what time do your kids go to bed?

[moxey]

what time do your kids ggo to bed i'd like to see if mine go up to early?

lou33, 8 is a huge sleep in for us - weekends only, (well it's a lie in while we listen to them fight!) I agree, KMG's kids sound great...to have the evenings all to yourself would be bliss. morocco my ds sued to be the same, had a very late bedtime as a little one, but we gradually crept it forward til he was going the same time as dd, which is much better for all of us! He is now almost 4, and dd is 6.5 - they both go to bed between 7.30 and 7.45, and wake around 6.30-7, sometimes a bit earlier (and it usually seems to be on weekends!).

DS aged 3 goes to be anytime from 6-7pm, he wakes up 7-8 am. Usually though the earlier he goes to bed the later he sleeps in.

My DS was a 7pm till 7am boy until the age of 2 (GF baby). After that it was a moveable feast due to him taking the p**s but recently he has been going to bed between 7pm and 7.30 (and staying there ). He is a nightmare in the mornings ... anytime from 5.30am onwards ... 6.15am is a good day ... 7am is a lie in!!!!
Have managed recently to keep him in his bedroom until 7am due to the fact that he has a newly decorated bedroom and he loves being in there !!!!

The reason we are strict about early bedtime (as opposed to 9 or 10pm which would mean a lie in) is that DH and I really value our time together in the evenings (child free) AND I think it isn't a bad habit to get into ready for school age. I have taught too many children who are too tired to function during the day because of late bedtimes and difficulty in getting up for school.

Fairly ordinary really, my two go to bed at about 7:45 and get up, usually between 6:30 and 7am although sometimes they have a nasty 5:30am or a nice 7:30am surprise for us!

After reading all the early starts you have I am going to give my kids big kisses and lots of treats when they come home to say thanks for not putting me through that!

Just to reassure you - my kids are NOT great. Because they get so tired, and need so much sleep they are monstrous at 4pm, as they are shattered. Playdates after school are completely impossible at the moment, so are after-school clubs - swimming, Beavers, football, whatever. I am trying to enjoy the phase, rather than keep on wishing it away!

My dd is nearly 8 months old. She usually is in bed between 8 and 9pm as dp does not get in until about 7.30pm. This week she seems to be more tired and there going down early. She is in bed now and has been since 6.45pm,she will probably wake about 2am though.

Ghosty - a question if you read this!

My dd is also 2 and pretty much a GF baby (we tailored bits to suit us, but I found the routines worked well for her). She too has been a 7am til 7pm baby until recently. However, we've now had the 6 or 6.15am thing for a few weeks, with a few 5.30am starts, and I'm trying to work out why. Any ideas?

I guess it could be the earlier dawn or the birds singing (ours are a noisy lot). I wonder though if it's time to cut back on her daytime sleep? Most days she has a 1.5 - 2hour nap after lunch (she asks to go to bed sometimes she's so pooped). The exception is when she's at nursery, when she tends to have only 45 mins - 1 hour (interestingly she manages very well there on less sleep, and is fine when she comes home).

She sleeps really well through the night, and I therefore honestly don't think we can complain. It's just that her early waking seems to have become a habit, and I find it hard to function when my day starts so early.

Does yours still sleep in the daytime?

God all these sound so early!!! ds and dd are still up just now. ds (3.8) has just about dropped his daytime nap so will usually go to bed around 8.30 and sleep till anywhere between 6-8am. When he was daytime napping it was 10pm and had been this for about 3 years!!

Last night ds went to bed at 9pm but for some reason woke at 6am so had a 3 hr nap this afternoon .... routines are not a big thing in this household, although this is quite unusual. He tends to be very active and tends to go from one extreme to the other.

dd (11 months) sleeps 9ish till ds wakes up and has 2-3 hour naps in the daytime.

Just seen your post Ghostly. I do agree although I think it can be OK to go into an earlier routine gradually. As I just said ds didn't go to bed till 10pm for years but he didn't have school. Even now he's at playgroup we don't need to leave the house till 9.20pm. He has a year of pre-school nursery coming up and this I feel is enough training to get him into an earlier routine without daytime naps.

Basically what I am saying is don't worry about routines too early! IMHO of course!

My ds (14 months) goes to bed about 7.15, and sleeps until anywhere between 6.45 and 7.30. Dd (3yrs2months) goes at 7.45 (well, by that I mean we are walking out of the room having done stories/songs/prayers by then) and sleeps until about 7ish, although sometimes it is 6 (when she is happy to lie in bed with us and dose) and sometimes it is 8 (whooopeeeeee!).
We like our evenings together but wouldn't want them to go any earlier as dh gets home about 5.30 and if they were off at 6.30 he'd never see them. Doesn't matter if the bedtimes shift, getting up time is always the same!

Interesting thread here. My dd is 5 and a half and goes to bed between 7pm and 8pm at the latest. She's always went to bed early since she was tiny. She cut out afternoon naps by herself when she was about 15 months and never looked back. Even now if she's sick she won't nap in the afternoon.
She went to nursery for a year and then did a year of pre-school and is now in the middle of primary one. I think her routine helped us more than her when it came to getting up in the mornings for school. Dh and I are real night owls but have been blessed with a right little early bird. She usually gets up between 6.30am and 7am. And I do notice that as the mornings have started to get lighter over the past few weeks there were a few days of her getting up even earlier at 5am, but we just let her come in with us until it's time to get up at 7am.
Also interestingly enough is when Dh is not on a night shift she goes to bed later as it's all a game when he is also there in the evening to read the bedtime story. But if it's just me she goes out like a light. Maybe she finds me boring? LOL

