Sleeping Into the School Year

By guest blogger Terri Reed

When my kids were little, summers were about having fun, staying up later than during the school year, sleeping in and staying active the rest of the day. But about halfway through summer, when we would receive the list of supplies for their classes, I would start to dread that first few weeks of school.

I knew what a struggle it would be for the kids, and me, to adjust to a new school year schedule of getting up early and going to bed early. Until it dawned on me one year that we needed to start prepping for the new school year schedule by slowly adjusting our morning routine and eventually our evening one so that those first few weeks of school wouldn’t be so difficult.

We’d begin the first week or so of August. Instead of letting us all sleep in until we naturally awoke, I would set my alarm for the time that school would start. For a week, I’d wake the kids up at that time, usually at 8:25 a.m. Then the next week, I’d get them up at 8 a.m. for the first few days, then each day after that the get up time would be pushed back by 15-minute increments until we were getting up at 7 a.m. for the rest of the month. They could still stay up late for those first few weeks. There was much grumbling from them, and me, but we had to get prepared for school.

By the second week of our early rise time, the kids were starting to become tired long before bedtime, which was the indicator that it was time to adjust our nighttime schedule. We did the same routine, only backward. We’d have the kids go to bed fifteen minutes early for a few nights, then increased the amount of time until they were in bed with lights out by 8 p.m., which was our school night bedtime. By the time school arrived, we would be on our new schedule for the school year.

The nice thing about doing it the month before school started was if the kids got tired in the middle of the day they could take a nap or read quietly. I actually liked the ‘free’ time during the day. But then they would adjust and we would settle into our new routine for our new school year.

How do you manage the morning and bedtime adjustment from summer to school?

About Terri Reed
Terri Reed’s romance and romantic suspense novels have appeared on Publisher’s Weekly top twenty-five, Nielsen’s Bookscan top hundred and Amazon Bestseller, and been featured in USA Today. Her books have been finalists in Romance Writers of America RITA contest, National Readers’ Choice Award, Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award, and American Christian Fiction Writers The Carol Award contest (three times!). Connect with Terri @ P.O. Box 19555 Portland, OR 97224, http://www.terrireed.com or https://www.facebook.com/terrireedauthorpage/.