Daylight savings time messes with sleep

Since we’ve sprung forward with daylight savings time I’ve enjoyed having another hour of sunlight at the end of my day, but the beginning of the days have been rough.

First off, I can never seem to wake up if it’s dark outside. I need some daylight otherwise my body just doesn’t want to get moving. With clocks pushed forward an hour, I’m trying to wake up when it’s pitch black outside, and it’s not working so well.

This is all compounded by the fact that our son has no concept of daylight savings time, so his sleep rhythms have gone unchanged. There is nothing wrong with that, but now they match up poorly with our sleep schedule.

Previously he would wake up two hours before I was set to rise in the morning. I would also wake up at this point for a few minutes and doze back off for a couple hours before starting my day. Now, he wakes up an hour before my alarm is set to go off and I only doze back off for another 45 minutes. I feel as though I no sooner fall asleep than my alarm is going off, so I’m a little on the tired side since the change over. Frankly I’m dragging and crabby.

If you’re like me and you or your kids are having trouble adjusting, About.com has a helpful article about adjusting sleep schedules with respect to a time change. The National Sleep Foundation website, http://www.sleepfoundation.org, is also a great resource for sleep-related issues.

No matter what approach you take, your child will adjust to the time change within a few days to a week:

* Maintain your child’s regular sleep, wake and nap times. Try not to compensate for the lost hour by delaying bedtime or allowing your child to sleep in. This will increase the time it takes to transition. There may be some crankiness from being tired, but this should last only a day or two.

* Make gradual adjustments. Some parents find it is best to try to start making adjustments on Saturday night rather than wait until Sunday, a school night. You might even want to try making a slow transition starting on Thursday night before the time change, moving your child’s bedtime earlier by 15 minutes each night. By Sunday night you will be right back on schedule.

Now for parents, who, like their children, can also experience sleep loss and schedule disruptions because of the time change. As many parents know, additional sleep deprivation is not something they can afford. NSF (National Sleep Foundation) polls reveal that most adults already get less than the recommended seven to nine hours of nightly sleep needed to be fully alert the next day. “Too many people will sacrifice yet another hour of sleep when the clocks change – an hour they cannot afford to lose, particularly on the weekend, when people try to catch up on the sleep they missed during the week,” said Richard Gelula, NSF’s executive director.