Spring Ahead 2023
Now, I don’t want to get too political with you here but I can’t help myself for a minute. I would love to see the Senate pass the proposed bill to end time change for Daylight Saving. For some reason the changing of the clocks throws my body into chaos. Losing an hour of precious sleep leaves me grumpy and confused for days…ahem, weeks. My first child is just as sleep sensitive as I am (meaning that her sleep is easily disrupted) and I am starting to see signs that my third child is as well. So I am going to make small adjustments to my kids sleep in the week leading up to the time change (which happens on March 12th). My preference, for my family and my clients, is to make small, consistent changes when it come to sleep. Here is an example of how to make small changes to get ready for time change:
If are struggling with an early wake time with your child, this time change can help reset them to waking at a reasonable time, however if that is the case then I would not wake them earlier in the morning and only adjust the rest of the schedule.
You might be wondering if you really need to do all this work and the answer is no. You could take an intermediate step and move your child’s schedule earlier by 30 minutes on Wednesday or Thursday so that you are half way to the new time, Alternatively you can just make the hour time change on the day, which works perfectly fine for easier sleepers, and for less easy sleepers might mean that you deal with a day or so of crankiness, but it will pass. A last option is that you stick to your old schedule at the new times, so if you used to put your child to bed at 6:30pm and they woke at 6:00am, you can put them to bed at 7:30pm and let them wake at 7:00am. A reason that some parents prefer this is: SUMMER! We are getting close (okay close-ish, yes I am dreaming of 80 degree weather) to summer where a lot of kids will stay up later due to the extended sunlight and wake up later since they don’t have school. While I understand the allure of that from my own days as a kid, it doesn’t do any favors for your child’s circadian rhythm.
Which approach to time change will you take?