Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Reading past bedtime . punish or not ?

My 8 years old DS loves reading so much . He can read and read and read . Usually we allow him to read past his bed time during weekdays . So when we send him to bed around 9 then he can read for half an hour or so . I think this sort of help him during days when he has problem to fall asleep , according to him , when he can't sleep , he's thinking a lot of things . Maybe the brain can shut off ?

Now , during weekends , we usually let him stay up until 10 , and so when we send him to bed , we expect him just to go to bed and sleep and no reading when he goes to bed at 10 . But these past couple of nights , we caught him reading , because we saw his light was still on , and DH wasn't too happy with the fact that DS went against what we said . DH ended up punishing him the next day with no computer or no movie night .. etc .

I am afraid that by punishing him , then it's like we're encouraging DS to hate reading , but if we didn't punish him , it's like we're letting him do whatever he wants because obviously he went against what we said .

I really love the fact that he loves to read and i am like him when i get into certain books i can't put it down even if it means i stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning to finish reading . So , what would you do ? Any suggestion ??
Thank you

My suggestion is to make bedtime 9:30 on the weekends, and let him read. If he has it as part of the routine that he needs to settle down, just build it in every day.

We have exactly the same problem.
One thing you can try is restricting the books to nonfiction books. Nonfiction books are usually less addictive and require more energy to read, so he is more likely to sleep earlier.

Honestly? I have one of these kids, too.

I use NOTHING but natural consequences when I catch her doing this. Truly.

My DH and I decided a long time ago that there are some behaviors that it is just wrong to punish, and reading is one of them. Now, electronics after curfew, THAT we punish.

But not reading. If she's tired the next day, really, what's the worst that comes of that? We point it out, and leave it at that. We also try to build in reading time-- both of us use it to unwind too, after all.

And I still stay up waaaaaayyyyyy too late reading once in a while.

Some people find almost impossible to go from up and about to bed and to sleep without transition. Make bed time earlier so he can read.

@iynait

surprisingly most of the time he'd spend reading past bedtime to read non-fiction book , but last night i knew it was the fiction book . He has this bookshelf in his bedroom , sometimes i wonder maybe i should move that shelf someplace else LOL

@HK and Puffin
I understand it's hard from up and go straight to bed and sleep , some ppl need to wind down , sometimes i do the same , reading in bed til i fall asleep . I really agree with you too that this kind of behavior .. reading a 'book' past bedtime shouldn't be punished , that's why me and DS was disagreeing about this .

We came to a decision yesterday about sending him to bed earlier even during weekend , if he wants to read still . The kid wants everything , he wanted to stay up and he wanted to read still , i guess the lesson would be sometimes you can't get everything .. Thank you for the suggestions .

I am with the OP's H with this. The kid needs to understand that there are consequences to disobedience, period. Kids need sleep - I understand that growth only occurs during sleep (please correct me if this wrong) so it is vital for a kid to get enough of it.

Our DD appears to have inherited my insomnia as well so learning good sleep habits is an essential life skill which is why we discourage reading after a certain point. It is tough, though. I get the same with a book sometimes - I basically stayed up all night after coming home from work at about 2 am reading Angela's Ashes - I just couldn't put it down. So while it is somewhat hypocritical a kid needs to learn to respect its parents' judgement and get sleep especially at 8.

We do allow our DD to read for a while after she goes to bed but woe betide her if she turns the light back on once we have come in to say enough is enough...

I'll echo HK's comments.
I'll bet reading is a self-soothing activity that enables your ds to wind down. It's clever and mature of him to know what he needs and take it upon himself to do it.

Agree to most above. I have a kid who has to read at night. I understand. I have to read at night. So I make sure reading time is built into every night- weekends included. I usually head in about 10 minutes before his lights out time and we flip through his book together to find a good page break or chapter end coming up that can be his stopping point. The only "punishment" he's ever received for reading past that point and staying up late was to have to stop reading mid-sentence and go to bed when I caught him. The next day when he complained about being tired, I reminded him why that might be.

The problem with DS , he will never admit he's tired , though i can tell from his eyes . His punishment today is losing his computer for half a day or a day i don't know , this is what my DH said to him last night . I actually don't want to 'punish' him for that , but like DH said it's m ore about DS going against what we said .. so i guess there will still be consequences . We'll send him to bed earlier during weekend to avoid things like this happening again .

