Remembering Goodnight Moon

Can you remember when your children were young? Maybe you can recall reading Goodnight Moon or their favorite bedtime story. With two young boys, I am quite familiar with the nighttime routine that children crave: dinner, bath, books, bed. Every now and then we can alter the routine and make an exception for a special circumstance.  Yet, if it is done too often, the result is grouchy children and grouchy parents.  As children grow older, the routine seems less mandatory, less important.  Summer is a time for fun, enjoying those additional hours of daylight, and letting your children stay up late.  This is normal and actually quite wonderful.

However when we make the switch and start school without a transitional period, the result is undesirable.  Middle school and high school students hit snooze on their alarms time and time again. Parents get frustrated because they can't rouse their sleepy students and get to work on time. They come to school not quite feeling like themselves and may struggle to learn that first block of the day.  It doesn't have to be this way though.  Take these next two weeks and slowly encourage your children to wind down earlier, go to bed earlier, and wake earlier.  Set an evening routine and every three days make it fifteen minutes earlier. It seems like a silly thing to do, but isn't it often that the littlest things make the biggest differences?