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I’m really over this messing with the clock nonsense. And, since I’m over it, it’s time for it to stop.

When I was a kid, I had a friend who had a sleepover on the weekend of the change. We loved getting an extra hour at her party. Messing with the clocks was a good thing.

In my late teens and twenties, I loved the extra hour. I’d get up at my regular Sunday morning time just slightly more rested. Messing with the clocks was a good thing.

But then in my thirties I had a baby and messing with the clocks turned into the dumbest thing ever.

It’s not news that we are a household of disrupted sleepers. My husband has battled insomnia most of his life. I haven’t had a full night of sleep since early May 2006 when I first started feeling pregnancy symptoms. My son, now almost seven, has slept through the night about three times. If that. It’s multi-generational insomnia at its best!

My son gets up when he gets up, clocks be damned. If his body is done sleeping, there is no getting him back to it. So for a kid who rises before the sun most days, gaining an extra hour from two to three a.m. does not help me. Instead of getting up at six, he’s up at five. During the years he was getting up at five, he was up at four. Let’s not talk about when he was routinely up at four, ok?

Now, that day when we lose the hour, that I can get behind. I don’t sleep anyway, so I don’t really care about losing any time. What’s one more hour? When my son wakes up on a Sunday morning and it’s already seven, well, happy day! Rejoice!

The thing is, the gaining and losing don’t really feel like an even trade and so I’m willing to give it all up for the sake of consistency. I realize the original intention was to have extra light for field work and the like, but now it seems like an antiquated notion. And you can’t convince me that something is vital when you go and move the date until after Halloween just so kids have more daylight for Trick Or Treating.

Last night, Nathan went to sleep at his normal time, about seven-thirty. He woke up around three and couldn’t go back to sleep. I hadn’t changed his clock, intending to do it in the morning, so he thought it was later than it was. And when he was still up an hour later, which really should have been almost five but was still only four, I was exhausted, thoroughly confused, and more than a little ready for him to go back to sleep.

Sometimes when he’s up at five, I’ll let him sit in his room with the light on with a book or just sitting, but basically giving him permission to stop trying to sleep. I don’t allow that at almost four though, because that would be insane. I’m trying to manage his messed up sleep, not create a kid who is up all day and night.

When he asked for the light, I had to tell him it wasn’t even four. He looked at his clock and I had to break the bad news that I hadn’t turned it back yet (mental note for next year!), and he sobbed. WHY!? I’ll never sleep again! This night is going to last forever!! We’ve all been there. As I rubbed his back and assured him the night would eventually end, in my head, I was feeling exactly what he was.

But the night didn’t last forever, just one (very long) hour longer. He finally fell back to sleep, which means I did too. But because we both fell asleep around 4:30, we woke up later than we normally do and I now feel like I’m behind an hour. Go figure.

Therefore, in conclusion, Daylight Saving Time is stupid.

This is NaBloPoMo Day 3. You can read more posts here.