This story resonated with me deeply but also helped me reflect on how much my personal bedtime torture has progressed. This time last year my husband sent me out of the house one night during bedtime so a) we could prove to my younger son he could in fact get to bed without me and b) I could get a break from wanting to kill him/myself every night when the bedtime process passed the two hour mark. Earlier this week I went out at 7 pm and this very same son told my husband, “I don’t care who puts me to bed!” It’s obnoxious to hear it gets better when you’re in thick of combat but man, it feels GREAT when you realize it actually has.
seriously! TWO HOURS. What kind of actual angel could be patient that long!
Tangentially related I did a story awhile back on how the only way some moms could do the final leg of sleep training/cry-it-out was for them to go out of town so they wouldn't have to listen to it while their partners did the hard stuff, which I feel like doctors should PRESCRIBE.
This made laugh so hard because for me replace “bedtime” with “bathtime”. I will literally do anything to get out of bathtime. Wash the windows? Fold laundry? Write meeting notes? ANYTHING. Why would anyone want to wrestle two wriggling rats out of water that could potentially kill them while they’re screaming they hate you and getting soaked in the process. My husband doesn’t get it so I’m like get in there bro, but of course he doesn’t really want to take over. My kids are therefore somewhat not as clean as they should be 🫣
I folded my laundry last night while my husband heckled our kids into bed! (Our bedtimes are pretty chill these days, but folding laundry is still easier!)
Now *you're* the person who should be writing a kid sleep book! That's the model parents need, not someone who's going to tell you their ten step plan that ends with lying in the dark next to their kid for hours until they're totally asleep!
She did not like that I had no patience for her time wasting in the bath. She did not like that I would not participate in elaborate nonsensical bathing rituals that changed every few days. I did “everything wrong” so hard that she said I was fired and I embraced that as legally binding.
I still think of my mom suggesting that a warm nightly bath would help our 37 week old get on a sleep schedule. Like he barely just grew some skin, give me a break.
Last night my son said he didn't want to take a bath after soccer practice. It was cold and windy, so we didn't really get sweaty and I was like, "whatever, I'm not going to force you, your body, your choice." Which will probably bite me in the butt at some point, but yay for no bath time!
(Side note, when do kids start bathing themselves?)
From 18-36 months bathtime was the literal worst hour of my week. Especially because it was also the time I changed the compression sheet (aka the “bed condom”) that my kid needed to sleep. I may have almost murdered my husband the day he complained that I was “hogging” bath time, because apparently I was supposed to engrave him an invitation or something to my weekly torture session. (It is better now.)
I feel your fury. So many times when my kids were little, I would yell "we have been parents THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME!" I mean, I might still yell this, tbh.
Wait, did you… did you change the compression sheet NIGHTLY?! I consider my kid lucky if that thing gets changed in their loft bed once a month. It’s like putting pantyhose on a mattress!
(I had to change it way more frequently in the era of leaky pull-ups, including more than once at 3 am, but we do not speak of those times.)
I usually wash their sheets a few weeks after realizing that they have visible stains and I should do it. My kind aunt just picked up my kid's comforter to repair and I cringe thinking about how many nosebleed stains she'll have to navigate.
Ha, yes, "a few weeks after discovering visible stains" is my M.O. as well.
We have sheets from Target that are white with little brown dinosaurs all over them and I swear they hide nosebleed stains better than anything I could have designed for that exact purpose.
Oh I absolutely deeded bath time and all bedtime rituals except breastfeeding (the rats refused bottles) to my husband in exchange for doing the dishes (we had a "I cook, you clean" arrangement before kids; now it's "I cook, they clean"). Best decision of my life.
