Sleep... sleep perchance to dream...

...and no dreaming of kitty cats!

My family has poor sleep hygiene. I admit it. I stay up too late and my daughter is a night-owl and loves to read into the deep hours. DH spent way to many years on second shift, not arriving home til midnight and taking yet more hours to catch up with me and wind down for sleep. My poor son would gladly go to bed earlier, if only his family was on the same page!

We are no conventional family, and so, I have accepted the odd shifts, the late nights reading and the occasional midnight tea party. After all, when the children were young, we did not need to adhere to a particular schedule. Our routine was predictable, albiet a few hours behind the rest of the world. Truly, we thrived, often having our best family moments in the darkness and under the stars.

Yet as the children grow older, I am noting a desire to move in synchronicity with the rest of the world; the majority of which seems to be on a traditional first shift. Busses, cars and pedestrians begin whirring around descreetly by six or seven AM. And by nine or ten, as we are gaining consciousness, the rest of the world has accomplished one-third of its daily tasks.

I feel as though we are beginning to miss out on something.

So how to make this shift and improve our hygiene?

For some months (on and off for two years) I have tried the "Early To Bed" method. But consistently, the children simply lay awake, play, sneak books, or slip out of bed as I drift off. The harder option is the "Early To Rise" method, which requires us to awake bright and early, despite our previous bedtime, often asking for full functioning on just four hours of sleep. Not so successful for any of our moods.

Another plan was to have the kids play hard so that they would be exhausted to the point of sleep by evening. My daughter seems to have more hours of energy than the average- or at least some sort of reptilian ability to slow her metabolism after hard play in order to eek out the maximum hours of awake time!

This is not to say that these measures are not working. I have tried, but clearly something in my methodology is off. I begin to believe that I am failing my children. I have not done, or have left undone, that which would be most effective.

So this week we attempt a new strategy. Instead of changing up our time table, we have changed the environment. It goes like thus:
Lock cats, busy little beggars, in the basement so they cannot wake us in the night.
Move beds into a common family bedroom with NOTHING but beds.
Gosh, I wish I had a third item because threes always feel nicest literally and organizationally.

So, the cats keep us up. The little bastards, who bring so much joy at other times of the day, have trained us to feed them upon provocation. One cat has learned to SHRED any paper-like product, noisily, and with vigor, until I get up and feed him. He has destroyed several precious books, including a cardboard cover to one. Did I mention they are little bastards?

By locking them behind a cat door, they can no longer access us in the deep hours.

And the bedroom situation? We live in a very small house. Previously, each child had his own room for play and occasional sleep. Even then the chidlren usually slept in the family bed. But they did have their bedroom for solitary work and play. In this new house, with lack of space, the children desire work and play of solitary, cooperative and family nature where ever they can find some room. And that has included the master bedroom for a full two years. It is the largest bedroom in the house, and I had created room for beds, bookshelves, a desk area, toy corners, doll dress up and more. One attempts to maximize one's space.

But we have been using our precious sleep space as a wake space. And that has become confusing.

Since we all sleep in the family bed anyway, I simply emptied out the smaller of the bedrooms, and lined up the king and single mattresses (with box springs) on the floor. There is a comfortable amount of room to pass around the mattresses, and a nice empty wall to place a simple shelf. The shelf will only contain a clock, nighttime music and a few nighttime books.

The closet of this small room will contain only bedding and jammies. That is what a closet is for.

No toys. No activities. No doubling up of this space. We NEED this space for sleep.

This is the plan so far. Pics will follow soon to satisfy the curiousity of those who cannot fathom shared sleep. (pics have been added to the top of this page) Sharing our sleep is no problem. We sleep just fine. But we must find new ways to get to that point, and maintain it. The next step then is to shift into an earlier sleep cycle, and rely on a predictable routine.