Kazimiera
12-23-2009, 07:31 AM
Let me begin by saying. We both work (although the hours we are "away" are flexible so someone is always at home) so we need enough sleep to function at a certain level. Also if I repeatedly get "not enough sleep" I usually end up sick. I am an 8 hour gal. What we have done to help with this is move our bedtime up from 11:00 to 10:00. I will admit sometimes DH and I talk for a while before we sleep but we did that when we went to bed at 11.
This is not a they don't need that much sleep issue. They are usually grumpy tired by 9am, so we have sleepy kiddos day. When they do not get enough sleep they are not fun to be around. Grumpy, whinny children all day long. And they refuse to take naps. Although we have "rest" time while they watch a movie. Sometimes the younger one will fall asleep.
My girls want to get up at 5am (well one of them gets up at 5 and usually she manages to wake the other up).
We have tried several things to try to get the girls to sleep later. They went to bed at 7pm. We tired moving their bedtime back to 8pm. Did that for a week. No positive result just more tired children. So we moved their bed time up to 6pm. That worked until the time change. We waited a couple of weeks after the time change and tried our bedtime changes again to no avail.
So we bought her a digital clock. You can not get up until there is a 6 here. That worked for a week and then the novelty wore off. The result is she now knows that we eat breakfast at 7am and can tell us it is breakfast time.
So we have tried telling her she can turn on her light and close her door and play quietly until it is wake up time. Sometimes this works. Sometimes "quietly" is not as quiet as we would like and her younger sister is awoken.
Most days she will play for a certain amount of time and then will sneak out of her room and down stairs and into my office or other places where she can get hurt or break expensive things. We can make sure the living room, dining room and kitchen are fairly safe (as long as she is not hunting or climbing for knives or something), we can shut the basement door and she for some reason is unable to turn the knob on that door. My office has no door. Well there is a door in the garage which belongs to my office but before we moved in the church (I am a pastor and live in a parsonage) put ceramic tiles in the foyer and in my office, the door will no longer fit. My husband is not "handy" and is nervous about taking the church door and cutting it shorter and putting a door on my office.
So we put a large object in front of my office. That worked for one night. Last night she figured out how to move it and then move it back when she left so when I came down to my office I was surprised to see signs that a kiddo had been in there.
My husband wants there to be a consequence for getting up "in the middle of the night" 5am (and sometimes earlier). I have to say it just not good for anybody. He thinks if they want to get up and play perhaps they should have to go play outside - as is - in jammies with no socks on (big issue right now there is 16 inches of snow out there). I am unsure this is a good idea.
He really believes in Gentle Parenting. In fact he will share about it to anybody who says something slightly related to parenting. But he is at his wits end. I am willing to say this sucks. We need to keep things as safe as possible and keep talking to her about the rules, enforce them as best we can, i.e. getting up and putting her back in her room when we wake up and realize she is not in her bed (unfortunatly doing just that tends to be one of the major things which wakes her younger sister up).
That was a long saga of a tale.
What do you ladies think.
This is not a they don't need that much sleep issue. They are usually grumpy tired by 9am, so we have sleepy kiddos day. When they do not get enough sleep they are not fun to be around. Grumpy, whinny children all day long. And they refuse to take naps. Although we have "rest" time while they watch a movie. Sometimes the younger one will fall asleep.
My girls want to get up at 5am (well one of them gets up at 5 and usually she manages to wake the other up).
We have tried several things to try to get the girls to sleep later. They went to bed at 7pm. We tired moving their bedtime back to 8pm. Did that for a week. No positive result just more tired children. So we moved their bed time up to 6pm. That worked until the time change. We waited a couple of weeks after the time change and tried our bedtime changes again to no avail.
So we bought her a digital clock. You can not get up until there is a 6 here. That worked for a week and then the novelty wore off. The result is she now knows that we eat breakfast at 7am and can tell us it is breakfast time.
So we have tried telling her she can turn on her light and close her door and play quietly until it is wake up time. Sometimes this works. Sometimes "quietly" is not as quiet as we would like and her younger sister is awoken.
Most days she will play for a certain amount of time and then will sneak out of her room and down stairs and into my office or other places where she can get hurt or break expensive things. We can make sure the living room, dining room and kitchen are fairly safe (as long as she is not hunting or climbing for knives or something), we can shut the basement door and she for some reason is unable to turn the knob on that door. My office has no door. Well there is a door in the garage which belongs to my office but before we moved in the church (I am a pastor and live in a parsonage) put ceramic tiles in the foyer and in my office, the door will no longer fit. My husband is not "handy" and is nervous about taking the church door and cutting it shorter and putting a door on my office.
So we put a large object in front of my office. That worked for one night. Last night she figured out how to move it and then move it back when she left so when I came down to my office I was surprised to see signs that a kiddo had been in there.
My husband wants there to be a consequence for getting up "in the middle of the night" 5am (and sometimes earlier). I have to say it just not good for anybody. He thinks if they want to get up and play perhaps they should have to go play outside - as is - in jammies with no socks on (big issue right now there is 16 inches of snow out there). I am unsure this is a good idea.
He really believes in Gentle Parenting. In fact he will share about it to anybody who says something slightly related to parenting. But he is at his wits end. I am willing to say this sucks. We need to keep things as safe as possible and keep talking to her about the rules, enforce them as best we can, i.e. getting up and putting her back in her room when we wake up and realize she is not in her bed (unfortunatly doing just that tends to be one of the major things which wakes her younger sister up).
That was a long saga of a tale.
What do you ladies think.