Daylight savings just ended so this post is coming exactly too late. But I was talking to a friend about how we just adjust 15 minutes per day, which is quite easy. She was saying “oh I wish I had that kind of foresight.” But we were talking Friday evening, and daylight savings didn’t end until Sunday, so there was plenty of time for adjustment. So since people don’t seem to realize that, here is the very simple plan for ending daylight savings:
Lets say your kids bedtime is at 8pm (I wish) then
And with that you’re done. If you realize too late and it’s Saturday already, you can just do 20 minute increments:
When daylight savings starts again in the spring, you just do the opposite each day:
Getting the kids to bed early is more difficult than getting them to bed late, so make sure to tire them out during the day by having plenty of activities. You may also want to combine this with waking them up early:
Not going to lie, it doesn’t work that well. But it works better than if you just switch 1 hour all at once. And before writing this I did some quick googling to see what others are advising, and for some reason the top results recommend schedules that start on Tuesday, or god forbid Monday, which sounds much worse than this schedule… If you try to drag it out over that many days you’ll just have more conflict and more confusion around nap time or daycare or other activities. So I think mine is a pragmatic simple schedule that is better than doing nothing and doesn’t take that much effort.
It’s a real benefit that you need almost no planning. You can do it entirely over the weekend. You still have time when you realize Friday after work “oh crap, daylight savings is starting/ending, we need to adjust.”
So when daylight savings starts again in the spring you can look at this blog post again (or re-derive the plan, it’s not that hard) and do the adjustment in a short amount of time.