Kids VS. Daylight Savings

No one likes to lose an hour of sleep. Usually I take it as it comes, however, because I do enjoy the extra hour of daylight. This year is another story. The kids have NOT adjusted well to the time change AT ALL! My oldest, an 8-year-old, comes into our bedroom EVERY morning and whispers, “Dad… Dad… DAD… Is there a delay?” This is partially the school districts fault. For awhile, we were having 2-hour school delays due to weather at least weekly. So now, she can’t get used to the fact that the weather is finally nice enough to start school on time. Either that, or the district is sick of the heat of all the missed school and won’t delay anymore… But much of it is because of the time change; my daughter just wants there to be a delay so she can go back to sleep for an hour or two.

My 3-year-old is back to staying up later than us. She has always been a toughie to get on a proper sleep schedule, and wouldn’t you know it, we had her in an awesome sleeping groove until this darned time change happened. She is back to refusing to go to bed, and she is a crabby zombie in the mornings. The other night, she was sneaking peeks as we tried to watch Poltergeist in the living room – THAT’LL get her right to sleep! That movie scared me awake for years – that clown part is STILL scary!

The baby – actually, she is now an almost 17-month-old toddler – is the most affected. She cannot fall asleep before 10 at night, and she actually sleeps in a little bit in the mornings, kind of. She’ll wake up at 5 or 6, then fall back asleep when Dad lays on the floor with her – poor Dad! Have you noticed a trend? They go to Dad when it comes to sleep issues – they KNOW better than to mess around with me – I get kinda grumpy when I don’t sleep well. Unfortunately, the pregnancy has made me a light sleeper so I get woken up anyway.

Something tells me we’ll get it all worked out, but then we will just have to change the clocks back an hour the very weekend the kids finally adjust, starting all over again!