The Sleep-In Debate

How late do you let your teenagers sleep in during Summer Vacation?

This is a battle I've had for a very long time...my oldest teen is 19.  It's a battle I feel no more equipped to tackle now than I did when she was 12 or 13.

I get it that time clocks are different for everybody.  That some people are natural risers, and that others are night owls.  I even get it that there is a proven physiological need for teenagers to get more sleep.  But something's gotta give.

Back when I was a teen, when I walked uphill to and from school barefoot in melted asphalt (I grew up in the I.E.), there is no way Sharron Tisor would stand for any of us sleeping the day away.  I somehow remember doing it from time to time, but it was under rare circumstances.  Rare, rare circumstances.

Just ask my sisters and brother.  It would be a BLESSED Saturday.  We would be in our rooms, in our beds, enjoying the day off from school.  We'd wake up to the sound the the vacuum.  Faint at first, off in the distance, then louder, and louder, until finally we would hear the sound of it "bumping,"our bedroom doors.  Voom-bump.  Voom-bump.  Voom-bump.  Out of bed we'd finally climb, rubbing our eyes, and in need of the bathroom.  Our mom would say something about how it was good that we were finally up, about how we had...and I'll say it again, "slept the day away," and about how she had already done 4 loads of laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, prepped tonight's dinner, washed the cars, trimmed the hedges, and hosed-off the patio.  Oh.  And vacuumed.

My husband says she wakes the Marines.

And this isn't about me not being able to sleep in as a youth, so therefore I feel the need to keep my children down and repressed.  On the contrary.  But, speaking of the Marines...

Think about every military branch throughout the whole world.  Is there one who lets their service-members have a lazy wake-up day?  Do you not see, in your store of mental images, a bugle waking up neat, t-shirt donned boot-campers to a standing attention at dawn?

It's discipline.  It's routine.  But am I being militant about it?

That's my problem.  I vacillate from one side to the other.  From the mom who remembers the joy of sleeping in, the mom who understands the need for these guys to be able to sleep in, to the mom who doesn't want to have her children grow up to be the people who wear their Christmas Sponge Bob flannel pajama bottoms to Wal-Mart.  At 2:00 in the afternoon.  In August.

So where do I give?  Do I give?  Will they eat me alive if I give?  Or if I don't give, will they eat me alive anyway?

I have every answer, really.  On every side.  Sadly, I come away just as confused.  But I have to have a plan.

So, this is what I've come up with.  How about a posted calendar, where each kid gets the opportunity to claim a sleep-in day once in a while.  But they log it.  They mark it on the calendar, and if they find, or if their siblings find, or if Hugo and I find that there are too many liberties taken, then they prove their need to be reeled-in.

OK.  So far, so good.  Liberal, but with order.

During the summer, wake-up time will be between 9:00 and 9:30.  An occasional sleep-in day later than 9:00 or 9:30 cannot be met with complaints that the house is too noisy.  You have a big family.  Tough.

I have to manage this bunch, and I can't have the early risers' right to a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed start to their day compromised by siblings who question the "good," in good-morning.

And finally, if I need to vacuum, and they're in bed, I reserve the right to Voom-bump to my heart's content.

Perfect.