I scammed my way out of bedtime early. When our daughter was born, I read a bunch of advice saying that the dad should take on at least one thing and make it solely his own. This is good for parenting confidence, child bonding, whatever. Since I’m a SAHM and he works long hours, we decided that bedtime would be his domain. It’s bliss.
this is how I know that I live in a bubble with only othe rwitchy moms/parents... the idea that anyone would WANT to do bedtime is crazy to me???? I am an aggressive morning person and will get up with a kid at 5am any day. but 7-9pm???? YOU ARE STEALING FROM ME is CORRECT
Yes! I had no idea this was a thing for me to feel guilty about, other than because I'm supposed to feel guilty about everything. Mine are 13 and almost 11, so they handle it all themselves now except for a quick tuck-in, but my younger one does spend maybe 2/7 nights in our bed (including last night) because he's scared. And guess what? I don't miss the elaborate bedtime days!
My 7 yo had the nerve to get snippy about how long she WAITED for me to come upstairs to start books last night after she had finished brushing teeth. Little does she know how petty a bitch I really am! I’ve been tracking every minute she spends faffing about at bedtime and plan to repay the favor in the future, probably when she’s a preteen and wants me to drive her somewhere. Reclaiming my time!!!
When my kid was a toddler, I used to dream about a future where he would make me a meal and I would look him in the eye and throw it out the ground piece by piece.
When mine were newborns, I would fantasize about waking them up at 2am when they were teenagers. Just walking in there, flipping on the lights, and bursting into tears.
Since this is a locked thread I can share the psychological bedtime torture that our toddler inflicted on us for what felt like an eternity (but was more like 6 harrowing weeks--he fact that it seems to be truly over now is the other reason I can talk about it). In the course of practicing the kind of bodily awareness/control that comes with potty training, our kid developed a habit of waiting until he was actually in bed, then yelling (accurately) "I HAVE A POOPY DIAPER!!!!!" It did not matter how long we let him sit on the toilet beforehand. It did not matter whether, or how much, he already pooped!! (Which was kind of impressive, except for how it was the most annoying fucking thing of all time.) It also varied in how long he'd wait before summoning back for the dipe change--sometimes it was the instant we closed the door, & sometimes it was like an hour later, after we thought maybe we'd gotten a reprieve. There are many other past behavior phases I do not miss, but that nonsense is by far my least favorite thing I've ever had to deal with as a parent. I cannot stress enough: EVERY. NIGHT.
I feel so much lighter...which is unfortunate given the subject at hand.
(Seriously, though, not to get too TMI, but can you imagine *saving* some poop in reserve after you've already gone? Not just once but on a regular [heh] basis?? And as someone who's relatively new to the whole "controlling one's excretory functions" game??? My spouse & I spent a lot of time marveling at this feat of will & physical prowess.)
I have tried and failed to explain to non-parent friends the tyranny of bedtime and just haven’t managed to do it adequately. It’s not even the specific details (/horror stories) of how it goes down (melatonin helps a lot here, too) - it’s that bedtime is EVERY FUCKING NIGHT and it has to happen, at the same fucking time (for my kids, at least). There are no rest days. You’ve just signed up for several hours of your day to suck EVERY DAY, in perpetuity. And then you’re gaslit by people telling you that these are supposed to be magical bonding moments? No, thank you.
(Every so often there’s like, 20 seconds of bedtime that is very sweet but it mostly serves to highlight how stressful the rest of it is.)
I mean, it would have to be! Can you imagine having the privilege to be ambivalent about bedtime? And by 'privilege' I mean round-the-clock nannies.
(...now I'm envisioning what it must be like to have a nanny at 2 am when the baby is screaming and then the big kid wakes up and needs to pee but will only do it if someone is holding their hand so one parent is shushing and bouncing while the other transforms into an emotional support potty animal and... yes, very jealous.)
I know, when I started envisioning that I was wondering how many of those women think they are missing something good b/c they're not familiar with what bedtime actually is and the baby thinks the nanny is mom. Meanwhile the nanny is like when will death come
The worst part about bedtime is that it WAS magical for my kid between 8 weeks and 15 months. He rocked in my arms, had a bottle went to sleep and was placed in the crib. It was the best part of my day and one of the happiest parts of my life. Then…. ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. Now at 5.5 we have a hard won peace and a routine that takes two parents and occasionally a literal song and dance. It’s not terrible mostly because I REFUSE to sit and watch him try to fall asleep, so I guess I can live with needing to walk upstairs and say “go to sleep” a couple of times a night.