Like i said im glad that he loves to read , but sometimes it's too much . He brings a book to read in the bathroom #2 , later on after shower , instead of putting clothes right away , he would lay on the floor with his towel , hair is still wet , reading his book , while everyone is waiting for him to get done so that we can go .. sometimes we tease him , because it takes him longer to get ready than me !! And i am a woman LOL

We have the same problem and have not yet found a solution. We don't want to punish DD for reading either, but what happens if we don't do anything is she stays up *way late* every night and then is tired and crabby in school, which at least sometimes contributes to inappropriate behavior. You can see it getting worse during the course of the week, too, so that by Friday she is really wiped out (even yawning at breakfast), unless we really get on her to stop and turn the lights out during the week. So we have her go to bed about 9, and it's supposed to be lights out by 9:30 so she can get to sleep. But she has snuck a flashlight up on many occasions. I have more sympathy than DH does, because I used to do the same thing when I was a kid Usually if we catch her we just take some time off her video game/iPad allotment for the next day. But we don't like that she feels moved to deceive, and this has only partially worked.

She has a radio in her room and is allowed to listen to the classical music station at low volume--this seems to help sometimes with getting her to sleep. But when we discuss the whole getting to sleep issue she usually says that her mind is racing with thoughts and she couldn't get to sleep anyway--that reading actually helps. We've been trying to have her get more exercise during the day and that seems to help sometimes, but it takes a lot to wear her out and some days she has after-school stuff that takes up most of her time so we can't do that every day. So we're still looking for a solution, too. Best of luck!

I agree with others who are saying make bedtime earlier and build in reading time. DD gets at least half an hour and more often an hour.

Sleep is really, really, really important to health, behavior, and development. I could send you reams of studies. 10 is a late bedtime for that age.

A little more exercise during the day might help.

We had a flashlight problem. I left a funny "warning" note on the flashlight and then it went away.

I'm going to guess that no punishment could make him hate reading -- I think once that love of books gains a foothold, there is no stopping it.

However... I was a "late night" reader as a kid, and so were my kids. I bet if I tried to find all the flashlights hidden in their rooms I couldn't. My kids even have permission in the middle of the night to turn on the light to read a bit if they can't sleep. Not right after bedtime -- I expect them to GO to sleep. But for those "just woke up at 2 am and can't stop thinking about stuff" nights, we all do it. For us it is a "sleep hygiene" issue -- we really have to read before sleeping to stop our minds from working on all the other issues of the day. But it is true that a good book will keep us up late sometimes, too.

I think a couple of times I took the "problem" (meaning: really, really good) book away. Told them it would be there in the morning for them (did the same with the laptop when they were older). But they needed sleep. Doesn't stop them from getting something else off the shelf, but if it was just not wanting to stop on that one book it worked. And as a bedtime reader, I would find it a luxury to have a whole hour at bedtime to read, so extend that time and it might help (tuck him in half an hour earlier than you have been with his book).

It really hasn't done any harm that I can see to any of us. But I would not turn it into a "punishment battle". Reading too much is like... eating too many vegetables or something. And for some gifted kids, taking away books is like cutting off their oxygen. I just tried to be firm that while reading is a very great thing, sleeping is good for their physical health, and they needed to take care of that as well. And try to give them a lot of reading opportunities during the day, and a bit of slack for middle of the night wakefulness. But making this a battle of wills like your H is possibly doing is NOT a good idea.

What do you think is a reasonable bedtime for 11, almost twelve year olds? DS goes to bed at 9, but some nights it's 9:30. We never have to wake him in the morning though, unlike my older son.

For my DD, I sometimes use this opportunity to expose her to some topics she normally avoids herself. If she can actually start to enjoy the books I picked and read them long past bedtime, that would be a big gain for her, more than enough to compensate for the harm caused by late sleep. If the books put her to sleep earlier, that's fine too.

Depends what time he has to get up, but 10 hours is recommended for this age. Before puberty, most kids tend naturally towards an earlier bedtime and wake-up...before 10 for sure. At puberty, the sleep schedule shifts, which is why we have so many problems with teens wanting to stay up late and being so tired. HS needs to start later than elementary school.

http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need

(I know a lot of you will say these findings don't apply to your kid, and they may not. I'm just saying that overall, the findings on sleep are incredibly convincing. For adults, too. I'm pretty convinced that sleep deprivation has a lot to do with the obesity epidemic--they find the connection over and over again.)

We recently had to remove the bedside reading lamp from DS6's room because he stayed up reading until 11:30 pm. Not good for him; he doesn't have the resilience for that schedule. We are working on learning self-control.