I must be a negligent compared to all of you!!! I could never bear the thought of up and down the stairs and fighting to get 2 children who clearly weren't tired into bed, so mine have showers/bath starting at 7pm (ds1 is 10, so moveable for him depending on what he's been doing - cubs etc), into bed at 8.30, lights out at 9pm. Stories etc in between. They both wake up between 6 - 7am and once they go to bed they go straight to sleep. so my evenings have always been mine in a sense - just a bit later!

i dont think your negligable - i think we do what we need to as parents to make life easier, instead of adhering to what we think society says we should do.

ds 13, 10pm
twins 10, 9.oo

this depends on cubs and youthclubs my work evening meeting and how tired i am and how pssed off i am, how tired the children are
and every year the clocks going forward and back cause mayhem - every single year without fail i get " but its still light outside and i can hear my friends playing out" arrrrgh

to which i reply
"their parents dont love you like i love you if they did they would make sure you get your sleep - now shut your eyes and go to damned sleep!"

I think we share the same children custardo!

My eldest used to rarely go down until nearly 10pm. Awake 7-9am. He used to do long naps most days, though. 2-4 hours. That suited us. My 2nd just wants to go to bed between 7:30-8:30 each night. If she went down any earlier she'd be up before 7am, which would not suit us! After eldest child giving up his naps, eldest now tends to want to go to bed 8:30-9pm.

Sometimes people say to me they'd rather have evening than morning time with their spouse. That remark used to confuse me until I realised that they don't actually go to bed almost as soon as their kids are down, which is what I do!

Dear Utka ... very sorry that I haven't replied to your question ... only just caught up with this thread.
Apologies in advance for a long post ....

My DS was a very bad sleeper from Day 1 ... the longest he would sleep was two hours at a time (but it was usually about 45 minutes) as a newborn and when he woke up at night it would take up to 3 hours to get him to go to sleep again ... he would feed constantly through the night and when we went on to bottles (to give me a rest) he would go through 4 or 5 full bottles at night ... on top of the bottles he had during the day. At 9 weeks we started GF and by 12 weeks he had improved and at 16 weeks he began to sleep through the night .... very early by a lot of people's standards but considering the awful first few weeks it was a godsend ...
Anyway ... that carried on until he was 2 years and one month ...
Everything went belly up when we came to NZ for a holiday and while we were here DS learned to climb out of his travel cot ... so as we were travelling around he had to sleep with us. When we returned to the UK we had a triple whammy in that he had to go in a bed straight away, learn how to sleep on his own again and had to cope with jetlag ... It was pure hell ... he just kept getting out of bed ... didn't sleep for 5 whole nights in a row .... and wouldn't go to sleep on his own. Anyway, we got it just about sorted but not for long as 2 months later we moved to NZ ... we had to stay with in-laws (NEVER AGAIN!), lived in a rented house for 4 months and then he slept in a makeshift bedroom for 5 months while DH (NOT HANDY ANDY!) decorated his bedroom. The worst time was when DS was beginning to cut back on his daytime sleep (at 2 and a half) as he would go to sleep around 10pm if he had had a sleep during the day but if he hadn't then he would conk out at 7pm and wake at 5am.
Recently (and it has only been in the last week) he has got much better (asleep by 7.30pm and awake between 6 and 7am)... and that I think is because he is finally in his own room with his old familiar things around him ... he is suddenly and very obviously finally 'at one' with where he is and I believe is confident that we are not going anywhere anytime soon ... He is also older now (3 and 4 months) and he understands the concept of 'it is not time to get up yet ...'
In your case I would say a couple of things ...
a) have you got blackouts in DD's room .... to stop the early dawn waking her? I know your clocks go forward soon so that would make things easier.
b) keep her in a cot for as long as possible ... never understood why people are so keen to get toddler's into beds early ... if DS hadn't learned how to climb out he would still be in a cot now!
c) Look at how well (or not) she sleeps if she has had a nap ... she might well be ready to cut back ... either shorten her daily sleeps or let her sleep every other day (we did the latter as waking DS up after an hour was more trouble than it was worth )
d) Accept (like we have come to do) that your DD might not need 12 hours sleep a night ... I have come to terms with that fact now ... very hard as my best friend's daughter sleeps from 7pm to 9am every morning and has a 2 hour nap in the day time ... GRRRRRR .... green eyed monster .... I am not bitter you understand ...

PS ... the only other habit that DS has developed is getting into bed with us at night ... so I do have broken nights but I always take him back to bed and if he sleeps until 7am I see it as 'sleeping through' even though he has come in with us ...
HTH ...

what about older children?

Ghostly you have just frightenend the life out of me - I'm sure you replied to my holiday routine thread - my dd is also a GF baby and goes to bed at 7.00pm she wakes roughly between 6.30/7.00 but I just wanted to say to sobernow that my dd is the same even is she goes down later some nights she still wakes at the same time every morning and for the nothing exciting after 6.30pm - same as my house

wog ... don't be frightened ... the first time we went to NZ from England it wasn't too bad ... it just took some time to get it back together ... as I said he also started to climb out of his cot ...
It was all the other upheavals that caused his nighttime nightmares ... or should I say MY nighttime nightmares!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what time do your older kids go to bed

My oldest is almost 11 and she goes to bed at 8.30 school nights, lights out by 9. She's allowed up a bit longer at weekends.

both my kids 9&7 ish go to bed at 8.15, they are allowed to read for 15 mnis or so then its lights out. They get up between 6.30 &7.00. Weekends are different they are allowed to stay up, but in their room intil they fall asleep which is rarely after 9- 9.15. They know tat if they wake up before us on a sat, sun morning they can go down and watch the telly. So ds (9) gets up as early as 6 some days, I don't know how he does. Mind you they only get 1.30 hrs of telly a day at weekends so they use it all up before they wake up.