One thing I am glad about is that they know dad is the man if they need someone to scratch a back and soothe them before they go to bed. Mom(my) don't play that.
Ohhhh the bedtime rigmarole. I have the theory that how cute they are after they're asleep is inversely proportional to how wildly annoying they are before sleep.
Incidentally well done everyone for not talking about the comments on that Cut article! Blimey the knives were out for parents who didn't slam the door in their kids' faces at 7:30pm after a chapter of Oliver Twist and a brisk handshake.
“Bedtime’s press person probably works for the same firm as Big Dinner. Beware false advertising!” Lolol yeeeeees. (Also yes to that footnote! Happens a lot with grandmothers 👎🏽👎🏽 who, to be fair, aren’t getting paid properly which is maybe the whole problem.) I am a PUDDLE at bedtime and can’t even believe some people like it! It’s so far out of my universe that you could be anything but an exhausted gremlin by the time you’re supposed to chase those suckers to bed. I will miss how cute they are in pjs but I will never miss bedtime, ever.😇🐍
For years (literal years!) we had to give our kids melatonin, load them both in the car, drive for up to an hour until they fell asleep, then carry them into our apartment and place them in their beds. Sometimes they woke up after that. Even though they're way better now and don't need a drive, I still get a bolt of dread every night at 7:30 when they take their gummies.
The thing people tell you about babies but forget to tell you about kids is that things will be rough, then better, then rough again. It's like they think once you get past toddler stage, the kid is the same forever. Get sleep down by 3 or 4 and they'll go to bed well from there on out--HA. I hate losing my entire evening every night--I'm the family cook and the bedtime person. Part of me like bedtime because I like reading books with my daughters, 7 and 10. The rest of me hates the endless nagging to pick up clothes, put on pjs, did you remember to brush your teeth, E. you haven't brushed your hair yet, and on and on. The older one is focused and remembers to do all the stuff and now that's she is learning to take out her (medically necessary) contact lenses, I don't feel like she is stealing my time, but the younger one needs constant surveillance to get all the stuff done. My husband would probably do bedtime more often but then the part of it I like gets interrupted--the book reading--as they want him to read something different so I don't miss any of the chapters of the books we are reading together.
I don't hate bedtime in the moment, I despise the fact that every night I lose the time between 8-9:30 and emerge from it desperately ready to fall asleep.
The time that we came home at 11 from a night out to find that my mom had failed to get the kids to sleep was the night I almost decided we were going to put her in a home eventually. The next time they were asleep so I have since changed my mind.
We have a boy babysitter who is a ton of fun but maybe a little bit too much fun. I have learned that we have to spell so many things out for him. Like throw away the Jimmy John’s wrapper. Turn off the light when you put the boys to bed.
Any parent who likes bedtime is a liar or still pregnant.
or a grandparent who forgot
No way. Grandparents hate it too. Except for my mil and her print out of Catholic prayers.
This story resonated with me deeply but also helped me reflect on how much my personal bedtime torture has progressed. This time last year my husband sent me out of the house one night during bedtime so a) we could prove to my younger son he could in fact get to bed without me and b) I could get a break from wanting to kill him/myself every night when the bedtime process passed the two hour mark. Earlier this week I went out at 7 pm and this very same son told my husband, “I don’t care who puts me to bed!” It’s obnoxious to hear it gets better when you’re in thick of combat but man, it feels GREAT when you realize it actually has.
seriously! TWO HOURS. What kind of actual angel could be patient that long!
Tangentially related I did a story awhile back on how the only way some moms could do the final leg of sleep training/cry-it-out was for them to go out of town so they wouldn't have to listen to it while their partners did the hard stuff, which I feel like doctors should PRESCRIBE.
