If you’re new to this blog, please don’t take this post as representative of the whole! Usually my posts have more of a point and are easier to understand – I hope.
The clocks went forward last night. This usually means that you lose an hour’s sleep, because if you usually get up at 9am on a Sunday morning, you have to get up at 8am (which has now become 9am). I remember this being an issue when I was younger – I would spend the next week feeling tired, thinking ‘I want my hour back!’
However, we’ve noticed something since having children, which has taken a few years to grasp but I think we’re there now. When the clocks go forward, we actually don’t lose an hour any more. We might even gain one. Let me explain:
Our children are our alarm clock. They usually ‘go off’ between 6am and 7am. Let’s call that 6.30. This morning, they didn’t wake up an hour earlier just because the clocks changed. They didn’t know the clocks had changed. So they woke up at the same time, which is now 7.30am. So if anything, it feels like we’ve been given a lie in! And better still, even when we put them to bed tonight at 7pm, which will only feel like 6pm, they will probably wake around 7am or even later, because that’s the time they’re used to waking up. (Have I lost you yet? Probably – sorry).
So I suppose one thing to take away from this is that in Autumn when the clocks go back and everyone else we know gains an hour’s sleep but we feel we’ve been cheated out of an hour’s sleep, we can remember that in the Spring, the opposite happens and we sort of gain an hour when everyone else is losing one.
Yes, having children does make everything topsy-turvy – and sometimes it’s for the better!
Mum in Zone One 