just odd, i think.[hgrin] I do sympathise with those who are dreading it though- i have a friend who has SAD, and get really anxious as the nights draw in.

Dh reminded me of this earlier today :( We've just had our youngest sleep through the night for the first time last night, and I was all happy about this until I was reminded that he'll be up really early on Sunday because of the clocks going back one hour. Eek!

Loathe it. If you work full time you get up when it's dark and don't leave work until after it is dark.

I do think however that Halloween and Bonfire Night are necessary distractions from the dismal dark evenings and mornings and once we get to 21st December (shortest day) things start to get a bit better as the days start to lengthen a little with each passing week. There's also Christmas to look forward to, you need dark evenings to appreciate the Xmas lights in people's windows/gardens as you are making your way home.

Hot chocolate with marshmallows/squirty cream cheer us up as a treat in our house and I try not to bother with it in the summer months to make it more special in winter.

I absolutely love it and hate having an hour taken off me all summer The dc seem to have gone over to what I like to call 'proper' time already and sleep until 8ish... Bring on dinner with candle light and , log fires, walks on frosty mornings...

Bloody hell, you're all a load of moaning minnies

Just wanted to say, this time last year DS was only a few weeks old and I was DREADING it. I was almost in tears I got myself so worked up! But refreshingly, he was absolutely fine. He woke up an hour early, so I gave him half a milk feed and a dummy and he settled back again.

Same thing happened in the spring; he was much older obviously and I was worried sick again. I dealt with it the same. Half his morning milk and back to bed again, resettling as needed.

I would do the same for a toddler, perhaps leave the milk by their bed and say 'if you wake up early, then this is for you to have. Don't wake mummy up until the sleep clock says you can get up'.

It's easy to wind yourself up. If they go to nursery on the following Monday (clocks change on the Sunday, don't they?) then they'll 'reset' themselves there. Lots of outdoor play on Sunday afternoon, and as bigger dinner as they'll take; maybe shift bedtime by 30 minutes if they'll have it.

Good luck!

Oh GOD had completely forgotten.

so this means a 4am rather than 5am start on Sunday? (DS is 20 months and gets up early whatever time he goes to bad). Fuck.

I try not to think about the early morning, as really you're know worse off - it's just phsycological, and the fact cbeebies isn't on for ages!!! Hide the clocks and look at as an extra hour to fill on Sunday. Hard with little ones who perhaps might need a snooze in the car or pram to keep them going, as effectively it's a later bedtime for them on sunday. We often push bedtime a little later, 15mins or so on the friday and saturday so sunday isn't such a shock for them.

know !!! NO worse off!! and other typos!! not in the mood today

I adjust bedtime by 15 minutes the four nights before which minimises the bedtime bit. The bit that kills me is dd will wake ultra early before kids tv has even started and then whines for food and snacks through the day as she gets all out of kilter.

Halloween we just dont observe, take the batteries out doorbell and ignore. Fireworks we'll go to the local display although last year dd was 2 and fell asleep in the buggy right through them!!

it's like jet lag, in a way.

one hour jet lag.

it should take kids around 2-3 days to get used to it.

Honest. just get going with the new clock.

I sympathise with the early rising bit but seriously, are your dcs so rigid in their bedtimes that they can't cope with a bit of flexibility?? My dcs can do half an hour or even an hour later if needs be, and we had flexibility of half an hour or so when they were babies without it descending into irretrievable chaos .

You may get tiredness and crankiness and even some screaming but it does them good to get used to a bit of flexibility. Or when you go abroad would you spend the first week adjusting them to the routine of that country then back again the week after?

I hate it, I really do. I feel all claustrophobic and shut in when it gets dark early. I would cheerfully stay on BST all year round and vote for dropping GMT. In fact I wouldn't mind moving it all an hour the other way.

minx I see your point, but not all children are good sleepers at all. When they're not, the prospect of getting an hour less sleep even for a couple of days can make you feel quite badly about the whole situation. It's easy to build it up in your head [hsmile]

my child doesn't need much sleep at all, never has but we never notice the hour at all, but I'm quite flexible with bed times I have to say as he sleeps so little anyway!

My two are flexible in their bedtimes. Not so in their rising times.

Not sure how much longer I can cope with such little sleep. But hey ho. Such is the joy of parenthood.

Hope everyone enjoys the 'extra' hour

Clocks forward or clocks back, our children were fine with it and I have no memories of it being an issue. People worrying about it to the point of tears is surprising to me TBH. And our youngest was particularly difficult for sleeping, we just had to be flexible, and the best thing we ever did was take "shifts" so that we both got a solid 4 or 5 hours at least and we all got through it. Neither of us are 'worriers', which helps a lot I know!

Not this year for a sad, pathetic reason - I always get 'caught out', in my 1:4 Sunday 08:00-17:00 hospital shift in spring by having to get up an hour earlier but THIS year I have scored next weekend so I get an extra hour in bed (which makes ALL the difference!- I am not one of life's early birds!).

Huzzah!

(In this Vale of Tears, you have to grasp comfort where you can... [hsmile] )

Oh, and having spent 15 years in Queensland, Australia, where 'night' (which arrived suddenly, no twilight!) comes between 5pm and 7pm, winter to summer, the 'pain' of an English winter is so much more than offset by a long, balmy English summer's evening stretching to 9.30pm, pinot in hand, as the sun sinks slowly towards a night that will relinquish its role to day 6 hours later.

As an adult (i.e. no public bus home from school at 4.30pm, walking alone down the dark, unlit country lane in the pitch dark, (and having played lacrosse in snow), then waking in the dark and cold in a 1970 home)- yes, as an adult who hops from a warm bed into a hot shower in a CH house, into a heated car thence into a warm, lit workplace, winter ain't so bad!

'Tis a price I am prepared to pay.