This made laugh so hard because for me replace “bedtime” with “bathtime”. I will literally do anything to get out of bathtime. Wash the windows? Fold laundry? Write meeting notes? ANYTHING. Why would anyone want to wrestle two wriggling rats out of water that could potentially kill them while they’re screaming they hate you and getting soaked in the process. My husband doesn’t get it so I’m like get in there bro, but of course he doesn’t really want to take over. My kids are therefore somewhat not as clean as they should be 🫣
When folding three baskets of laundry seems like an actual vacation in comparison
I folded my laundry last night while my husband heckled our kids into bed! (Our bedtimes are pretty chill these days, but folding laundry is still easier!)
💯
A few years ago (4?) the 7 year old fired me from bedtime, and it might be my greatest parenting achievement.
You Constanza’ed your way out of that!
Now *you're* the person who should be writing a kid sleep book! That's the model parents need, not someone who's going to tell you their ten step plan that ends with lying in the dark next to their kid for hours until they're totally asleep!
I want to know more.
She did not like that I had no patience for her time wasting in the bath. She did not like that I would not participate in elaborate nonsensical bathing rituals that changed every few days. I did “everything wrong” so hard that she said I was fired and I embraced that as legally binding.
yeah, right? don't hold out, give us these servicey tips
These parents who are like "oh yes we do a calming bath every night before bed." Um, WHAT?! *EVERY* NIGHT?! How? Why? I could never!
I still think of my mom suggesting that a warm nightly bath would help our 37 week old get on a sleep schedule. Like he barely just grew some skin, give me a break.
Last night my son said he didn't want to take a bath after soccer practice. It was cold and windy, so we didn't really get sweaty and I was like, "whatever, I'm not going to force you, your body, your choice." Which will probably bite me in the butt at some point, but yay for no bath time!
(Side note, when do kids start bathing themselves?)
Probably when they realize they can fuck around a little bit more when they’re not being supervised.
From 18-36 months bathtime was the literal worst hour of my week. Especially because it was also the time I changed the compression sheet (aka the “bed condom”) that my kid needed to sleep. I may have almost murdered my husband the day he complained that I was “hogging” bath time, because apparently I was supposed to engrave him an invitation or something to my weekly torture session. (It is better now.)
I feel your fury. So many times when my kids were little, I would yell "we have been parents THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME!" I mean, I might still yell this, tbh.
Omg, please good sir - do wash our child 🫣
bath hog!!! lol
Wait, did you… did you change the compression sheet NIGHTLY?! I consider my kid lucky if that thing gets changed in their loft bed once a month. It’s like putting pantyhose on a mattress!
(I had to change it way more frequently in the era of leaky pull-ups, including more than once at 3 am, but we do not speak of those times.)
Oh god no. I just only bathed the kid once a week during lockdown.
Ah, yes, that’s our normal. (*whispers* But I still don’t change the sheets weekly. 😣)
I usually wash their sheets a few weeks after realizing that they have visible stains and I should do it. My kind aunt just picked up my kid's comforter to repair and I cringe thinking about how many nosebleed stains she'll have to navigate.
Ha, yes, "a few weeks after discovering visible stains" is my M.O. as well.
We have sheets from Target that are white with little brown dinosaurs all over them and I swear they hide nosebleed stains better than anything I could have designed for that exact purpose.
Oh I absolutely deeded bath time and all bedtime rituals except breastfeeding (the rats refused bottles) to my husband in exchange for doing the dishes (we had a "I cook, you clean" arrangement before kids; now it's "I cook, they clean"). Best decision of my life.
NGL, there have been times I’ve fantasized of just yeeting the child into the room, locking the door, and running away.
I wish you could put gifs in Substack comments b/c here'd leave the one of Rafiki tossing Simba over the cliff.
