Under the Umbrella

The boys had been asking us to make their bedtime later for quite some time. Apparently seven pm is on the early side.  Their friends now stay up until eight or nine, or even ten.  “It’s so unfair,” they pleaded.

But I’ve read too many reports on the importance of sleep to just give up an hour without long deliberation.  Besides, Jeff and I lose our parenting mo-jo after 7 pm.  I’ve run out of patience and creativity and motherly tenderness.  Instead, I start grunting and snapping and fighting an impulse to hurt someone.

Unfortunately, they can no longer fall asleep at 7, and they lie awake for a long time, complaining that it is “so unfair” that they have to be in bed “soooooo early.”  Instead of just changing their bedtime, though, I decided to use it as an opportunity to work on their five-paragraph essay skills.

I helped them write an outline,using an Umbrella Organizer (see below).  They wrote the essay themselves.  Here’s what finally got them an 8 pm bedtime.

We want to go to bed Later.  We want to play more, stay up longer.  We have three reasons we want to do this.

We are growing older.  We want more privliges to stay up later.  Most of our friends stay up until 8 or 9.

Kids our age need 10 or 11 hours of sleep.  We wake up at 6:30 am. So we should go to bed at 8:00 pm.

And you can trust us.  We won’t talk or we’ll go to bed at 7:00 pm.  We will have pjs, teeth and potty done.

We really hope you’ll let us do this.  We’re older We don’t need as much sleep. and you can trust us.

What it lacks in poetic flare, spelling, and punctuation, it makes up for in, well I’m sure it makes up for it in something.  If nothing else, it’s brief.

As for the umbrella organizer, it’s a type of graphic organizer I first learned of from the Governess.  You can use a version of it for reading comprehension, but I like it best for writing.  Ours looked like this:

I drew an umbrella and asked the boys what the main point of their essay would be.  I wrote it down in the top of the umbrella.  Coming down the handle, I drew three lines (two toward the left and one toward the right).  Each line had one of the reasons they should be allowed to stay up late. Coming off the lines were picture words that would help them create a picture for the reader (things like clean teeth).  Finally, in the handle, I wrote their summary.

They resisted coming up with picture words (and by resisted, I mean whined and complained and told me that pictures are stupid).  But once they had finished the outline, writing the essay took five minutes and they were walked around jutting out their chests like they had just collaborated with Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence.

If you don’t mind being slightly manipulative, I suggest requiring essays for all kinds of “privliges” that you’ve already decided to give them.  Like lunch and birthday parties.

Let me know how it goes.  And please pass along any other tricks you have for getting your kids to beg you to write an essay.  I’ll organize them under an umbrella and write boring but brief post.