In general, I'm strongly approving of reading at bedtime... but not at the cost of that much sleep.

He was devastated about losing the lamp. We are likely to put it back and see if he manages it better...

DeeDee

yes, let me add that I would not PUNISH (and did not, when DD was reading with flashlights). We just removed the means. Our house is small enough that reading with overhead light on is not something she could get away with, so we just made sure no flashlights were filchable.

FWIW, I think I would have the same bedtime during the week as on the weekend, just for consistency's sake. That way he would always have the same amount of time to read. A routine. A routine can lead to less arguing and debate because you can just say, "Sorry, that's how we always do it. Those are the rules." Then, if you find that he would like still more reading time, offer to let him go to bed earlier, knowing that the "lights out" time never changes.

I can't see punishing a child for doing something that is as great for them as reading, but I definitely see the need to set limits.

That's what we do. Lights out time is lights out time. She's pretty good about understanding that it's about adequate sleep, though-- and always has been.

A loving "I need for you to put the book away because I don't want you to be too tired tomorrow" tends to work much better with her than "I said so, don't argue with me," too.

We've had to contend with free reading during time that needs to be spent on other activities, so I'm not unfamiliar with this problem. It's just that punishment seems like such a bad idea w.r.t. reading-- the most I've ever done is take away the book that was the culprit or move her to a location where she has more trouble "sneaking" what she's doing.

Maybe leaving a bedroom door open?

We've had this issue too. Light out time is lights out time. Saying that, my pg ds7.5 woke up wet one time at 2 am and then started to read Stephen Hawking's book, George and the Secret Key to the Universe. My husband and I had to laugh; we both have library degrees and wanted to foster reading, but not at 2 am!

We've managed to somewhat get around this issue by giving ds a quarter of a melatonin pill about an hour or so before ds goes to bed. This way, he can read but usually conks out within 30-45 mins. Everyone is happy then. Ds gets to read before going to sleep and ds actually goes to sleep! Daddy and I get some peace and sleep too.

I would never punish a child for reading since I have a library degree. Instead, I emphasis the point about the need for the brain and body to sleep with eyes closed.

You can't really force a child to sleep, but you can set the right conditions and environment. I'm guessing adhering to a bedtime here is the issue rather than reading for pleasure. So if this is case, I would work on improving the conditions and environment for sleep - ie. Epsom salt baths before bed.

I think it's important to set rules and stick with them; regardless of if the actions that break the rules are something one would normally encourage during other hours of the day.

As a child, I loved to read at night because it relaxed me (still does), so mom would start my bedtime routine early enough so I could get in at least an hour. I'm not saying she didn't yell at me to turn off the light a couple of times!

Hubby, on the other hand, did the whole, "reading with flashlight under the covers until 2am thing". He doesn't think his parents ever realized it.

Dh had a fixed bedtime as a kid and still resents being sent to bed when he wasn't tired. Therefore, the rule in our house has always been that the kids must be in bed by a certain time, and after that *only* reading is allowed, but there is no time limit set on the reading.

Actually... I had sort of forgotten until just reading the latest posts, but for my second D -- I read to her at bedtime every night until she was about 15. She often read before we did our reading, but that was the closure for the night. As I mentioned before, she still did some flashlight reading, but that kind of "broke the spell" of the current book she was reading to herself and got it put down at bedtime. And it was really great bonding time for us, too.

We used to allow DS to read until he fell asleep. This usually resulted in him being exhausted the next day. We tried a variety of methods to remedy the problem and we came up with something that works well for us...

Independent Reading 8:30 - 9:00 p.m. (then 15 minute break for toilet/water/etc.)
Lights Out 9:15 p.m.
Listen to Learning CD until it runs out

Our rule is you have to listen to the CD twice before you can change to a new one. And since we don't buy new ones very often, he can fall asleep anytime...he already knows the endings!

This may not work for everyone, but it's worked well for us. Prior to giving his mind something to think about, he would just lie there for hours trying to shut his brain off.

Amazon offers some good learning CDs, and there is also Story of the World if your child enjoys history.

I agree with this. One of my twins loves to read in bed, and we make sure his bedtime is early enough that he can do it every night (with only a few exceptions.) Maybe let your DS decide? Ask him if he would rather go to bed earlier to allow reading time, or skip reading to stay up later with the family.

