School-Aged Children

I need help regarding dd's bed time. Kind of long.

B started kindergarten this year and to get her prepared for no nap during the days, we moved bedtime up. So the routine now is that we go upstairs at 7:30. She brushes her teeth, puts her pajamas on, then I turn her tv on for her. I go upstairs to turn the tv off at 8:00 and usually she is already asleep by the time I get up there to turn it off.

But, we had her parent/teacher conference today and her teacher says that she still gets tired in the afternoons around 2:00. So we are thinking of moving the whole bedtime routine up by 30 minutes. I actually have three questions about this idea.

1) Should we wait until after daylight savings time since that will screw with her body/sleep times anyway?

2) We also have the whole custody thing to consider. We do have a set visitation schedule with my xmil (xh used to live with xmil but she kicked him out because of his alcohol issue. Xh is not allowed to have dd by himself so if he wants to see her, he goes to xmil's house to see her. The schedule is unofficial and NOT in our divorce decree.) which is that xmil picks dd up from school on "her" nights, then brings her home between 7:30 and 7:45 despite me asking her to bring her early enough so that we can stick to the bedtime routine. So part two of the new bedtime idea is to pick her up from either xmil's or my mom's house (depending on who picked her up from school) on my way home from work around 5:15 so that I can get her to bed on time every night. Since our visitation schedule is unofficial and not in any kind of writing, do you think this would be ok to do with xmil? My mom doesn't care, I was talking to her about it today actually. ETA: This is a rhetorical question. I know I can do whatever I need to do, I just had to talk it all out.

3) Do you have any other ideas or comments?

TIA!

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Re: I need help regarding dd's bed time. Kind of long.

  • My son started kindergarten this year.  He's an older kindergarten kid (already 6) and has not napped since the summer before he turned 4.   But STILL, he is adjusting to being in school all day and feeling tired at night.  We're hard pressed to get him to bed before 8 on a school night, and we get up at 6 some days and 7 others (depending on my work schedule).

    I'm not sure that in your case an additional 1/2 hour of bedtime would make much of a difference.  My feeling from watching my son go through this is that it's just hard to stay focused for a long day of kindergarten.

    I guess handle it one of 2 ways in your situation:

    1.  Quiet time in the afternoon.  Don't adjust bedtime since things are complicated by visitation with xmil.  Just talk it over with xmil and let her know that DD's teacher has said she's really tired around 2 every afternoon.  Suggest that instead of changing bedtime, which would cause her visitation to end early, that it would be great if DD could have some quiet time to rest/read a book/watch a video/whatever right after getting home from school.

    2.  Change bedtime when daylight savings changes to standard.  Tell xmil that this is a temporary thing to help DD adjust to kindergarten, and that you'll revisit moving bedtime back to 7:30 at winter break.

    High School English teacher and mom of 2 kids:

    DD, born 9/06/00 -- 12th grade
    DS, born 8/25/04 -- 7th grade
  • My DS started kindergarten this year. He and his 3yo sister are in bed at 7pm. Some days he does seem more tired in the afternoon, but other days he is fine all day. But generally he is ready to sleep by 7. Occasionally he'll even tell us he needs to go to bed.

    Picking up your DD will also let you have more special time with her, aside from her bedtime routine.

    Hope it works out!

    _____________________________________________
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