Thanks Coach T for the new perspective on bed time! This made me laugh and think. I will give it a try but I think it may have to be a bit later than 7, especially on basketball practice night. :)

I got a bit confused for a minute. I thought I remember reading a blog about keeping up kids late and I thought the husband and wife had completely different views and then realized it was a different blog. Web Link

But got to agree with this husband completely.

I also agree about the basketball practice!

If bed time is a battle zone, that\\\'s the parents fault - learned behavior. We had a rule from birth, once fed and settled, if it was time for bed the baby went down. If she cried we waited a set time period, promoting self-soothing, rather than coddling every second. Now we say let\\\'s go bedtime, shes pre-k, she jumps up stops what she\\\'s doing and heads to bed. We read her a story and it\\\'s lights out. Its not rocket science, but you can\\\'t play tough parenting after years of coddling and responding to this behavior. It\\\'s learnt that if they make enough noise in bed, you come running. Also the "seen but not heard" line is an old one, and I recommend you don\\\'t have children if that is the case. Whether my kid is screaming or laughing I want to enjoy every breath of it. If you want to ignore your kid for your "adult things", then hopefully when your in a nursing home, they have the same thoughts towards you and your needs. How they act reflects more on you, then them. Do some reflection.

This is great!

Question: Once children are old enough to read by themselves, what's your opinion on allowing reading past the imposed "betime"? (To be clear, I am referring specifically to books and /not/ to electronics of any sort; those, in my view, absolutely should be banned past bedtime.) For example, is it ok to permit one hour of book reading past bedtime? An arbitrary amount of time?

When I was a kid, I read with a flashlight under a heavy blanket that didn't transmit the light. It would have been a lot more comfortable in warm weather to be able to read in the open, but maybe my parents had good reason to equate "lights out" and "bedtime".

Male engineer: There's some things you want to promote, like reading actual books. We do that now. If she wants time to read she has to figure out how to work that in. I.e. bedtime is 8pm. You want to sit and chill with a book, head to bed at 7:45, then at 8pm I'll read the story, then it's lights out. BUT if we said yes to reading beyond bedtime, what do you think happens? That will turn into something else and before you know it you are battling. It's all about independence and control. She gets to choice if she wants reading and we manage around that, but she doesn't dictate lights out - hard stop. We will ask how much time she wants, then help her set an alarm clock for example so that when it goes off, she knows the plan (also teaches her about time). If she is responsible for the plan, it rarely goes sour. We just engineer it so that she has a say in the plan, between our parameters. Works for us.

Ouch, Bunyip! You might be right about my children. They will probably let me and Jessica T rot in a nursing home, but that's the American way--it has nothing to do with childhood bedtimes.

Male Engineer, I think it's important to have a lights-out time, but if my daughter wants to read under the covers, that's her business. Jessica T and I have always respected our daughter's privacy. What she reads under cover of darkness is her business, just as it was mine when I was her age.

Coach T - This is a great idea (and would have been when my kids were smaller) except that if I had put my older child to bed at 7, she would have been up at 4 am! As it was she got up at 5 or 5:30 as a baby. Does you 10 year old go to bed at 7 or just the babies.

I totally agree that after 12 hours, it is time for a parenting break! I'm glad it works for your family!

In total agreement with the ideas that a) kids need more sleep, and should be in bed earlier and b) parents need some grown-up time for themselves after the kids go to bed. The challenge is for families where both parents work full-time outside of the house. If Mom and Dad are walking in the front door at 6:30, how in the world do you get dinner on the table, eat, bath time (sometimes necessary, sometimes optional) and in bed at any sort of reasonable hour? Not to mention that the only time these parents get to see their children is in the evening, it can be really hard to send them off to bed when you haven't seen them all day.

Part of this conversation about making sure children get enough sleep has to include work/life balances and the expectations of so many employers that "dedicated" employees will routinely work 60+ hour weeks. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

Tunbridge - We hear you as two parents who work outside of the home. It's such a challenge. What Coach T means is "Neither Seen Nor Heard After 7 PM - or as close to that as humanly possible."