Adjusting children's sleep schedules for time changes
Parents struggle to adapt their children's sleep routines to bi-annual time changes, resulting in very early wake-ups, disrupted days, and exhausted families.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Trying to incrementally shift bedtime by 10 minutes each day leading up to the change.Did this help you?
- 2Doing a really quiet movie morning with blankets on the couch and calling it 'rest time' to keep meltdowns at bay.Did this help you?
- 3Living in an area without time changesDid this help you?
- 4Putting kids to bed earlier to match their internal clockDid this help you?
- 5Relying on caffeine to make it through early morningsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Well now here we are and the time has changed and he’s wide awake at 4:45 which would be 5:45 for the old time. I’m about to lose my mind.”source ↗
“I’m not sure how we’re gonna get through this day or make it to the new bed time tonight. He doesn’t nap so that isn’t an option. I’m so frustrated.”source ↗
“oof, that 4:45 wake-up is a special kind of torture. halloween week is already chaos and then we just toss a clock change on top like it's nothing”source ↗
“My baby decided "fall back" means "fall back to a newborn feeding schedule," so I am too tired to care whether it is light or dark out.”source ↗
“They really don't care if the clock says 5:15 instead of 6:15.”source ↗
“No. My toddler now is waking at 5:45 instead of 6:45-7 😩”source ↗
“We were up at 4:20 this morning 😭”source ↗
“My toddler was up at 5 am ready to party.”source ↗
“Nope. Kids sleep is fucked and getting outside to play after school is much harder because it’s full dark.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 6Why are my pets demanding food early after the time change?
- 2Do you enforce bedtimes at sleepovers?
- 2Should my kindergartener still nap on weekends?
- 7Is my toddler getting enough sleep on a low sleep schedule?
- 7How to safely apply OS time zone updates without breaking apps
- 5Toddler wakes every hour and only wants to sleep on me