I scammed my way out of bedtime early. When our daughter was born, I read a bunch of advice saying that the dad should take on at least one thing and make it solely his own. This is good for parenting confidence, child bonding, whatever. Since I’m a SAHM and he works long hours, we decided that bedtime would be his domain. It’s bliss.
You should write a book on this!!!! I would buy it. Even if it was just one page.
This was our deal too! I refused to nurse them to sleep, so I would nurse them, and hand them off to him for bath/bedtime routine.
this is how I know that I live in a bubble with only othe rwitchy moms/parents... the idea that anyone would WANT to do bedtime is crazy to me???? I am an aggressive morning person and will get up with a kid at 5am any day. but 7-9pm???? YOU ARE STEALING FROM ME is CORRECT
Yes! I had no idea this was a thing for me to feel guilty about, other than because I'm supposed to feel guilty about everything. Mine are 13 and almost 11, so they handle it all themselves now except for a quick tuck-in, but my younger one does spend maybe 2/7 nights in our bed (including last night) because he's scared. And guess what? I don't miss the elaborate bedtime days!
My 7 yo had the nerve to get snippy about how long she WAITED for me to come upstairs to start books last night after she had finished brushing teeth. Little does she know how petty a bitch I really am! I’ve been tracking every minute she spends faffing about at bedtime and plan to repay the favor in the future, probably when she’s a preteen and wants me to drive her somewhere. Reclaiming my time!!!
When my kid was a toddler, I used to dream about a future where he would make me a meal and I would look him in the eye and throw it out the ground piece by piece.
When mine were newborns, I would fantasize about waking them up at 2am when they were teenagers. Just walking in there, flipping on the lights, and bursting into tears.
just another year or two !
Lolol
i am literally crying laughing at this image-i love it
Put me in the “will do nearly anything to get out of bedtime” camp and leave me there.
🤗 🏕️
Since this is a locked thread I can share the psychological bedtime torture that our toddler inflicted on us for what felt like an eternity (but was more like 6 harrowing weeks--he fact that it seems to be truly over now is the other reason I can talk about it). In the course of practicing the kind of bodily awareness/control that comes with potty training, our kid developed a habit of waiting until he was actually in bed, then yelling (accurately) "I HAVE A POOPY DIAPER!!!!!" It did not matter how long we let him sit on the toilet beforehand. It did not matter whether, or how much, he already pooped!! (Which was kind of impressive, except for how it was the most annoying fucking thing of all time.) It also varied in how long he'd wait before summoning back for the dipe change--sometimes it was the instant we closed the door, & sometimes it was like an hour later, after we thought maybe we'd gotten a reprieve. There are many other past behavior phases I do not miss, but that nonsense is by far my least favorite thing I've ever had to deal with as a parent. I cannot stress enough: EVERY. NIGHT.
Let it out, Court!! Man I remember that feeling of the post-putdown shit. Like Lucy pulling back the football on Charlie Brown.
I feel so much lighter...which is unfortunate given the subject at hand.
(Seriously, though, not to get too TMI, but can you imagine *saving* some poop in reserve after you've already gone? Not just once but on a regular [heh] basis?? And as someone who's relatively new to the whole "controlling one's excretory functions" game??? My spouse & I spent a lot of time marveling at this feat of will & physical prowess.)
I have tried and failed to explain to non-parent friends the tyranny of bedtime and just haven’t managed to do it adequately. It’s not even the specific details (/horror stories) of how it goes down (melatonin helps a lot here, too) - it’s that bedtime is EVERY FUCKING NIGHT and it has to happen, at the same fucking time (for my kids, at least). There are no rest days. You’ve just signed up for several hours of your day to suck EVERY DAY, in perpetuity. And then you’re gaslit by people telling you that these are supposed to be magical bonding moments? No, thank you.
(Every so often there’s like, 20 seconds of bedtime that is very sweet but it mostly serves to highlight how stressful the rest of it is.)
Did you ever notice it’s like really successful rich women who lament not putting their kids to bed?
