I just finished listening to Sarah Parent’s podcast on unschooling sleep, which was great. I wanted to talk briefly about unschooling and sleep while it is fresh in my mind.
I think one of the most asked questions I get from mainstream parents is, ‘how do you get your son to sleep that long?’ or ‘…to sleep until XXX?’ My quick answer is always, ‘I don’t force him to bed at 7pm (or any arbitrary time).’ This seems like sound logic to me. The question askers either admit that it is crazy to be doing the insane things they do to try and force their kiddos to bed at 7, 8 and 9pm, just to turn around and bitch about having to wake up at 5am with them — Or they complain that they would never get anything done, or have free time/sex time or just fill in the blank with whatever-you-want-time!
Sometimes the people doing the asking have kids in daycare/school or are planning on having them enrolled in one of those in the near future and they can’t see how respected sleep cycles and structured institutions can mesh well. Well, they don’t mesh well. Yet another reason to add to your list of pros and cons when deciding whether or not to force your children into a setting they might not want to be in…especially when you have options (I didn’t say stress-free options) to not ‘have to’ force them into school/daycare. How important is subjecting a child to school, if they can’t even have freedom when it comes to their personal body and cycles? Maybe there are those out there who don’t see it as forcing, because they just see school as ‘unavoidable’, so their kids just have to get used to it.
Do you enjoy or would you enjoy someone else informing you when you are tired and when to go to bed? Are you currently in a situation where you ‘have to’ go to bed at a certain time, because you ‘have to’ get up at a certain time? Thankfully, children don’t ‘have to’ go to school.
Up until this last year & a half, I know that I was like most parents when it came to bed time. I rarely forced my son to bed, but it was clear that when I chose the time (which was not consistent) that was it. Now, unlike most parents, we are co-sleepers (only part-time since about 2 1/2 years ago) and I would have never let Elijah ‘cry-it-out’. I usually laid there with him until he fell asleep. It was still coercion, but better than most. Now, it’s been more of, ‘Now is the time for me to read to you, if you want me to read and for daddy & I to have some time alone. You can quietly play your Leapster or read/play in your room until you go to sleep. Here’s some water, a snack and some love.’
Does that mean I don’t still have nights where I am about to cry or scream, because E is so tired that he’s fighting it with every ounce of his body? No. But, I try to remember that it will pass and I try to help him get what he needs so that he can calm down inside. Trial and error some nights, but most are quite uneventful.
I know in the past on this blog someone mentioned in the comments that their child wasn’t able to regulate their own sleep cycles, because when the commenter ‘let’ her do it, she stayed up for many days in a row with no sleep and didn’t eat well and etc. Apparently, she ended up getting really sick. Now, I don’t know all the factors involved with this particular situation, but it sounds like what I have heard described by several parents as to what happened to them during the de-schooling or unschooling of sleep period with their children. Their children went from having bedtime be this truly painful event to completely rebelling against it, pushing past physically acceptable boundaries and then they did eventually come back down to their own autonomous sleep cycles. They were only able to find their own cycles, because their parents guided & supported them through this de-schooling period. Ridding one’s life of forced and coerced traditions, cycles and experiences is often painful, debilitating and scary as hell.
I have some more links to share with you about sleep, children and unschooling:
Sandra Dodd on Sleeping
Sandra Dodd on Bedtimes
What do you mean no bedtimes?
What are your thoughts on sleep? Do you have problems with sleep now as an adult, because of how sleep with forced on you as a child? Are you struggling through the rebellious de-schooling part of unschooling sleep?