I'm confused by the parents who say that they would never punish a child for reading. I don't think that this is a case of punishing for reading - it's a case of punishment for ignoring the rules (and as a side note, we never use the word punishment... it's a consequence, brought on by the child - and frankly, in our case, it was never physical and was usually just taking away the means and having to endure a "we're disappointed" chat with us :)).

I don't think you can kill the love of reading. Dd20 got in trouble quite a few times for reading-related offenses: not returning books to teachers, reading past bedtime, reading in math class, etc... At 20, she's out of college (with a degree in literature), still reads voraciously, and is a member of Teach for America's current corps - sharing her love of reading as an interventionist at a high-poverty school.

We built in reading time every night for all four of our kids. We had the same bedtime every day of the year. If we were out late on a weekend (not common) we'd give then 10 minutes to wind down instead of the 30 minutes that was normal.

Our dss13 and 11 still go to bed at 8pm and read til 8:30. Three or four days a week, they are up before 6 for early-morning activities. Yes, it's early to bed, but they need it. Obviously, when there are sleepovers, school events, etc...(or just a lot of homework) that changes, but even at this age, they really do need their sleep.

Two of our kids are great sleepers and two are not so great. Dd23 struggled in HS and college with sleep issues, but she is now graduated, gainfully employed, and although she'll never be the best sleeper, she has thanked us many times for being so structured. I am a terrible sleeper and had no bedtimes growing up. I really wish I had (my self-discipline on putting a book down is TERRIBLE). For our youngest, who is the other bad sleeper, we have really worked with him on keeping the room cool, using sleep music, sitting with him if he needs it, etc... but I don't think that the answer is reading til exhaustion forces you to stop (in my case, 2am, even if I have to get up at 5:30).

Our dd20 is a teacher at a school that starts at 7:20 am, and she is dismayed on a daily basis to see how many kids are just too tired to learn.

You make some great points, Momtofour.

I think the problem in the OP is that he has a nighttime ritual that involves reading on weekdays, and that ritual is taken away during the weekend. I find these rituals to be very useful in preparing for sleep, so we try to stick to them religiously.

This isn't much of a problem at our house. DD8 reads before bed, but self-regulates pretty well. She'll even ask me to turn out the lights on some nights, where she's ready to skip reading and go right to bed. But we have had some issues with DD not getting enough sleep lately, and we're not making it about the reading time at all. Our focus is on the bedtime. If she's not getting enough sleep, it's time to move bedtime earlier.

So we tried giving him choices and of course , he chooses to have the reading time , which is perfectly fine for us . We don't mind at all with his choice of reading for half an hour to 45 minutes before bedtime . He goes to bed by 9 and starts reading until 9.45 , he'd supposedly turn the lights out and go to bed .

Well , so last night , me and DH were watching tv about 11.30 , when we suddenly heard a sound ,a sneezing sound .. by the stairs . DS' bedroom is upstairs , so we knew it was him , since he's our only one too . We saw him standing by the stairs , eyes wide awake no sign of sleepiness at all .. and his excuse was " oh i was too hot , i was going to grab the light blanket down there "

I knew it was just an excuse , if he was already alseep , his eyes should look sleepy and tired , not wide awake like it was . Later on he said he just couldn't sleep . So he did finish reading by 9.45 , shut the lights off , but i guess never did sleep . I might have to try some soothing classical music for him to try to listen . DH is not happy at all with this ( not the music ) , he's going to move DS' bedroom downstairs now . I don't know if this is going to make any difference ..

I never punish for reading. (ever). DD10 will stay up until close to midnight on some nights reading (bedtime is 9:00) and I let the fatigue she feels in the early mornings be a natural consequence.

I go a little to the extreme, actually... like if she's supposed to be doing something else, like cleaning her room (sigh), and I catch her reading instead, I let it go. Reading is like a free pass.

I'm probably a little too book friendly, but it's an activity I really value that I think will help her in the long run.

I'd look at WHAT he's reading before bed.

This is why I am nearly always reading 2 books at once. There's the page turner that I burn my way through, and then another book that I have to read much more slowly. Often it's a non-fiction... biography or something. Some books have the ability to really, really get your brain going and then you just cannot sleep!

I am glad I found this post. Last night, I took my child's reading time away because of behavior issues and it was just so late. I feel a guilt over that and reading this post helps me understand that other people experience this as well. I am going to rethink how we handle this. It is not worth it in my book to see her face when we tell her she is not allowed to read. So, we will rework the punishment aspect because I really want to keep her love of reading. (Sorry for the ramble but my allergies are kicking in big time)