Tuesday, March 16, 2010

What time is it?


Did anyone else have a hard time getting up on time this Sunday? I love having extra sunlight with daylight savings, but losing that hour sure makes it hard to wake up!

My family spent a few days at my parents' house, then took a day out of our week for wedding festivities. It's been almost a week now, and my two-year-old still hasn't gotten back to taking a regular nap and getting to bed at her usual bedtime.

We all have adventures, whether long or short, that take us away from the regular daily routine. Children always seem to have an especially hard time with this. After a weekend at Grandma's house or a day trip out of town, it takes twice as long to get everything settled back to normal, no matter how hard we may try to keep the same times while away from home.

So...

How do you help your children deal with changes in the routine?
How do you get back on schedule as quickly and smoothly as possible?




5 comments:

Tannie Datwyler said...

Well children are of course different... so they are all going to adjust in their own way.

But this is what works for us. I just tough it out.

If we are gone on vacation for a week or more and the kids are away off base I just put them right back on the normal schedule the next day that we are home. They might resist a little and they don't always go to sleep on time, but I just persist and usually it pays off.

With time changes I do the same thing. I just look at the clock and go by the normal schedule (even though it will be an hour off for them). I still put them to bed at the same time (8:00 which totally feels like 7:00 to them) or maybe just half an hour later. The first few days are rough and they don't go to sleep when they are put in bed. But again... eventually they fall back into routine.

That's what works best for me... but again, all kids react differently some might REALLY balk at that.

Britta said...

I do the same thing as Tannie. I let the clock be the guide. Fortunately my daughter has always been a good sleeper and generally understands that if I put her to bed, no matter the time, that she is supposed to sleep.

But even if she does have a hard time with the transition it only takes a day or two- she wakes up with the sun so she's actually putting herself on the right schedule first thing the next morning.

Megan said...

I do the same thing as Tannie and Britta. We start are regular schedule as soon as we get home if we have been on vacation. Same thing with the daylight savings thing, we take our naps at 1 and go to bed at 8. One thing we try to do on vacation, if we can, is still stick to our normal schedule as much as possible. Obviously if we are camping or doing something else where we can't keep our schedule, we let it go.

Delia said...

Slowly but surely. I try to follow the clock but the rhythms of our normal day take over and I find myself ready for certain things at the "old" time. So I just try to scoot it over 15 minutes at a time. I keep bedtime the same though and luckily my kids have been waking up at 8:00 am this week. Sweet! I know we have to get them to get up earlier next week though because Spring break will be over and my son has to go to preschool at 8:30.

So...my advice is to take it slowly but surely. Give yourself a week and you should get there.

Erin said...

I guess I'm the odd one out... I just let them be the guide. I kind of always have done that with their schedules though. My kids are used to going to bed at 7:30 ish, so with the time change it made it about 8:30ish, which is fine with me. That's when they started to get tired. The trade off is that they sleep in a little later, which is also fine with me. (Except for Sunday... why do they always have to change the time Saturday night so you have to get your kids up an hour earlier for church?...) I find that eventually they switch little by little. I just try to encourage a schedule, but follow their cues, and the exact time really isn't important to me.

When we went on vacation, the time switched to two hours earlier, so at 6:00 they were ready for bed! It was really unfair to them to keep them up so late, and it made us all miserable when they weren't sleeping well. Being in different beds didn't help either. I tried to have mercy on them and get them to bed as close to their normal bed time as I could get away with, even if it meant going to bed when all their family was there. Getting up earlier than normal gave us a little more time with everyone anyway.