I’m no fan of Daylight Savings Time. I express my dislike of it here just about every time we have to change our clocks.
Losing or adding that hour messes me up. It takes at least a week to get my sleep schedule back on track. Even worse, it screws up my boys’ bedtimes, and they spend a week tired and cranky.
But this year we get a double whammy. Halloween is on a Friday night, and we turn our clocks back Saturday night. OK, technically time changes at 2am Sunday, but who actually waits until then to adjust their clock? I’m not waking up in the middle of the night to do that. Usually we get a few days in between to recover from Halloween before we have to deal with DST.
So, are you following me?
Tonight your kids are going to be out late collecting free candy. Half of which they’ll eat before you get home. So even though it’s way past their bedtime, they won’t go to sleep. They won’t sleep in Saturday, because they’ll be up early asking for Hershey’s Miniatures for breakfast. You’ll spend the rest of the day listening to them complain when you try to ration their intake.
They’ll crash hard when you send them to bed Saturday. But when you think it’s 8pm it will really only 7pm, because you’ll turn your clock back an hour before you go to bed, so you show up at church at the right time Sunday morning. On Sunday morning the kids will come bouncing in your room at 6am asking where you hid the rest of the candy. You thought you’d get to sleep in for that extra hour, but your kids’ internal clocks didn’t get the memo about DST. Your clock says six, but theirs still say seven. Instead of sleeping, you’ll spend that extra hour in your day explaining, “No, Snickers are not part of a balanced breakfast just because they have peanuts in them.” And your kids will still be hopped up on sugar and a little tired from the Halloween festivities.
Sunday night is when the storm reaches its peak. You tired of doling out the candy at 4pm and declared it off-limits until Monday. It’s been three hours, and the kids are coming down hard from their sugar high. Your clock says 7pm, but their internal clock says 8pm. They’re ready to pass out, but you have to keep them awake one more hour, or they’ll wake you up at the crack of dawn again. You can’t deal with that on a Monday. You do your best to keep your exhausted, little candy fiends happy and awake for 60 more minutes. But then one kid looks the wrong way at the other one. All of a sudden they’re throwing the collective tantrum of the century.
Finally, the clock strikes 8 and you put them to bed. You’re tired and try to go bed early, but DST is messing with you too. You can’t sleep.
Next thing you know, it’s Monday morning. Two little faces are staring at you, wide awake at 6am and smeared with chocolate. They got up a 5:30 and found your candy hiding place.
It’s going to be a long week.
P.S. Did you know Childhood Daylight Savings Time Syndrome Affects 10 0ut of 10 Kids?
Somewhere I read an article that a study found our bodies performed optimally on sleep spells broken up in 24 hours instead of 8 or so all at once. Apparently, a long time ago people would go to bed when the sun went down, get up a few hours later and do some things that do better before sunrise ( although I cannot for the life of me think of what those could be, possibly milking cows or collecting eggs?) Then they would go back to sleep and sleep another 4-5 hours.. hmmmmm. yeah no not gonna work that way for me either
Oh, but it is a federal law. You must change your clock at 2 AM and not
before. It is a part of that same regulation that includes not removing
that tag from your mattress under penalty of law!
The worst. Seriously.