<p>I just wanted to give my opinion without being OT and contributing to derailing yet another thread in the parents forum. ;)</p>
<p>Regarding teens and bedtimes: In my opinion this is a bad idea. Quiet hours in the household seem reasonable, especially if it is important for the parents’ optimum sleep schedule. Insisting on a wake-up time, if it is necessary for the rest of the household to operate smoothly, seems reasonable. Not allowing internet access or tv in childrens’ bedrooms also seems reasonable and perhaps intelligent depending on the individual child. Telling a teen, especially a high school junior or senior, when to go to bed doesn’t seem to me the most successful way to parent when trying to raise children who need to learn (gradually and over time imho) to make responsible choices, in all areas of their lives. In the end, IMHO, this is an area where we may have less control than we imagine. We can insist a toddler or teen to lie in bed. We can’t make either a toddler or teen sleep, by natural means. It does seem to me if parents feel strongly about a very regular eight hour sleep schedule that modeling that behavior themselves will be the best way to encourage it in their offspring.</p>
<p>Parents will have many different opinions on this “issue” and mine are rather strong, which is why I felt compelled to respond. LOL</p>
<p>We enforced a bedtime in grade school, enforced a late (11 pm) bedtime in middle school when necessary, but have not enforced a bedtime for the kids since they reached high school. They go to bed when they are tired, unless they have to stay up to finish homework. The house needs to be quiet by about 10 or 11 pm, when DH and I tend to go to bed.</p>
<p>My two D’s have very different body clocks. D1 was usually in bed by 10 or 11 pm, and up by 7:30 am even on the weekends. Now that she’s in college, she stays up later / sleeps later. D2, on the other hand, is a night owl. She rarely gets to sleep before 11 pm – some nights she’s up until 1 am. Even if I made her go to bed at 10 pm, she wouldn’t be able to fall aslee. It is tough for her to get up at 6 am for school, but she did it for the past three years. Now, her last semester in HS, she has study hall for first block, which for seniors can be “late arrival”. She doesn’t need to be in school until 9:00 am (and is loving it). She plans to be a nurse – she’ll be a natural for the night shift!</p>
<p>DH and I tend to be early to bed/early to rise, but I do not believe that there is anything inherently “better” in that schedule. As long as you awake and productive for good part of the day, it doesn’t matter if it’s from 7 am - 10 pm or 10 am - 1 am.</p>
<p>My husband and I proceeded similarly with our daughter. By the time she was in high school she often did not begin her homework until after dinner because of school activities and did not finish up until I was already in bed. Quite honestly, she gets more sleep now as a first year med student than she ever did during her high school years. I don’t know how she did it at the time but I certainly was not telling her when to go to bed. I did encourage her to try to get more sleep.</p>
<p>We don’t enforce a bedtime per se on our teens, and know full well one can’t ‘make’ one’s kids go to sleep anyway. But I will say I push them somewhat on it because it hugely impacts them, and sometimes they needed the nudge because self-discipline isn’t enough. Same with homework, eating well, exercising. In our house, everyone seems to agree these things are important and they value doing them once they’ve done them…but all of us (adults included) could use more help in the self-discipline department. They don’t seem to mind (though its hit or miss if they truly follow my third reminder they should go to bed, and I try to avoid making it an “issue” as it would backfire).</p>
<p>I enforced a bedtime in elementary school, and it was never early compared to their friends. I tended to push it back by a half hour every year or so. Early in high school I tried to enforce 11:30 p.m., but by sophomore year, I lost that “battle.” Now I try to suggest that they get to sleep at a reasonable hour, but I no longer stay awake to make sure they are asleep. LOL I think on average they probably get 6-7 hours a night. I’m sure that’s not enough, but it isn’t worth arguing about.</p>
<p>My HS freshman D tries to get herself to bed by 10, she gets up by 5:30 AM. Spring sports start up in March, and the games are usually at night, so she may not even be home by 10 on game nights.</p>
<p>My junior S does not get up until around 6:30, he usually goes to bed 11:30-midnight, not because of homework or EC’s, just because that is his personal schedule. I do not try to force him to go earlier, that would be a major battle I am not interested in taking on.</p>
<p>Junior son goes to bed around 12:00 and up at 6:30 but he takes 20 mins nap during the ride back home after school. About the same at weekend but wake up a little bit late, around 8:30.</p>
<p>Now that my son is a senior, it’s up to him. Although if he’s got bags under his eyes and he’s being ill-tempered, I will tell him that we’re on the verge of insisting he’s in bed with only reading from a book aloud at a set time each night. He’s old enough that that is all it takes to get him to self-adjust.</p>
<p>Until this year, he’s always had a bedtime. He’s also always been free to read books for a while but there’s been a lights out policy as well.</p>
<p>I think people tend to underestimate how important sleep is to one’s overall health. I’ve been dealing with insomnia for the past 15 years, so it was important to me to instill good sleep habits in my son. Now it’s up to him.</p>
<p>If there’s one thing at which H and I have been utter parental failures, it’s in enforcing bed times. Even in grade school, we’d have them in bed by 9 pm the first night of the school year and* never again*.</p>
<p>We enforced a bedtime (9 PM) in elementary school. It was moved up to 9:30 in MS for D. By the time she was in HS, she pretty much was upstairs (in her room or the computer room ) after 10, but no specific bedtime.
S is now in MS and typically as the second child we are not as strict. He has to be upstairs at 10:00 and tha’t the time the internet gets turned off. I know that sometimes he is up late reading, but as long as he gets up in the morning for school/church, I’m OK with it.
I also used to get really upset if the kids slept in on a non-school day, but I’m now picking my battles.</p>
<p>mp, I really think it depends on the kid. My son (like his mother!) does not cope well without enough sleep. Some kids get really upset if meals are not on a strict schedule but my son was not that way. </p>
<p>If that was important to your child functioning well, you would have made it happen. For years I felt guilty about my son’s floating meal times but then I finally thought, “if it doesn’t bother him, why should it bother me?”</p>
<p>I agree that older teens should go to bed sometime. But I never attempted to do much to impose that belief on my kids when they were in high school, much less tell them when they should be doing it. The design of our house created something of a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell situation, anyway – it would have required more effort on my part than I usually wanted to spend to find out if they were awake or asleep at any particular time.</p>
<p>I suppose my parents are in the minority here; bedtime in elementary school was 8:30, middle school was 9:30, and for high school it’s 10:30 on weeknights and 11:30 on weekends.</p>
<p>It’s never really bothered me, to be honest. I’m up at 5:30 on weekdays, by 9 on weekends, so I’m usually pretty tired by the time they want me in bed. And besides, it’s not really worth the argument; I’ll be in college and in full control of this next year, so I’ll let them keep some control over this for now.</p>
<p>My bedtime was 9 until I was in 6th grade. Then it was try to be in bed by 10 (but Scooby Do, Where Are You? was on at 10, so I would watch that before going to sleep :D). Then in high school there was no limit. My parents knew that I would just ignore what they said. </p>
<p>The only time that my mom pushed me to go to bed was when I was sick. She would just talk to me and tell me that I needed to go to sleep and I would feel better in the morning. Never forced me to do anything though.</p>
<p>I would rather they find out in high school while living at home what happens when they don’t get enough sleep than wait until they are out on their own. Just not an argument I was willing to have.</p>