Rock around the clock

We are a house divided: two against two. Our five-year-old son and I are naturally early risers while my husband and our three-year-old daughter are night owls.

The kids have the same bedtime, but they definitely don’t go to sleep at the same time — or wake up at the same time — and that was causing some problems in our house!

Our son immediately snuggles up in what he calls his “cosy bed.” He has two pillows and the one with the crayon pillowcase must be stacked below the blue pillowcase. He likes the blankets to be arranged smoothly, in the proper order, with the airplane decal on the top blanket on the left-hand side of the bed. He sometimes turns on his lamp and “reads” for a while, but he’s usually asleep very quickly.

Our daughter? Couldn’t be more different. First of all, her bed is a disaster and that’s how she likes it: four or five mini-quilts in a heap, numerous dolls and stuffies (and doll clothing wadded up here and there), flashlights, books, hard plastic Happy Meal toys that I certainly wouldn’t want to roll onto. I have tried emptying her bed but she piles it all back in, like a tiny hoarder.

I usually have to tuck her in several times in a row because she darts out of bed for a drink of water, to pee, to fetch yet another doll, to get a pair of socks, or to put on a sweatshirt. I go downstairs and hear her little feet thudding around the top level. I walk upstairs and she races back to bed when she hears me — waking her brother in the process. Her eyes are bright and she’s not sleepy. So she gets back up, more quietly, and plays with her dollhouse for God knows how long.

True story: we bought a two-way baby monitor recently just so we could tell her to GET BACK TO BED without having to walk up two flights of stairs.

In the morning, though, the tables are turned. Our daughter is snoring away when our son pops out of bed — almost exactly the same time, to the minute, like a miniature Sheldon Cooper. He walks into our bedroom cheerfully and asks if it’s time to go downstairs yet when there are HOURS to go until we need to be at the bus stop. Uggghhh.

Not only was he waking us up, but he was waking up Cranky Little Sister Who Needed More Sleep — and that REALLY wasn’t cool.

We tried putting a digital clock in his room and setting a soft radio alarm so he’d know he couldn’t get up until he heard the music. Well, the kid has hearing loss so he kept *thinking* the music was playing when it wasn’t — that clearly didn’t work.

We considered buying one of those fancy kid-clocks that changes colour when it’s time to get up, but I wasn’t up for paying $75 plus tax and shipping. Then the clocks went back and he was suddenly getting up even earlier and I was willing to pay much, much more.

In the end, we taught him to look at the first number of the clock. If it was a six, he could come out of his room. (We didn’t emphasise the importance of looking at the “first” number, originally, and he proudly woke me up at 4:46 because “the clock says six.”)

It’s been working out well, and it was a free solution since we already owned the clock. He knows to tiptoe to our room (not a running tiptoe, not an exaggerated tiptoe, not a giggling tip-toe) and open the door a crack. The tiptoeing is important because it lets Princess Night Owl get her much-needed rest.

If it’s after 6 a.m., I’ll give him a thumbs up and he’ll take the iPad back to his bed to watch Netflix. If I’ve gotten up at 5 a.m. to write, I’ll leave the iPad near the door and he’s on his honour to take it after 6 a.m. (Don’t worry, I can hear from downstairs if he’s trying to sneak it early.)

Just like my husband can’t fall asleep before 1 a.m. and I often feel alert at 4:30 a.m., our kids are very different people with different internal clocks. We’re not going to fight it when our daughter stays up playing in her room — as long as she’s not waking her brother — and we’re not going to fight our son from waking up earlier than necessary — as long as he’s not waking his sister. As long as they both get enough sleep, it’s all good.

(And there’s no way I’m paying $200+ for two colour-changing clocks!)

Heather Laura Clarke is a freelance journalist who married her high-school sweetheart. They moved from the city to the country, where they spend their days chasing their spirited five-year-old son and sassy three-year-old daughter. Follow their family’s adventures over at at: www.LaptopstoLullabies.com.