Late Evenings

[New to Radical Unschooling]

Hi, looking for a few thoughts and ideas on how to make our evenings work for everyone in the family.

 

I have 2 girls, ages 3 & 5. They usually get up between 8-9am, and go to sleep around 10-11pm. 

I tend to follow this sleep pattern too.

My husband though works long hours. He's up and left for work by 8am, before we're up, and isn't home until at least 7pm. By the time we've had tea and cleared up it's often 9pm. The girls are usually still up and wanting to play. I'm pretty tired and my husband is exhausted.

I quite like them being up and about and can continue doing my things (like using the internet, watching tv or reading) while they play around me, but my husband finds it really hard. He says he finds it stressful, difficult to concentrate and it's sensory overload with so many things going on late at night. He also says we never have any adult time together to just talk or watch films we want to watch, like scary movies.

 

Sometimes we can all watch a film together, but our 3 year old often finds it difficult to sit through and we often can't agree on a film we all want to watch.

Sometimes my husband watchs a film with our 5 year old in our lounge and I watch a different film with our 3 year old in our playroom. This works ok but means I spend even less time with my husband.

 

I'm not sure what to do. I think ultimately he'd like the children to go to bed earlier, but he also accepts that their current sleeping pattern works well for us, just not him.

 

I've tried to think of different ways to deal with this but can't seem to see a way to make it work for everyone.

 

Any ideas?

[Meredith]

Something that can help, when it comes to meeting adult needs, is to break them down into individual "bite sized pieces". So part of the problem is likely that your husband is seeing a single possible solution to "adult quiet time with partner" - and yet that's not one need, its several needs all rolled into one. Look for ways to meet the individual needs rather than the whole schebang.

Do you ever go out on dates? That's a strategy that works well for some as a way to get some "quality time" alone together as a couple. Alternately, maybe your husband can stop somewhere on the way home to get some quiet time - a coffee shop or a gym or a bookstore, for instance, or he could take a yoga class or even something more energetic like kick boxing if he needs to work out some stress in physical ways. Another option could be to set aside a "quiet space" or time at home so that he can recoup for awhile when he gets in - although an alternative to that is for him to really engage with the kids right when he gets home and have his quiet time later. These are all ideas to kick around or experiment with - different things are going to work for different families and most likely you'll end up with some kind of combination of strategies rather than one "solution".

Does your husband read at all? Will he read parenting books or email lists? It could help him to connect with other parents who will reassure him that having two little kids at home isn't a permanent state of being. The three year old won't stay 3... I promise! And the 5yo won't stay five, either and one of the good parts of kids getting older is they get better able to be responsive to others needs and less needy themselves. If he doesn't have a way to connect with other parents, it may help for you to remind him of all that. As the saying goes: "it gets better". Really, my now-9yo used to charge through the house like a wild horse for up to two hours a night and now she rarely does that. You'll get your peace and quiet back ;)

[Scott]

Hi Louise. Could you clarify a little about the nature of your husband's discomfort? It wasn't clear to me. Is it that he is having problems getting to sleep when things are going on around him? Is it because there is a lot of noise in the other room? If so, ear plugs might help. Or is it because the activity is actually going on in the bedroom itself after he has retired for the night? If that's the case the activity could move to a more distant part of the house. Or is it that he has trouble falling asleep, worrying about things?

If he leaves for work at 8AM, then he is probably getting up at 6AM. You mention he leaves at 8AM and you're not awake then. To get up at 6AM rested an average person would fall asleep at 10pm to get 8 hrs sleep. That might require starting to wind down at 9:30 and in bed by 9:45pm. Is he mentioning things like this? If I understand this all right, and he is the one with a fixed schedule that depends on the external factor of his job, it seems this is pretty fixed and things should be worked out around this if it's required that he work his hours and do a good job at work.

[Scott]

Thanks, it is a much more clear picture now, my idea about the core issue, insufficient rest for him, was incorrect. It's not as simple as that.

He is happy going to bed at 11pm and waking up at 7am and is rested from 8 hrs.

You, having two young girls and a different metabolism, need more rest and are better with 10 hrs, typically starting at 11pm, and going to 9am. In doing this schedule you match that of your daughters', which is common for moms to do. 10 hrs for their age is very normal for them, and 10 hrs for you is within the human range. Some people are fine on 6, some require 10, the average is 8 but it doesn't cover everyone.

