My hubby and I are having a bit of a disagreement. He seems to think there is no 'sleep window" for older kids, so last night, he kept the kids up 30 minutes past their regular bedtime. Of course neither would then go to sleep. And of course this means my son (2.5) got up an hour early, so I get to deal with a 2 year old that is two hours short on sleep.
How do I get my husband to get this? He is a terrible sleeper, no schedule, etc. loves to play with his tablet in bed, stays up late to play video games, etc. I, otoh, got to bed at a regular time and wake naturally at a regular time. I sleep great.
Oh, and did I mention, he doesn't' get up with the kids in the morning. I do. He stays in bed until one of us goes in there and kicks him out. So, this morning, I was hoping to workout and make a cake before breakfast, but since I have two little people running around an hour early, this kind of messed up my plans. Trust me, I will be kicking him really soon and getting him up, but how do I get him to understand that they are up early because they went to bed late?
free ride is over....he needs to be responsible for the children's care equally, & then he'll see the effects/needs for proper sleep.
I would stand your ground and tell your husband that for every night that he keeps the kids up, he will have to deal with them to get them asleep. And then he has to get up with them and fix their breakfast.
Once he has to do all this everytime he keeps them up, I would think that he'll finally quit keeping them up.
Just keep kicking his butt out of bed!
Dawn
I would have woken him up as soon as the children were awake.
Gone for my workout and baked my cake and made it very clear that since he created the situation it was his deal with.
In fact, it may time for him to get up with the children every morning. Maybe if he has a regular morning routine, he will understand the need for the children to have one also.
Ah, maybe everyone will go down for a nice nap today !!!
The only way he's going to "get it" is by suffering the natural consequences. You should have gotten up and gone to your workout as planned, with a quick kiss on the cheek you say "ok honey, I'm leaving, you're in charge!"
Really, unless he has to deal with it personally then it isn't a problem for him, it's only a problem for you.
You let him sleep in after that?? Amazing.
If he doesn't want to follow your recommended (not dictated cause that might put his back up) bedtime, then he gets to get up with them in the morning.
And I get a kick out of you calling a 2 1/2 yr old an older kid :) I thought you were talking about preteens till I got to the specific age.
My husband felt the same way. I remember trying to explain this to him when our oldest was 5 months old. At the time, my husband got off work at 5:30, but he liked to spend time working in the garage. He would come back into the house around 8 or 9 (or later) and want to play with our son. It took me awhile to convince him that he needed to play with our son first and then go out, as the child needed to go to bed much earlier. He just assumed that if he stayed up late he would sleep in the next morning. Funny how that doesn't work at 5 months!
I think the only way you're going to teach him is to insist that he get up with the kids. One of the reasons my husband didn't get it was that he went into work at 7 am. Our son usually woke up around 7, so he might have seen him for a minute or two, but had no idea what his mood for the morning was.
If you husband has to get up with them, he should soon have incentive to stick with the sleep schedule.
Um, I think the problem is more defining what is an older kid. An older kid is at least grade school. Two is a baby!
Oh, here is a good way to define an older kid as it related to schedules, can they tell time and understand what it means? If the answer is no, then they are not an older kid.