I mean, it would have to be! Can you imagine having the privilege to be ambivalent about bedtime? And by 'privilege' I mean round-the-clock nannies.
(...now I'm envisioning what it must be like to have a nanny at 2 am when the baby is screaming and then the big kid wakes up and needs to pee but will only do it if someone is holding their hand so one parent is shushing and bouncing while the other transforms into an emotional support potty animal and... yes, very jealous.)
emotional support potty animal 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I know, when I started envisioning that I was wondering how many of those women think they are missing something good b/c they're not familiar with what bedtime actually is and the baby thinks the nanny is mom. Meanwhile the nanny is like when will death come
The worst part about bedtime is that it WAS magical for my kid between 8 weeks and 15 months. He rocked in my arms, had a bottle went to sleep and was placed in the crib. It was the best part of my day and one of the happiest parts of my life. Then…. ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. Now at 5.5 we have a hard won peace and a routine that takes two parents and occasionally a literal song and dance. It’s not terrible mostly because I REFUSE to sit and watch him try to fall asleep, so I guess I can live with needing to walk upstairs and say “go to sleep” a couple of times a night.
One thing I am glad about is that they know dad is the man if they need someone to scratch a back and soothe them before they go to bed. Mom(my) don't play that.
Ohhhh the bedtime rigmarole. I have the theory that how cute they are after they're asleep is inversely proportional to how wildly annoying they are before sleep.
Incidentally well done everyone for not talking about the comments on that Cut article! Blimey the knives were out for parents who didn't slam the door in their kids' faces at 7:30pm after a chapter of Oliver Twist and a brisk handshake.
The Cut knows those parenting articles get people going that's for sure and I hate that I totally fall for it!
“Bedtime’s press person probably works for the same firm as Big Dinner. Beware false advertising!” Lolol yeeeeees. (Also yes to that footnote! Happens a lot with grandmothers 👎🏽👎🏽 who, to be fair, aren’t getting paid properly which is maybe the whole problem.) I am a PUDDLE at bedtime and can’t even believe some people like it! It’s so far out of my universe that you could be anything but an exhausted gremlin by the time you’re supposed to chase those suckers to bed. I will miss how cute they are in pjs but I will never miss bedtime, ever.😇🐍
For years (literal years!) we had to give our kids melatonin, load them both in the car, drive for up to an hour until they fell asleep, then carry them into our apartment and place them in their beds. Sometimes they woke up after that. Even though they're way better now and don't need a drive, I still get a bolt of dread every night at 7:30 when they take their gummies.
The thing people tell you about babies but forget to tell you about kids is that things will be rough, then better, then rough again. It's like they think once you get past toddler stage, the kid is the same forever. Get sleep down by 3 or 4 and they'll go to bed well from there on out--HA. I hate losing my entire evening every night--I'm the family cook and the bedtime person. Part of me like bedtime because I like reading books with my daughters, 7 and 10. The rest of me hates the endless nagging to pick up clothes, put on pjs, did you remember to brush your teeth, E. you haven't brushed your hair yet, and on and on. The older one is focused and remembers to do all the stuff and now that's she is learning to take out her (medically necessary) contact lenses, I don't feel like she is stealing my time, but the younger one needs constant surveillance to get all the stuff done. My husband would probably do bedtime more often but then the part of it I like gets interrupted--the book reading--as they want him to read something different so I don't miss any of the chapters of the books we are reading together.
I don't hate bedtime in the moment, I despise the fact that every night I lose the time between 8-9:30 and emerge from it desperately ready to fall asleep.
The time that we came home at 11 from a night out to find that my mom had failed to get the kids to sleep was the night I almost decided we were going to put her in a home eventually. The next time they were asleep so I have since changed my mind.
We have a boy babysitter who is a ton of fun but maybe a little bit too much fun. I have learned that we have to spell so many things out for him. Like throw away the Jimmy John’s wrapper. Turn off the light when you put the boys to bed.