He is exhausted not because he is not getting enough sleep, but because mentally and physically as he works something like 9 hrs a day, plus a 2 hr traffic commute, so he is out of the house for 11 hrs from 8am to 7pm. Come home, eat dinner, washup, now it is 9pm. From 9pm to 11pm you are playing with the girls. He would like to spend 9pm-11pm with you and is recommending the girls go to bed earlier as he thinks that would fix things. But if that happened, then you would still go to bed at 11pm but now need to get up at 7am when they would after 10 hrs sleep if going to bed at 9pm. This would then create problems because you would be more exhausted, drained etc, and you have an intuition this would create more problems than the 2 hrs of time with him would solve, and that intuition is probably correct.

It is very normal for parents with young children to have these issues of the husband not getting enough time with the wife and that causes frustration on top of the normal exhaustion of juggling young children and work. As the children get older, they will sleep shorter hours and be able to do their own thing, get themselves up, put themselves to bed, and things get better. But with very young ones mom needs to be there for all that. So in this sense this is normal, although it is not what we might have imagined or hoped for.

I also think that, although he might think this is an issue of the girls hours from radical unschooling, it's not really, it's an issue of his long day coupled together with your biorhythm naturally needing 10 hrs of sleep, which the two things compresses things up. It's unfortunate that so much of the economic value of the massive modern increase in productivity has been grabbed by the rich elite for their toys and wars and fetishes. Otherwise people would be able to work 4 hr work days 4 days a week and have the same income and house and food and so forth, having more time for personal pursuits, family time, scientific experiments, travel. Instead the work days of hard workers get longer, and traffic and the need for commuting make things even longer and more tiring. But that's a political issue that can't be resolved here.

There is probably room for some improvement. It may do a lot to address his need for adult companionship. The date night is a very good suggestion. Are there grandparents around or that can visit and look after the girls? This can help a lot. There is also the weekend, hopefully he only works 5 days and not 7 like some people are having to do nowadays.

Having time is a balancing act that each couple must resolve together as best they can. There can't be any sure fire plan given to fix things from a stranger from afar. If I understand the issue right, he believes that imposing an earlier bed time than they naturally choose would create more relationship time and fix his sense of frustration at not having enough. But you realize that this particular change would not really fix things as well he things. That doesn't mean though that the frustrations are not valid or can't be addressed in some ways that might be effective, while also understanding that at this phase in life there is no perfect solution. I'd probably present that your natural sleep rhythm is matching that of the girls at their age and this is normal, and his long commute are both things that are creating the problem and making it so moving (or creating) their bed time wouldn't really resolve the situation. But make an effort to do those dates and talk with him and see about having a babysitter one night a week. Also, maybe the girls can play on their own for two hours if they really want to be up that late.

[Tam]

We're in a very similar situation at the moment. Up until about 6 months ago my DH had been getting our boys (aged 2 and 4) to go to bed at 8pm. It was a great source of conflict, they weren't tired and they didn't sleep well. I finally persuaded him to look at bedtimes the same way we looked at the rest of our lives, and give the boys autonomy over their sleep patterns, as it stuck out like a sore thumb that the one thing he was trying to control was the one thing that was causing upset.
Anyway, their sleep problems sorted themselves out overnight and they now sleep very well. They go to bed somewhere between 9pm and 11pm when they get tired, and get themselves up between 7am and 10am. While recognising that autonomy over their sleep has been a very positive thing, my DH is also unhappy, as you say, that we almost never spend any alone time or watch any grown up or scary programmes/movies etc. We cosleep and the boys currently don't like going to bed without me, so there really is no time in the evenings just me and him. I currently work two days a week for which family look after the boys, so this pretty much takes up all our babysitting time, however my job ends in the new year so I think we're going to go down the date night route if family will babysit for us.
Would be interested to know how you all get on!

[Tam]

Ah glad it went well, we'll have to be creative too as money very tight, shame IKEA is so far away as sounds like an interesting idea :)

[Meredith]

When DH gets up for work at 7am, he's always been really super quiet so he doesn't wake anyone up. He's not being so quiet now and it does seem to wake them up gradually by 8am. Doesn't seem to have had a major impact on mood, in fact they're both really pleased to see him before he goes to work (as am I).
They're going to bed a little earlier, 9.30-10pm

What a great idea! Yeah, sometimes it can be a whole lot easier to shift sleep patterns by waking people up a little earlier than trying to change the "other end" of the cycle as it were.

I'm glad the date went well, too. Check with any big chain bookstores in your area to see if they have free events. Also look for your local public radio station's "local happenings" page - some of those will be free or cheap. Not quite "free" but a once-a-year expense is to get a membership of someplace you could visit often - like a museum or botanical garden or even a state park with a good nature center. A family membership to a museum usually pays for itself in two to three visits. Another, somewhat crazy option depending on how much time you have is finding a place to volunteer together.