Sleeping in soon to be just a fond memory

Because I Said So column for The Commercial Appeal

Aug. 4, 2011

We’ve come to the end of another summer. The very words stick in my throat like hot tar considering the thermometer still reads 101 degrees. Yet here we are trying to grind the gears of vacation backward and calibrate ourselves to the school year’s hours.

During summer break, my family enjoys later bedtimes and sleeping in, breakfast and lunch eaten when we’re hungry, not necessarily when the clock summons us to eat. Dinner is grilled while the children play nearby, unconcerned with homework or tomorrow’s quizzes.

At summer’s end, we find ourselves trying once again to fit our circular summer selves into the square peg holes of school days.

Alarm clocks will sound, sleepy heads will be rousted, and the days will begin several hours earlier than what my kids have grown used to. To facilitate this difference in time, I’ve been trying to wear these kids out with swimming all day and forced marches to the neighborhood playground for climbing and timed races in the evenings. The desired effect of them dropping earlier and easier into bed, and naturally rising earlier, has been mixed; it’s a hard-headed crew whose stubbornness has only deepened along with their tans these past months.

Changing their biological clocks is not a science, but more like Superman flying backward around the Earth to make time reverse and remind them, after eight weeks off, what 6 a.m. looks like. I have assured my kids that, like it or not (they do not), they will come to know the darkness of morning again … (read more)