Customer Reviews

The 7 O'Clock Bedtime: Early to bed, early to rise, makes a child healthy, playful, and wise

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

...even if you never actually set up your life around a 7 o'clock bedtime. This book was loaned to me by a friend, and I enjoyed reading it. It is easy to get through, not heavy and burdensome, yet gives a lot of good food for thought in child rearing. Actually, if you are an informed parent, a lot here is stuff you probably already know, like TV is bad for children, children need a diet with less sugar and salt, children need to have time to BE children instead of rushed from this lesson to that club...you get the picture. Yet even though I have read this all before (I am a stay at home mom of a 19 yr. old, a 10 yr. old, and a 4 yr. old) over the 19 years of my parenting career, I feel every time I read it, I NEED to hear it again, because as a parent it is easy to drift from the ideals we want for our children.
I recommend all parents read this book. We need to be aware of how our culture and society today is very negative against childhood and so much that we accept as normal is NOT good for children. It takes effort to order our lives so that our children can enjoy their childhoods as children, not as mini teenagers or mini adults.
I can't say I totally agree with the 7 o'clock bedtime concept. I do think she is right in that children need much more sleep than we realize or give them. I do think this works well with babies, toddlers, with children up to the age of 7 or so. However it will not work for all people, especially those who have one or more parents who do not work the usual 9 to 5 hours. I think you could still have your children go to bed at 8 or even 9 and still benefit, especially if your children can get up later in the morning, or if they take a good nap in the day.
The author speaks of the importance of routine in the life of a child, and this is VERY important, no matter what bedtime you exactly use. Routine has a calming effect on children, and they feel safe and secure in routine.
I enjoyed the suble humor of this author; she wrote honestly and not like she was the super perfect mom none of us can ever be. I cheer her for being so honest as to admitting that at times she has served cold cereal for dinner! I have done that on rare occassions! I like her emphasis on simplicity as well.
At the back of this book, the author has a very good list of other parenting books to read. Some were ones I have read; I think anyone reading this book would do well to go on and read others in her list. Parenting takes much effort on our part, and we need to be informed. We can't trust society or the fact that "everyone's doing it" as a model to follow for our parenting. You owe it to your children's well being to read this book and others.

Ever since I read this book I have found myself recommending it to all my friends. Those friends who I have lent my copy to read have since gone out and bought their own.

I liked the principle enourmously and her gentle approach to it. I found the book to written differently than most parenting books with their air of authority and lofty advice. This book gets down to the nitty gritty. The style of writing was more like an old friend writing a letter to you, sharing what worked for her. Sometimes the writing would wander off the subject a bit, but it was that personal aspect that appealed to me when I read it.

Ah ha! But what was it about you may ask. It is about how to get kids into bed by 7 o'clock (you probably geussed this much already) and explores the practical way of scheduling the early evening to accomplish this. It also covers the benefits of the early bedtime and tailoring the schedule to fit different situations, i.e. vacations and sleep overs. The people who will most benefit from this book are people with school age children or children who have to be somewhere at a certain time in the morning. However, I have a toddler and I have started slowly implenting the earlier bedtime with a view of 'starting as we mean to go on'. As an attachment parent, I liked her references to nursing and as part of a tv free family I especially liked her views that tv is overstimulating.

I would put this book in with my top ten parenting books.

I subscribe to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to bedtime and sleep. The reason I got this book was that things were in need of some fixing in our home. Bedtime was creeping later and later and I was becoming resentful.

Schaenen's overall theories that children need more rest, parents need more rest, and bedtime can be viewed as the beginning of nighttime rather than the end of the day are all valid and helpful. I am also in agreement with her that children need to have unstructured playtime everyday, preferably outdoors, that television, video games, and computer are simply unnecessary for children, and that nutrition plays an important role in healthy children and sleep habits.

Her emphasis on family ritual and routine were also useful.

What I did NOT like about the book was Schaenen's endorsement of the Ferber method of sleep training for infants and young toddlers. It doesn't fit my parenting philosophy at all. We follow an attachment parenting approach in our home, and share a bed with our infants. Rather than setting Schaenen's book aside as another book contrary to my beliefs, though, I decided to overlook our philosophical differences about family bed & night nursing, and use the good pointers about getting my children off to bed earlier and more restfully.

