WESTSIDE — I wish - and I know I’m not the only mom that feels that way - someone would come along and force me to go to bed at 8 p.m.
At the end of a long hard day when there is still three days work left to do before I go to bed, I wouldn’t mind a bit if someone came along and said, “Janelle, it’s time to take a bath and put on your pajamas.”
At 7:30 p.m. they could give me some milk and read me a story. Then when 8 p.m. rolled around, they could say, “Now it’s time to go lay in your bed and turn out the light.”
Then that person could go wash the dishes, do the laundry and pay some bills.
I’m not saying I want to be a kid again, it just seems that at the exact time my body is screaming for some rest, my kids are screaming because they don’t want togo to bed. It’s a little hard not to lay down with them when I tuck them in like they beg me to do, but I would probably fall asleep before they did and then they would be up running around the house unsupervised.
If only tucking them in bed were the end of it! But after the lights are out, it’s, “Mommy, I need a drink ... I know, but I need another one,” or, “Mommy, you forgot to kiss me ... But that kiss didn’t count cause I wasn’t tucked under the covers yet.”
Then there is the classic, “Mommy, I heard a noise;
I think there’s a bear in my closet; I’m scared; I need to sleep with you.”
And if all else fails, they can just plain scream and wail, “I’m not tired (sob, sob, sob, scream); I don’t want to go to bed!”
I know my family isn’t the only one struggling to get back into the routine of an eight o’clock bedtime now that school has started. If my children go to bed late, at 9 p.m., or even 8:30 p.m., it makes a huge difference in their attitude the next morning.
On the third day of school my four-year-old son, who just started prekindergarten, said, “I want to go to school, but my eyes won’t let me wake up.”
And I know a good night’s sleep is important to their performance in school, but it isn’t easy to go to bed when there is still light coming through the window after a long summer of late evenings spent catching fireflies in the backyard and lazy relaxed mornings.
When I was a kid, I thought sleep was a boring interruption of my play time. Now sleep is a precious commodity that sometimes has to be put on the back burner so everything else can get done.
I even get a little jealous of the cat. Cats just don’t have stress. That might not be entirely true - wild or stray cats living on the street probably have stress- but my cat does not have stress, period. I get up early in the morning and the cat is sleeping on the bed. I rush around and get the kids off to school and the cat hasn’t moved. I work all day, go to a meeting in the evening and come home, and there is the cat sleeping in exactly the same spot, in exactly the same position that I left her.
Now that might sound like a boring life, but I don’t think I would mind trying it for a couple days at least.
Janelle Jessen is a reporter and staff writer for the Westside Eagle Observer She may be reached by email at jjessen @ nwaonline.com.
Opinion, Pages 7 on 09/15/2010