Q&A: TIme change and its evil spawn

So now that those of us in North America and Europe are done with this fall time change, it's all starting to hit the fan. Some of the problems are kid-related: kids waking up too early, going to sleep too late, or just being all screwed up.

The solutions to those problems are, as with all things parenting, a choose-your-own-adventure. Some people just go cold turkey to the new ("new"?) time. So if your child has been going to bed at 8 pm (or 6:30 pm if you live in Seattle), even though 8 is 9 to the kid, keep them up until 8. After a week or so they'll adjust. Others bump the kid up to the new bedtime 10 minutes a night. So you'd start with 7:10 tonight, then 7:20 tomorrow night, etc. until the kid is going to bed at 8 by the weekend. Others will seize the opportunity and start putting the child to bed at 7.

If it's the morning that's particularly screwed up, you could try blackout shades, or "blackout shades": cardboard and/or aluminum foil over the windows.

The older I get, and the older my kids get, the more I find that the time change messes with me more than it does them. And it's not the time part, but the light part. For some reason, it doesn't much bother me how light or not it is when I wake up in the morning. But it makes me truly and seriously sad when it's so dark so early at night.

I've been trying to figure out how to deal with this, as it's an actual problem. And what I'm coming up with is trying to work things so that I can just coast through the hours that feel too dark to me (for me, now that daylight savings time is over, here at the eastern end of the time zone in NYC, that's about 5:30-7:30 pm). I'm going to do as much dinner prep ahead of time as possible, and make sure I have things all set up for the kids to go to bed, so I'm not doing any scrambling when it's time to get them down for the night.

Does anyone else have this issue? It almost feels like SAD (which I sometimes get a touch of, and which my aunt has seriously and has described to me). If so, how do you manage it? Does anyone else have the opposite problem, of being depressed by getting up in the dark? How do you cope?

Comments

[Sandra]

Ugh. Daylight savings. I do think it's more of a problem for me than my 22-month old kiddo at the moment. We kept him up half an hour later and he woke up at right around his usual wake up time. But he has always woken up early anyways. I'm just glad it wasn't at 4:00, which he has been known to do in the past.

Regarding SAD, I've read a great book - The Chemistry of Joy - which discusses the use of light therapy, but also good adjustments to diet and the use of supplements to help ward off SAD. Worth checking out IMO.

[Heather]

Eating seasonally (I know, I know, easy to say from a temperate city) seems to help me bring in fall and winter for me. I'm not prone to seasonal issues anyway, but I suspect there's something useful in all those orange squashes, leafy greens, and citrus as well.

I know SAD is a medical issue not to be fixed with such small measures as diet and holiday cheer, but to make the season more welcoming I also like the idea of bringing in holiday cheer, stringing up fairy lights all over, brightening the inside.

[Scotti]

I live in Oregon where, by the time we get to the solstice, it will be dark by 4:30pm. Ugh. That's the worst part of the winter for me.

I've had great success with the GoLite. I bought it at Costco and they have it online for $109 right now - it's very small and super portable. I found it helpful for dealing with jetlag too.
Here's the link - if you're not a Costco member, you pay a slight mark-up but can still order: http://tiny.cc/WHpJQ

I'm also taking Vitamin D these days. Helps!

[MichelleB]

My 1 year old has woken up around 3 am so since I can't sleep after that, I'm exhausted by the end of the day.

But for my recent birthday, my hubby surprised me with a gorgeous pair of diamond earrings from www.idonowidont.com and my bff bought me a new swinging crib for our son.

So I had a great romantic quieter night in with my hubby on my birthday.

[diedre]

My Bugaboo is about to turn 1 and like everyone here- our lives are nuts. Two jobs, one long commute, MBA-seeking night school all equals very little time for much else. And so its weird, I no longer really notice light and dark. Weird, aye? It hit me the other night returning from teh ER (long story) that the baby hasnt seen the dark in her recent memory-which is all she has...and either had I!!! Once she goes to bed I resume working, cooking, laundry, etc. I barely notice if its day, night, warm, cold, etc. I'm so utterly consumed with my tasks that I'm not stopping to smell the flowers or see the light! Although, this morning I did snuggle up by the window and watch the sunrise with The Bugaboo and told her all about what she was seeing. I actually like that she brought sunrises back into my life- i remember thinking that last winter when she was a month old and I was nursing her with the sunrise...if now its only for the 2 minutes I sometimes stop to look at those sunrises.

maybe thats whats really wrong Moxie- you dont have the time to see the sun when its up? sending it your way...

[Dana]

I definitely feel a difference in my own attitude with it getting dark so early (also a NY dweller!). I never realized that I use the sun to gauge where I should be in the dinner/cleanup/bathtime/bedtime schedule!

Oh well, we've got a while to figure it out, right? And that extra hour on Sunday morning? Verrrry nice. We were actually ON TIME for church. Imagine that.

