That kids today are under-slept (along with the adults)… um, yeah. I’m in the midst of a five-day solo parent gig (dear hub away) and so the (sometimes roving) bedtime debacle is all mine. When getting eight and three year-old to sleep by 9:45 seems not so terrible you know you’re really in trouble.
I can’t lay any blame about the sleep crisis in the house on the eight year-old. He tends to lie down and fall asleep just like that (or maybe more so justlikethat).
But between the three year-old, potty training, working so hard to regulate her behavior towards others—as in, no hitting, biting, or pinching—not exactly always napping or resting and not settling down at night (“I’m scared”) and then her eldest brother, who’d do well on one of those no-class-before-noon collegiate schedules in his freshman year of start-at-half-past-seven-AM-high-school… is chronically exhausted and so he naps, but sometimes, he’s hard to rouse from naps and sometimes the naps mean he’s up at 3:00 AM but asleep again at 5:00 or something like that and therefore totally conked out at 6:40 when it’s time to get up. Plus, he and the next brother—now a teen himself—like to stay up later than the younger teen should together (even if I’m all for brother bonding, it’s becoming yet another sleep issue).
Is it any surprise that I’m exhausted?
**
In Australia, they have sleep schools (think, a little bit Ferber, but with support and gentleness the book simply does not transmit) for mums with young babes big enough to sleep for longer stretches (about 12 pounds). Nationalized health care can be so very civilized.
Shy of meltdown, breakdown, reading my preschooler the PDF of the racy and as-yet released (brilliantly marketed) Go the F*@k to Sleep each night, sending my high school student to a new school where attending morning classes is not required or taking Judith Viorst up on it and moving to Australia, I am focused on finding ways to calm my little gal down in the evenings (and afternoons).
You might ask what I’m going to do about the teen. I have no idea, frankly.
