The start of the new school year always brings schedule changes. This can be frustrating, or it can be an opportunity.
Yesterday I wrote about how our mornings were shifting. Today, it’s on to the other side of the day.
I was definitely looking to refine our household evening schedules. The older kids are not exactly looking to go to bed early. If screens are an option, it’s hard to get people to do other things (like read). Because I have older kids, my youngest child in particular had a hard time going down while everyone else was up and about the house. That meant that I felt like I had very little downtime after he went to bed (or after the others went to bed, for that matter).
Last year I had enforced an “In room with no devices time” of 9 p.m. I’d go around and turn out lights at 10 p.m….if I wasn’t still dealing with the 4-year-old, whose bedtime can be long and involved. As parents of older kids have probably experienced themselves, sometimes when I went in to turn people’s lights out, they’d decide this was the perfect time to talk to me and…
Since the high school now starts an hour later (8:30 a.m. vs. 7:30 a.m. this year) I had visions of everyone’s bedtimes drifting later and later and I was not excited about that. So I decided that the official “In room with no devices time” would move back to 8:30 p.m.
There was actually not too much resistance to this, which I am grateful for. I think it helps that the older kids can still have their (school) laptops to do homework, so they can play music and honestly could be on (limited parts of) the web if they wanted to — they just aren’t texting their friends or watching YouTube. The older boys also have a fair amount of homework (and college applications!) so if they go to bed around 10:30 p.m., the 8:30 p.m. in room time gives them a reasonable two hours for work (and shower), which they kind of need.
Because everyone is up in their rooms, I can have the 4-year-old in his room at 8:30 p.m. I know that sounds late for a little guy, but he doesn’t have to be up in the morning until 8:15 a.m. and some number of days he actually sleeps until then! We go up, sometimes take a bath, read stories, and he is usually in his bed before 9 p.m. Unfortunately, I often still have to sit in there for a while, but he is asleep somewhere between 9-9:30 p.m. (if it is taking a while he has started to allow me to leave while he plays with toys in his bed…and then I just come check that he’s fallen asleep later). As soon as he is asleep, I go around and say goodnight to the big kids, have quick chats, but I don’t turn off their lights. They can deal with that on their own. Since there are no phones/ipads/Nintendo switches they will not stay up all night.
The only one who’s had some struggles with this is the 9-year-old. He’s not been a huge fan of independent reading. He’ll do art in his room, or quietly (sort of quietly) play with toys. And my husband has been reading Harry Potter out loud to him during this window. But my husband doesn’t exactly want to read to him for 90 minutes so this is something of a work in progress. We’ve been trying all sorts of books to entice him toward independent reading. One surprise hit was an Oahu guidebook, so go figure. I’m hoping he’ll build the habit over time.
But in the meantime, I’ve been a fan of this new routine. One complication: If I am not home at 8:30…it doesn’t always happen. Yes, this is a source of frustration. But I have been working on some solutions to this — it turns out kids can be good enforcers of their siblings following the rules!
We have had good success with audio books or kids. You would need a device that could play an audio book but now allow screen time which would be tricky but if you could figure that out listening to a book might be a quiet activity for the 9 yo.
@Gillian – this is definitely a possibility – there are also a few podcasts he’s listened to in the car (Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest) so that could work too….
We have a cheap-y MP3 player which works really well for audiobooks. We use it with audible and Libby.
Does that work? I have an MP3 player I wear when I swim because swimming laps is boring, but have not been able to figure out how to put books on it. How do you put a Libby book on a MP3 player … ?
Yes to audio books! They have Playway devices at our library, which are essentially just audiobooks with no other screen options on them. Or you could go old-school and get a CD player to keep it screen free. Bonus points if you hand him the book along with the CD so he can read along if he wants to.
The Yoto is an audio book device with no screens. The blog, Every Day Reading does a good job covering the Yoto. There is a way to use a Libro FM subscription to make your own Yoto cards. Cutting down the costs.
I just came down here to suggest a yoto player to – my nephews love theirs, although they are a little younger.
I think it is great that after the evening routine changed this month, you found yourself to be a fun of this new routine, Ms. Laura Vanderkam.
@Yukun – thanks! So far it is working out.
My 11 year old reluctant reader son enjoys puzzle books (word searches, crosswords, sudoku type puzzles etc). On a recent holiday, this was my best bet for him to have some quiet, non-screen downtime.
@K- ooh, this might work. I will float the idea with him…
We have the Harry Potter books on CD from when I listened to them on my commute as they were coming out! So we bought a CD player and that proved useful for before bed audio book time, without a screen. For my more responsible children, they will actually just listen to an audio book on their phones, without drifiting into texting or YouTube etc.
I was going to suggest audio books too! All of my kids have loved them especially my 9 year old son. He will often listen for an hour at night before falling asleep. Your youngest would probably like them too. We usually just use an old iPhone with other apps disabled and choose books available on Libby (the amazing free library app) or Audible.
We do the audio books with a follow along illustrated Harry Potter on the Amazon dot which I can set limits to or unplug it all together when the book is finished. My youngest has loved listening and reading along.
For audiobooks, another option is to use a Bluetooth speaker in his room with the device outside the room.
This is what we do too and have since the kids were young. The only downside is some of them now claim they need an audiobook to sleep. The other downside is that my now 14 yr old still won’t really read for fun, but he is the most avid audiobook listener so he has probably “read” much much more than other kids his age.
I love this idea of enforced in the room time. I have all older kids now and they tend to go to bed at the same time as I do and that can be hard.
The Encyclopedia Brown mysteries successfully pried my 8 year old son away from graphic novels. We read the first chapter together, then he reads the rest of the book on his own, usually in a single night. So far he has read five of them and should burn through the rest in the next few weeks.
Evenings had become a challenge in our house for my tween/teens. Their bedtimes were creeping later and I found they were defaulting to mindless scrolling. Since Snapchat is their primary way of connecting with friends, it’s a thorn in our sides because the messenger part of the app can’t be separated from the feed when setting parental controls. I digress!
We instituted a few things at the start of this school year that are working (so far!):
1) Downtime & app limits: Set these in Apple Family
2) The rule that the kids have to read before bed. Doesn’t matter what (book, graphic novel, magazine…) or for how long, but it’s just the habit of reading before bed we are looking to embed in their routines
3) To encourage reading to supplant mindless scrolling, we are offering an “incentive” of a certain amount of $$ for every half hour of reading they log. I’ve never been a big fan of bribery, but hey, it’s a means to an end! It’s $$ we would have spent on them anyways, but this way they feel they’ve earned it. One of my girls already has enough to buy a shirt she’s been coveting (meaning she read 5.5 hours last week alone)
Oh and one more thing: There are illustrated versions of the Harry Potter series. They’re beautiful and really enhance the experience for the reader and the read-to!
My 8.5 year old really enjoys where’s waldo and similar “finding” type books before bed. She also likes reading the bedtime math books and funny poetry books. And if you go the yoto route, the yoto daily podcast is a big hit for her too (it’s 10-12 minutes and then she usually chooses one of the above book options until she falls asleep)
Thanks for sharing your evening routine, so helpful to see what everyone else is doing. My 3.5 year old is similar to your 4 year old in falling asleep around 9, probably mostly do to the afternoon nap she enjoys everyday at preschool. But, it’s actually ok, it’s easier to put all three of my daughter to bed together at 8:30 vs trying to get her to bed earlier on her own.