[Maria]

Thank you so much for the reminder that THAT'S what's wrong with me these days! I have plenty of reasons to be legitimately stressed and grumpy (just made an interstate move, followed immediately by a 3 week road trip including 7 full days of driving across the country with a 5 year old - great but, a lot! Also major money worries) but I've been extra cross, extra discouraged, extra totally hair-trigger-tempery for the past 3 days… oh yeah, since the time change. Sheesh sometimes I'm not very bright.

I'm determined to find a way to get a SAD light this year.

[Melba]

I get up in the dark AND I come home from work in the dark. In fact, in December and January if I don't go out at lunchtime I will not see the light of day during the work week. On the shortest day of the year (December 21) the sun doesn't come up until 8:30 or 9:00 and it's down by 4:30. Seriously, it makes me SAD, whether it's actually S.A.D. or just depressing to have so little daytime, I don't really know. But I do feel more tired all winter long.

On the flip side, in June, sun goes down at 11:00 p.m. and rises at 3:00 a.m. So I get all kinds of light then!!

[Pippi]

I was so worried about this last year because my daughter was born at the end of October and I always have trouble during the dark winter months -- and they're especially dark and dreary here in Vancouver. To my surprise being at home with her was so, so easy -- much easier than any other year. I think it's because we went outside every day and could take advantage of the few hours of sun because I didn't have to work (yeah, one year maternity leave is sweet). Now that I'm working part time, I'm trying to get that time in the sun at lunch time or by riding my bike to work. We'll see how it works...

[Caroline]

I grew up in NYC, and moved to San Francisco after college. It took me years to figure out why the light change effected me so much more out here than it had back east. Finally realized that for me, it's because it's the ONLY change the seasons bring. On the east coast, the fact that there was less light was overshadowed by the fact that it was freezing, and vice versa in summer. Out here, where the weather is pretty much the same year-round (OK, it gets a bit cool and it might rain in winter) ALL there is is the light change, and it really got to me.

I'm also a big wake-in-the-dark hater, love my faux-dawn alarm clock.

[ramy]

big hugs to those of you who go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. I've been there and it freaked me out so much I moved to Africa. Unfortunately I had to move back eventually but this time I get to see the sun sometimes.

and big hugs to us all b/c I think we need it!

[e_chendo]

Huge fan, first post: As if it wasn't bad enough that the cats don't grasp the concept of an extra hour before breakfast... Our Boos, 8.5 mo old, had been sleeping from 7-8 p.m. to 5-6 a.m., with a 4 a.m. waking every now and then, which he would make up for by taking an extra-long morning nap. After the time-change, I was so befuddled when I saw 4:50 on our unchanged clock, I told myself 'it's really 5:50' and stumbled into the nursery to find it really was 3:50 a.m.! Arrgghh. Was still pitch-black at this point. I soothed him back to sleep but he woke up as soon as I put him back down in the crib. Tried letting him cry a little while. Was so much easier before he could pull up, cuz now he's liable to slip on his sleepsack and bonk his head, so I usually go get him if he's standing. I ended up curling up inside the babyjail--I mean, gated playyard--as he played away until he wanted to go back to bed. Generally, rejiggering his bedtime doesn't seem to make much difference--my latest working theory is that the later *I* stay up, the earlier he's bound to wake up.

[amy]

I suffer from SAD (so does my mother), along with low-level bi-polar. Gloomy weather puts me in a 'low' cycle, the early darkness makes me want to weep. I work 3-11pm so it's Really Hard to be in a good mood when it's getting dark at 6pm already. Sigh. I just soldier on, soldier on... and remind myself that the times change back in a few months. That and lots of caffeine, and chocolate. Heh.

(Walking the kids to school in the morning helps me with a bright and early dose of natural sunlight, most days).

[Mudhutkenya]

The time change has seriously messed with us, especially since it came right in the middle of the stomach virus (or, as I like to call it, our family puke fest). M. (16 months) was up at 4am Sunday and 3:30 Monday. I was thankful for 4:45 on Tuesday, and now he is back to his unfortunate usual 5:00. I would have tried to put him to bed progressively later and later (or earlier? now I'm confused) but he was sleeping most of the day anyway with being sick. Now if I can just get him back to eating normal again.

[new jordans 2010]

Nous sommes allés à La Zamaan le 19 et ils étaient encore en train de pain livré. Mais le repas a été savoureux et délicieux! Le poulet est cuit à la perfection - en réalité, tout était. Le service n'était pas grande que mentionné dans la revue Nouvelles mais nous n'étions pas pressés pour cela n'avait aucune importance.

[Jun Jun]

I love light therapy products for when I am feeling the Winter blues. They are effective ways to minimize the depression that comes with the changing season. I loved reading this post because I could really relate to what you were saying. Thank you for sharing it.