The Great Bedtime Experiment
Our kiddo has a new mission: a later bedtime.
Lately, they’ve been asking (okay, campaigning) for an extra hour before lights out. It’s such a weird thing about kids—they fight sleep so hard, even when I can see their little bodies dragging with exhaustion. If I had someone telling me to go to bed early? I’d thank them and be asleep in five minutes.
But, because we want to be fair, we’re running a trial run on weekends. Instead of the usual bedtime, kiddo gets an extra hour to stay up on Friday and Saturday nights. The deal is simple:
- If they handle it well—no meltdowns, no extra grogginess the next morning—we’ll consider making it a permanent thing.
- If they turn into a grumpy, overtired mess, then the experiment is over, and we go back to normal.
Why Do Kids Fight Sleep So Much?
I get it, to some extent. Staying up late feels like a privilege when you’re a kid. It’s proof that you’re growing up, that you have some control over your schedule. There’s also that fear of missing out—like something really exciting must be happening after they go to bed.
And honestly? I remember feeling the exact same way. One of my earliest attempts at staying up late was trying to watch Saturday Night Live for the first time. I was determined to make it through the whole show, convinced I was about to witness something legendary.
Instead, I barely made it past the opening monologue before completely crashing, only to wake up disoriented and disappointed that I had missed everything. It’s a memory I don’t think I’ll ever forget—one of those early moments of realizing that maybe, just maybe, my parents knew what they were talking about when it came to bedtime.
But of course, that didn’t stop me from trying again.
Weekend #1: The Results So Far
We’ve done one weekend of the later bedtime, and so far, it’s not been as bad as I thought. Kiddo loves the freedom, but they’ve been sleeping in the next morning, which tells me that they truly do need the extra sleep. The real test will be seeing how things fare as we continue this test.
Will they eventually crash mid-afternoon? Will they power through? Will we regret this whole thing?
TBD.
For now, the experiment continues.