Well Hello There Peeps!
I was talking to a friend yesterday about teenagers and sleep and hadn’t realised before that conversation that I was doing anything she would find surprising, so I thought I’d share with you and see what you think.
My daughter and her boy are similar ages and she said he needs to be told the time every night and reminded when bedtime is or he’d just stay up watching TV.
That’s exactly what we were going through until a couple of weeks ago. My daughter has never been a morning person, even at the age when most are up at 5am, she slept until 7 or 8; she’s no different now. Definitely a night owl.
She’s been protesting bedtime for a while and we gave her an extra half-hour, still reluctant. So we sat down and discussed with her the fact that we have to try to get her up in the morning and that being tired wouldn’t help her school work.
We agreed to try something a bit radical; she has no bedtime now.
We told her some ground rules of what she could and couldn’t do and she still has to be in her room before 12 so she’s not clattering around waking neighbours up (or us if we’re in bed). The main condition is that if she was a pain to get out of bed in the morning then bedtime would return.
The first night she went right to the limits of what we’d allowed and was visibly tired when she got up (on the first attempt at calling her) the next day…we didn’t say anything but that second night she took herself off to bed within half an hour of her old bedtime.
Since then (about 2 weeks ago) she’s gone around bedtime on her own….with the exception of last night as she and I watched 3 episodes of a programme we’ve been watching because it got to a good bit and we wanted to know!! 😉
So now, there’s no resentment at bedtime and (despite how she may feel) there is no grumbling in the mornings…so it’s actually made stuff better.
I don’t know how this would work for everyone and I’ve never raised a teenager before, but this works for us right now so I thought I’d share.
Have a good one Peeps!
Anna x
Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash
A Peace of Life 