For the people whose 6 year olds are getting up and playing quietly by themselves until 7, how have you made this happen? My 6 year old won’t get out of bed before 7 during the school week, but on the weekends she’s up at 6 (or sometimes even 5:30) bouncing off the walls in our bedroom. She has a consistent bedtime and is in bed by 8, asleep by around 8:30 or 9 depending on how long she reads to herself.

She definitely knows that we want her to stay quiet in her room until 7 but our 6 year old cares almost exclusively about what she wants rather than what we want. Did others institute consequences (or rewards) and what were they? Or did you just persistently keep repeating the expectation?

Our 6yo still pretty much sleeps 7pm - 7am.

I go upstairs with all 3 kids at 7:30ish. Youngest (3 years old) is asleep by 8:15. Older two (6 and 8 years old) are asleep by 8:30ish. I do it solo pretty much every night.

Kids wake up somewhere between 7am-7:45am during a school day and from 7:30-8:30am on weekends.

Some kids have a natural alarm clock regardless of what time you put them to bed. My younger DS would be up at 6:30am on the dot regardless of what time he went to bed until he was older (8ish) and now it can range from 6:30-7:30. My older DS would sleep in every day if we let him. It was more genetics that anything - no change in bedtime ever altered the morning.

Your 6 year old is old enough to play quietly or read a book for 30 minutes when she wakes up.

It's hardly selfish to want some down time in the evening!

Kids have different sleep needs. My 6yo goes to bed at 7:30pm on weeknights and needs to be woken up at 6:30 to make it to school on time.
On weekends, bedtime is 8pm and will sleep until 7:30 or so.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your husband is a lazy selfish pig

It's not selfish to want some time to yourself after kids go to bed. Days with young kids can be very long and it's not selfish to be very ready for an hour or two of adults-only time by 8pm. OP is phrasing this like her DH is the bad guy, but I'm a mom and I relate to her DH in this scenario.

The issue is that OP is setting it up as either or -- either the kids stay up later hanging out with parents, or the kids get up super early and wander around by themselves. It's neither? Set up a good bedtime routine with quality time for your kid, then make sure they can look at books or listen to music or a podcast afterwards if they aren't quite ready for sleep. In the morning, set it up so they have ways to engage/entertain themselves if they wake before you do (or if you need to shower or workout or make breakfast, which is often the case in our household).

I find it especially odd that OP and her DH are struggling with this with a 6 year old -- by that age, kids should be independent in the bathroom, able to get themselves water or a snack, and capable of playing safely and happily on their own for 45 minutes or so.

OP here. I think my DH is lazy and selfish. He wants to be left alone from 8pm until 730am when he wants to wake up and start getting ready for the day. He's really hands on the rest of the day though. I don't like my 6 year old waking up at 6-630 because she wakes up her sibling and me - but not DH (he sleeps through anything). She is pretty independent in this time. I would prefer she wake up at 7am which means a later bedtime. I'm going to let her stay up until 815-830ish on my own - DH can suck it.

Also, yes her room has black outs but it gets the AM sun with no shade so she's up from that and the hallway sun.

When I put my six year to bed later, I get earlier wake ups, so watch out!

8:30 for hours but like every person, every child has different sleep needs.

We are still waking our y-year-old up for school at 7am. On weekends she can stay up till 9pm and will naturally wake up at 8/8:30 unless she needs to be woken earlier.

Our 10-year-old though, he’s always been an earlier riser. It didn’t matter when we put him down for bed. He would always wake up at 5:30am/6:00 and if we pushed his bedtime back to 9:30 he’d wake up at 6:00 but me miserably cranky by 10:am. So he went down at 7:30pm and woke up at 6:00 and would manage fine. But by 4 he was old enough to know he was not to leave his room or wake us till 7:00. He had fresh water, a bathroom and tons of toys and books. He could self entertain.

Your six-year-old may always be an early riser, but they shouldn’t be mindlessly roaming through the house at 6:30am. Set some boundaries, get an awake clock.

We start the bedtime routine at 6:45p. Upstairs, bath, jammies, books, last glass of water...goal is 8pm. It is really nice quiet time that we get to unwind together at the end of the day.

Mine goes to bed about 9. He’s a very heavy sleeper, still in overnight diapers. He wakes up around 7 and usually reads in bed or plays in his room for the first hour or so.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your husband is a lazy selfish pig

It's not selfish to want some time to yourself after kids go to bed. Days with young kids can be very long and it's not selfish to be very ready for an hour or two of adults-only time by 8pm. OP is phrasing this like her DH is the bad guy, but I'm a mom and I relate to her DH in this scenario.

The issue is that OP is setting it up as either or -- either the kids stay up later hanging out with parents, or the kids get up super early and wander around by themselves. It's neither? Set up a good bedtime routine with quality time for your kid, then make sure they can look at books or listen to music or a podcast afterwards if they aren't quite ready for sleep. In the morning, set it up so they have ways to engage/entertain themselves if they wake before you do (or if you need to shower or workout or make breakfast, which is often the case in our household).

I find it especially odd that OP and her DH are struggling with this with a 6 year old -- by that age, kids should be independent in the bathroom, able to get themselves water or a snack, and capable of playing safely and happily on their own for 45 minutes or so.

OP here. I think my DH is lazy and selfish. He wants to be left alone from 8pm until 730am when he wants to wake up and start getting ready for the day. He's really hands on the rest of the day though. I don't like my 6 year old waking up at 6-630 because she wakes up her sibling and me - but not DH (he sleeps through anything). She is pretty independent in this time. I would prefer she wake up at 7am which means a later bedtime. I'm going to let her stay up until 815-830ish on my own - DH can suck it.

Also, yes her room has black outs but it gets the AM sun with no shade so she's up from that and the hallway sun.

Well ok then. You thinking your husband is lazy and selfish is a problem far beyond your 6 yr old’s bed time.

But as others have said, it doesn’t matter when you “prefer” another human to wake up, you need to instead help your daughter find a routine that will keep her occupied, happy, and quiet until you’re ready to get up.

Our 6 year old starts bed time at 7:30 and is generally asleep by 8:15. After bedtime stories, he typically reads on his own for 15ish minutes before falling asleep. He wakes up between 6:45 and 7:15. I would definitely say that we don't see any correlation (at least not in the direction you're hoping) between bed time and wake time (with appropriate regular bed times - sure the occasional super late night for something special (talking midnight here) might lead to waking up around 8). However generally on nights he goes to bed closer to 9 for whatever reason, he tends to wake up earlier (which always feels very annoying to my adult sensibilities as this tends to weekends/holidays when we could be sleeping in).

Sleep is important (for kids and adults). Time to self is important (for kids and adults).

The main hard things we have found, he is not very good about having different routines based on the day of the week. Weekdays we need to get moving to be ready for school. Weekends it would be ideal if he could spend more time playing on his own, reading, start his own breakfast, etc. All of which he CAN do. But with there being more weekdays than weekends, routine kicks in.