I need to get my kids asleep earlier so they can wake up earlier to make our hellish morning commute more of a purgatory-ish commute.

Any suggestions for this? W already try to limit physical activity and screen time in the last hour or so as we countdown to bed time ...

You might focus on some wake-up techniques for adjusting to daylight savings or time zone changes. Like eating right away, using a dawn simulating light in bedroom, turning on lots of bright light in the morning. Complimented by the opposite at night, dim and quiet, not eating two hours before sleep time. It's tough when kids want to stay outside and play on a beautiful late summer evening!

Ugh - yes first day back to school at our house today - so I completely sympathize...

The only thing that works for my kids is _lots_ of physical activity. It's really hard to fit it in on school days though. We are planning to try to get to the swimming pool as often as possible during the week - it seems to help.

Also, I find that waking them earlier seems to naturally lead to (slightly) earlier bed times, as annoying as that is to do.

When the kids were toddlers and pre-schoolers, my mom's group motto was that bedtime began with the afternoon nap. Now years later, after-school time can impact bedtime. I don't recall how old your children are, but even with teens look at how they come home, what happens when they walk in the door, how and when they do homework, eat dinner and snacks, handle any other responsibilities (practicing music or physical activity, doing dishes or laundry, walking the dog, etc), and include some relaxation in there (which might coincide with snacks or dog-walking)

We find that as much of a routine as possible in the evening, along with planning the morning departure (how they get to school, what they are wearing, is it their day to roll out the trash cans, lunch arrangements, getting the big science project to school, etc) helps them get to bed a bit earlier, but more important than early, a bit more routinely, so that morning comes as expected, not as an intrusion (well, not as much, anyway)

Not to say that you should run a military academy, everything timed to the minute. It's more about the progression, guiding the way to lights out.

Predictable evenings lead to calmer mornings.

How old are they? With our DS9, we have set up an alarm clock and make sure it's set each morning. When (if? ha, not often yet this school year) he doesn't get up when it goes off, we note how tired he is and tell him that evening that's why he needs to go to sleep when we say, not when he finishes 100 more pages.

Beyond that, we do showers right after dinner time, so that's done and isn't a winding up factor. They are in PJs and are in their rooms. DS5 gets a story and his lights go off at 7. With any luck, he's off to sleep shortly thereafter. DS9 stays in his room and reads until we come in to say goodnight, remove his book (and glasses!), turn off the light. That helps.

They are little (3 and 5). Door to door they each have a 10 hour day plus or minus.

I would like to do more physical activity, but from the time we get home we have maybe 2 hours or so to get in the house, get dinner, do everything else and get the kids asleep.

We do have it almost scripted out almost by the minute, but a tantrum here or some foot dragging here can blow the schedule pretty easily.

Can you start that "unwind" time DURING commute time somehow? That schedule sounds really brutal-- it's just not really enough time for the wind down, at least for some kids.

We've found that the lead-up to a successful bedtime needs to start about 3h out from bedtime, ourselves. At least it did at that age.

We've had more luck simply waking DS up at a target time a few days before school starts. We've had no luck trying to work from the other end (i.e., phasing in an earlier bed time and hoping he'll wake up naturally earlier.)

If you haven't started school yet (or since they are still very early in "school"), you could try my Ultimate Cheat for Start of School: I took my kid to the East Coast for a few days, then came back to the west coast on Sunday (school started Tuesday). By the time their bodies had caught up with the time zone change, we'd put in place a decent schedule.

Of course - the schedule doesn't work when he NEEDS to read another chapter .... Last year I let him sleep as late as possible before I HAD to get him up. That led to huge "hurry up" battles that were an incredibly awful way to start the day.

So this year I have started everything 30 minutes earlier, so he can wake up slowly. I open the curtains and say "good morning - I'll be back in a few minutes to help you get up." And I give him a "carrot" of reading on the couch with me (I read out loud) while he eats breakfast, if he get up early enough. So far - (we're in week 4) - I think we're having fewer battles.

Only 9 more months to summer vacation!

On the subject of winding down in time for bed, don't forget sugar usually will hype up like caffeine. Sugar finds it's way into all sorts of foods, so it can be tricky to avoid at dinner. I found looking up lists of foods that contain hidden sugar to be really eye-opening. ( ! )