Lynn's Comments: My kids negotiated their bedtime, as did my brother and I. With the passion and forethought of seasoned debaters, we plied our folks with every possible reason, suggestion and excuse for why we should stay up longer, always to no avail. Now it was my turn to set the rules.
Aaron was especially keen to see us give in. It was the challenge that made his entreaties a ritual. By the time dinner ended, he was devising yet another way to add a few more seconds to the deadline of eight o'clock and the ruses began with disappearance. Not one to be unnoticed, he would slip unto the basement to do "stuff" or head outside and down the lane where he'd melt into the network of sheds, fences and open back doors. This was particularly frustrating in summer when the sun went down around midnight and there seemed to be no reason to hit the sack in broad daylight. Bringing him home hollering "no fair" when neighbors were outside washing their cars and chatting over coffee seemed, well,... no fair!
Still, a tired kid is not something you want to mess with in the morning, so we placed quilts on the windows, begged the older kids to play elsewhere and hoped the dogs would quit barking long enough for blessed somnolence to kick in.
Aaron is almost 40 now. He's still a night owl and often hits the sack well after two a.m. He's convinced me that this is his natural rhythm, that he was never meant to go to bed at eight. Even as a kid, he tells me, he was awake until late into the night and that I should have let him stay up until he was tired. Perhaps he's right. But he was a kid then, and parents have their rules - some of which are meant to save their own sanity!!
