Disorderly Conduct

I think people who can lie down and fall asleep until it’s time to wake up are the luckiest people in the world. And also some of the advice-iest people in the world. Being a lifelong bad sleeper, I have been told by the sleep-easy crowd that I don’t get enough fiber, exercise, and/or protein. It has been suggested that I should just lie in bed because I am really probably getting more sleep than I think. I even had a counselor query whether smoking pot would be the answer. Lots of advice, very little remedy. The fact is, you are either a good sleeper or you’re not, generally speaking. Every easy sleeper has an occasional restless night and every insomniac has moments of complete exhaustion resulting in deep slumber, but we come here wired a certain way and that’s just the facts. I recently discovered through a high school friend that there is a name for what ails us: Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. Basically, DSPS-afflicted folk have a different rhythm than the nine-to-five crowd and they will never understand us. If you are a DSPSer, three in the morning is productive time and early morning staff meetings are torturous. Think about it--asking a DSPSer to come to work at 7:30am is the same as asking the normals to come in at 4:00am. Which sounds ridiculous, right? But it’s our reality. In Sandra Boynton’s The Going To Bed Book, the monsters learn some skills. I hope they have good wiring.

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Bed-Book-Sandra-Boynton/dp/0671449028

http://www.sandraboynton.com/sboynton/index.html

Rock-A-Bye, Baby...

I’m an insomniac. So are my father, all of my brothers, and every one of my children. Considering our familiarity with the wee hours, our family tree must have several vampires and an owl or two. According to our natural rhythms, it is much more likely to find us still up at six in the morning than just getting up at that hour--which makes participating in the traditional world a constant battle. People who see that it’s bedtime, tuck in, and fall asleep until the alarm rings are a complete mystery to our kind, and make me crazy envious. One of the worst aspects of troubled sleep is lying awake staring into space, knowing that your chances to start the next morning well-rested are ticking relentlessly away. Another equally awful component is the anxiety that develops early in the evening as you contemplate the approach of your nightly war against sleeplessness. So, when my kids have dawdled or stalled in the bedtime process, I have always had to fight my inner demons and try to second-guess myself. Is it just normal kid foot-dragging or are they beginning to dread the bed? Do I force the issue in the name of consistent parenting, or am I more flexible since I know how they feel? Mercer Mayer’s Just Go To Bed follows Little Critter through reluctant bedtime preparations, including annoying an exasperated dad. I understand kids need sleep, but, speaking as a lifelong nocturnist, you can only count just so many sheep.


http://www.littlecritter.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Go-Bed-Little-Critter/dp/0808563963