I also appreciated the candor with which she shared anecdotes from her own family. I always enjoy books in which the author shows their own family life rather than just proclaiming what everyone else should be doing. It's always comforting to see a glimpse into another family's real life.

In summary, I will use many suggestions from this book regarding getting my kids off to bed in a timely manner. I will choose to overlook the recommendation to sleep train my infant.

I have a personal library of parent/children help books with over 100 different titles and categories. Adding this book to my collection created a new section in my collection.
The idea of 7'o clock bedtime may be unrealistic to working parents or stay-at-home parents, but Schaenen offers many alternative schedules for various lifestyles. But her basic tennent of the importance of sleep in a child's life should not be overlooked. Many children in our neighborhood are up past 10 pm on a school night watching television and their parents wonder why they are so wired. Too much stimulation counters the natural rythyms of a child's brain. After reading this book, we instituted an 8'oclock bedtime for our 2 1/2 year old, cancelled TV completely, and have exprienced more personal time together than ever before. We decided 8 'oclock because our child wakes always at 8 am, so 12 hours is sufficient for his age group.
This book should be a "wake up" call to many parents who seem to have lost the upperhand on children and schedules. It really can change face of your family.
Thanks Inda!

I love this book and recommend it to everyone I meet. Are my kids in bed by 7:00 PM? No. We homeschool and have no reason to be up early for school every morning by 6:30 -7:00 so we moved everything back an hour. it works much better for our family while still giving us an early bedtime and enough sleep. I look around me and am saddend by all the over tired children I see, thier angry exhausted short tempered paretns who are keeping them up in the name o quality family time. My chidlrens behaviors changed dramatically when I instituted an early bed time. htier morning wake time did not change. We don't get all legalistic about keeping her rules but the closer we stick to them and the more routiened our days are the better bed time and sleep are for my children. Having the early bedtime also has reeduced thier night walking!! what a bonus.

I am not completely finished with this book yet. But, I do agree with the authors premise of the 7 o'clock bedtime. I have a child who has regular night terrors. These most often occur when he is overtired. Before I even read this book I had charted my son's daily schedule and found that if he was in bed and sleeping by 7:30pm his night terrors were greatly decreased. I had also found that early dinner and no t.v. before bed made the evening so much easier in getting ready for bed. Don't judge this book before you read the majority of it. There is always exceptions to the rule and some late nights, but I think she has a very logical solution for some of our children's sleep and behavioral problems. FYI...I am a stay at home mother, thank God, so I can follow a schedule like this.

This book has a wealth of common sense and good ideas. It includes many practical ways to implement an early bedtime and a harmonious family lifestyle. Many families, however, would find her idea of the 8 o'clock bedtime better suited to modern life, simply adjusting the whole schedule an hour later. This is a necessity for us, since Dad does not get home until 6:00, and a family dinner is important to us. At five years old, my son needs about 10-1/2 hours of sleep, and does best with 11 hours. It makes sense that a child will wake up naturally when he/she has had enough sleep, so the author's basic premise is, if you have to wake your child up every school day, he/she is not getting enough sleep. Most people can agree thus far, but are unwilling to admit that means the child NEEDS to get to bed earlier, just as much as he/she would NEED more food or water if hungry or thirsty!

Implementing earlier bed times is the hardest thing in the world (try 10 minutes earlier per day, or even per week), but worth it. We don't watch TV anyway, but we do music practice and have to have some father-son playtime. My son has just started kindergarten and has to wake up earlier than he used to, so we are working on achieving the 8:00 bedtime on most nights. On nights when sleep-time is delayed to 8:30 or 9:00, I let my son sleep in until 7:30, and give him breakfast in the car on the way to school. Each week the earlier time becomes easier as WE PARENTS get used to it!

Many thanks to the author for the voice of reason in this book!! Even if the idea seems extreme, it is a needed correction to the craziness of sleep-deprivation. This book will do much in favor of healthy, happy kids.

I found this book after seeing that my 3 1/2 year old needed...SOMETHING.... to help with her sleep habits. The 19 month old falls right in line with the 7 bedtime, but ahhh...that strong-willed first child! I am also in a position to share ideas with other parents that might work for them. We had instituted the quiet time and had a good bedtime routine, as most practical parents do. She just wasn't ready for sleep by 7.

