I keep forgetting about daylight savings time—and then remembering with a sick feeling, as if our agricultural forbears hit me in the gut with a bushel of corn. And as a planner, I’ve been reading oodles of online articles about preparing kids for daylight savings time.
Consensus is clear: Gradually adjust kids’ bedtimes and wake times so that when DST hits this Sunday, they’re already on the new clock.
Naturally, then, my girls are helping by preparing us parents for daylight savings time.
Case in point:
Last night, each girl woke twice—in succession, because that’s how they roll. (I swear they telepathically communicate to coordinate their wake times from opposite ends of the house.)
Then Peeper woke for good at 5am (that’s 4am in DST, for all you out there uninterested in math). Kiwi woke shortly after.
So yay! Thanks to all the work I’ve done preparing kids for daylight savings time, my children will be waking even earlier come Sunday.
(Side note: More than 125,000 people have signed a petition to end daylight savings time. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess approximately 124,000 of them are tired parents.)
Looking on the bright side of daylight savings time
With the extra light—that’s the whole point of moving the clocks as if we’re Hermione Granger—I just have to look on the bright side. (See what I did there? I know, I know.)
Preparing your kids for daylight savings time or not—either way, we’ll get more light in the morning. That definitely helps me wake up, since it’s not pitch-black at breakfast.
Because my kids will be waking up so early, I won’t struggle so much to get us out the door on time for preschool. (Right? RIGHT?!)
And the extra-early wake ups give me yet another excellent reason to be in bed by 9pm.
Fist bump for solidarity
On Sunday, and really all next week, I expect to see a lot of tired adults. The really, really tired ones—the ones with bits of Chex stuck in their hair or a Paw Patrol sticker on their butt—I’ll recognize as my fellow parents.
When we pass each other in traffic or zombie-shuffle forward in the Starbucks line, we’ll lock eyes. We’ll nod in mutual understanding and exhaustion. And perhaps we’ll fist bump.
Until then, good luck preparing kids for daylight savings time.
