Dealing with insane late-night toddler energy bursts at the moment.
I’m a teacher so we’re on our big summer break here in Europe, so my 2 year old daughter is home with me instead of daycare.
Schedule is roughly awake at 7am, stays up until around 11am, sleeps until 1pm, then lunch. We make sure we’re active all day. Museums, playgroup, park etc.
Yet still, come 8pm, she has this incredible burst of energy where she’ll sing and run around like crazy and won’t get to bed till 9.30, when usually she’s in bed at 8.
Don’t know if it’s routine change but it’s only started in the past 4-5 days. Exhausting haha!
We have that with our 3 year old for the past year. Randomly enough, it’s meant to be a sign of being over-tired. But then my oldest does the same whether she’s had a big day or a small day. In her cot by 8pm (thankfully the sides are still up) and she’ll sing, read books, talk to her bunny for the next hour or so. She’s also started requesting water before she goes to sleep, and keeps calling us back in for cuddles just to try extend everything out.
My kids will do a similar thing. They’ll throw a tantrum because they don’t want to go to sleep, and they’ll run around, fighting their eyes closing, looking like their Dad post 10-beers.
Then they’ll want a cuddle and be asleep in your arms before you know it. It’s actually kinda cute and adorable.
You could have it worse. 930 is a good night for our 2yo. We go for a 1+ hr walk after dinner and cut daycare naps to max 1 hr to try and get her tired earlier. Like adults, some kids just have different sleep needs and ours gets by on 10hrs.
Our eldest (7) has never been a sleeper. We had to wake up at 2:30am recently to get a 6am international flight. He went 20 hours through to what would have been about 10pm until we all just jumped into bed and turned the lights off and even then it took him 40 mins to wind down.
Run them around the said… It will tire them out. Bullshit! It’s just built a foundation of stamina… He can do the fucking Bay Run.
Both of ours (now 7 and 4) have never been great sleepers… and when we did get some sort of decent routine going, it would change because they hit another milestone or growth spurt or something. We have always tried to be loose with it as kids vary so much that trying to stick to what its ‘expected’ just is useless in my experience. My wife and I are a little like this anyway, the wife didn’t do any mothers groups, we didn’t read any advice books, aside from stuff the doctors gave us - we really avoid other people opinions where possible etc. I think this stuff can just cause so much unneeded parenting anxiety - particularly for mothers.
Also - eldest is in Year 1 now and I am still just in disbelief with the amount of admin needed to keep up with what is going on - last week there was the sports carnival, an assembly performance and open classroom - all in one week - all with invites to parents which your child instantly feels envious of other kids if you can’t make it to all of them. Next week its book parade plus book fair and some other performance - honestly, this sh!t is built around the 1950’s expectation that there is a stay at home mum or that parents can just drop work at hat etc… equally could be in the gear grinding thread.
The expectations for parents to be able to attend multiple things during the working week (we have a kid at middle school, one at junior scahool and one at preschool, so multiple things a week) is mental.
throw in the fact that we then have the extra curricular activities after school hours to get them to and from.
All we learnt from the advice is that every kid is completely different, although the constant advice is obviously keeping them to a schedule. A friend of a friend has two kids that have zero schedules and zero routines. It was like that for the first and continued for the second. She can’t figure out why the kids aren’t going to bed by 8pm despite the fact that they have a chocolate milk right before bed etc.
You see , this is what I mean, you are talking about the friend of a friend, that you have obviously heard second hand info on via the great parent gossip train as if they are the world’s greatest moron because they might have a different approach to others. Things like habitus (and cultural capital) play a very large role here and judging other parents for ‘being stupid’ just bugs me no end.
My dad once said to me about being strict on kids having unbendable routines and schedules just breeds grown-ups who can’t handle change well… is he right or wrong - I have no idea - my in-laws are from a different cultural background to me - they believe that kids should fit the parents schedule and not the other way round - that if parents want to be up or out at 10am on Friday night then the kid has to bend to that… are they right or wrong, I have no idea because who is to say which cultural approach is right or wrong??
This one though we literally saw first hand. I say friend of a friend as we have little to do with her socially, apart from through my wife’s cousin. We see her enough and she complains enough. I mean it’s fairly well unanimously accepted that kids need routine and you probably shouldn’t be feeding them caffeine right before bed. In this situation, you literally have a parent that’s talking to everyone around her about how she can’t cope, but then continues doing the exact same thing without trying anything new. We often talk to other parents and try out things that they’re doing, if we see something isn’t working for us. It’s just logic as so much of childcare is trial and error.
Understanding that trends change and suggestions on children change, but the consensus is a happy medium with the understanding that parents will adapt and change where required to assist the kids and to just survive.
First time dad here. Got a little 6 week old boy. I live abroad and my wife is kind of estranged from her mum (dad passed away) so we’re doing it on our lonesome. They say it takes a village, but we’ve got a pretty good tag team thing going. Managing to get about 6-7hrs of sleep a night and have done so since about week 2. It’s broken up into 3 chunks but cumulatively it’s enough to keep us going.
It’s been an absolute joyful experience. We heard so much negativity about this period in the lead up but we’ve been absolutely loving it. He’s just started to try and crack smiles the past couple of days and it’s just awesome.