After I read this book, I implemented some of the ideas I found within Schaenen's wandering, "let me share with you how my family is perfect" (and strange), idyllic, description of her three children sitting around reading, listening to show tunes, and playing nicely together. Even when they are at their worst, I am still feeling like we are not getting the whole picture. The lengthy ramblings and examples don't fit my style as a reader or as part-time teacher/full-time mom looking for support.

With that said, I felt compelled to write my first-ever review. This is a book that might be overlooked due to this off-putting (in my opinion) style of imparting what I feel to be worthwhile, valid, suggestions that might help the AVERAGE family. Most of the information will not be new to the seasoned reader of parenting books.

What it does offer is a nice balance between doing what is right for your children (talking- and really listening to them, encouraging play for play's sake, and getting good sleep time) and having a little bit of your own life (after 7, of course!) Being a scheduler by nature, this book also offers me what many do not-an actual play by play of how this might work-rather than the usual theories without a plan for putting it into practice. I just could have done with less of the off-topic (condescending!) diatribes into the evils of TV, sugar and overscheduling- that is covered in later chapters.

Overall, a worthwhile tome to be read with care, thoughtfully considered, and worked into your own family dynamics. The practical suggestions are just difficult to glean, given the author's water drinking ("yum"-and I quote!), hard-to-relate to, style.

Despite it's title, this book is not just about a bedtime. It's about a way of life, and of viewing the world that is completely counter-cultural to the way most people live modern life.

Several reviews complained that the authors advice is 'unrealistic'--for any number of reasons, that I will not get into here. This is a completely INSANE claim, although quite understandable considering the powerless way that most people view their lives today. Most people act as if they have no choice but to enroll their children in multiple extracurricular activities; that they have no choice but to have both parents working outside the home so that they can afford a huge home, brand new cars, flat-screen tvs, credit card debt, etc. --all of which they are, of course, forced to have. Hence, they are forced to make more money to pay for all of the above. (Note: this rant is NOT directed at parents who genuinely both have to work minimum wage jobs to afford rent, food & health insurance.)

Of course having a peaceful family life and quiet evenings is unrealistic if you are simultaneously 'trying to have it all.'

The author gives extremely sane and sound advice about paying respect to the ultimate best interest of children; this includes the right of children to live unhurried lives in which there is time for unstructured play, freedom from stress, and plenty of sleep. She puts this need for sleep on par with parental responsibilities such as providing food and shelter.

Bottom line: because parents insist on leading overloaded lives, their children suffer. And whether they realize it or not, so do these parents.

This author is right on the money, but she also humbly acknowledges in her book, that most people don't want to face their own unwillingness to sacrifice/compromise other things in life, to give their children what they REALLY need.

As she says in Chapter 4, entitled, 'Facing the Consequences':
"I sympathize with the salmon; It's not easy swimming against the current."

Today's current is very strong--emphasizing materialism, achievement & performance from a very young age, scheduling every single moment of the day, tv-watching to the detriment of early bedtimes...and so on, and so on.

Gee, I wonder why our country is going down the tubes.

Ever since I read this book I have found myself recommending it to all my friends. Those friends who I have lent my copy to read have since gone out and bought their own.

I liked the principle enourmously and her gentle approach to it. I found the book to written differently than most parenting books with their air of authority and lofty advice. This book gets down to the nitty gritty. The style of writing was more like an old friend writing a letter to you, sharing what worked for her. Sometimes the writing would wander off the subject a bit, but it was that personal aspect that appealed to me when I read it.

Ah ha! But what was it about you may ask. It is about how to get kids into bed by 7 o'clock (you probably geussed this much already) and explores the practical way of scheduling the early evening to accomplish this. It also covers the benefits of the early bedtime and tailoring the schedule to fit different situations, i.e. vacations and sleep overs. The people who will most benefit from this book are people with school age children or children who have to be somewhere at a certain time in the morning. However, I have a toddler and I have started slowly implenting the earlier bedtime with a view of 'starting as we mean to go on'. As an attachment parent, I liked her references to nursing and as part of a tv free family I especially liked her views that tv is overstimulating.

I would put this book in with my top ten parenting books.