Saturday, April 18, 2009

Daylight Saving, Sanity Not Saving Time

Dear Governor Daniels,

It's time for my annual letter in which I request that you come explain to my children, now 3.5 and 2 years old, why they have to go to bed when it's broad daylight outside. I am writing this at 8:30 pm, and the sky is light. My kids (should) go to bed at 8 pm. They are quite annoyed, and so am I.

I can only guess how difficult things will be in late June, when it stays light until 10 or 10:30 pm.

Whenever they ask me, "Mommy, why do we have to go to bed? It's daytime!" I say, "Ask your governor." This makes their father snort, but is unfortunately an unsatisfactory response from their youthful perspective, as they do not often get the opportunity to directly address elected officials such as yourself. Therefore, please come at your earliest convenience and explain it to them for me.

Sincerely,
Amy Prettybaby

Hey blog readers - follow me on Twitter - @prettybabies

5 comments:

Kelly said...

Hi! We're Indiana people too and my son (20 months) lays in his crib and plays for almost an hour (from about 7 til 8) until it gets too dark and he finally goes to sleep! I feel your pain. Luckily he's not old enough to start asking why yet! What we have done in his room is install some roller shades under his regular blinds which helps with the light! :) Good luck getting more sleep!

Cate said...

Although nighttime light is a fact of life for us, we also feel snarky about daylight savings, believe it or not! Actually, just from a teacher's perspective. It totally messes up the students' sometimes-already whacked out sleep schedule, and it is just one more thing that makes teaching hard. It also makes no sense whatsoever that we have daylight savings time in a state that gets nearly 24 hours of daylight by the summer solstice. The only reason I've ever been given is that the legislature didn't want us to get so out of whack with the rest of the US; but, honestly, what's one more hour?

But I can give you tips on getting children to go to bed when it's light out -- though they're fairly common sense. The #1 thing: Denim curtains, doubled. Before your kids go to their bedroom for the night, pull down these curtains so that they are getting PJs on in a dim room, and they are mentally more into the idea that it's night. The rest is just talking with them about how light and dark is unreliable; probably you guys have better words to use since your kids have background knowledge about space, but I have always talked about what we do differently during different seasons of the year, and Esther has been into that. But the denim curtains have been the best help. :)

Heather Bungard-Janney said...

Geographically, we are in the Central time zone no matter where politics prefers to place us. Which means that back when we were on year-round Eastern Standard, we already were on daylight saving in the summer (Central Daylight = Esatern Standard), and in the winter we essentially had yet another hour of shift added to our clocks.

STUPID frackin' DST...

Mitch said...

Gawd. Let's make decisions on dailysight saving time because YOUR Little brats have to go to sleep at daylight. Forget the fact that there are millions of people who benefit from it. Gee, I wonder why the Governor doesn't put your family's sleep schedules on his list of priorities. Get a freaking life.

Amy said...

Hahah "Mitch," you're funny. I'll bet you a dollar I can guess who you really are.

No one has been able to satisfactorily explain to me what economic "benefit" the state of Indiana derives from being on Eastern time instead of Central.

But obviously you didn't come here to discuss the issue, you're just here to be a cranky, name-calling pig.

Buh-bye.