My Plea

Dear Mother Earth and Father Time,

I am writing to make a request. While I respect the idea of Daylight Savings Time and appreciate the “opportunity” to be “more productive”, I kindly ask that you PLEASE reconsider implementing this “holiday”. I am sure there are a few select individuals who will take advantage of this extra time of saved daylight, but most of us (at least those of us with kids) need ALL the time we can get and this change makes our days much, much longer (and not in a good way).

Not only is it a nuisance to change a schedule we work hard (and sometimes have to fight hard) to achieve daily, but it is COUNTER-productive. In addition to losing a perfectly good hour of sleep, our once-afternoon activities (for example team practices) are inevitably pushed back until later with the idea that we somehow have this time in the evening to spare (which we don't). In addition, we teach our children that we sleep during night and play during the day (and finally have their bodies acclimated to this from the winter holidays) and then arbitrarily put them to bed in daylight and wake them up in darkness…and expect them to GO TO SLEEP and WAKE UP AND BE PRODUCTIVE? My children, for instance, are more than happy to entertain themselves after bedtime because there is nothing preventing them from playing (specifically LIGHT). Consequently, a pointless battle ensues because really, how does one make one sleep if one doesn’t want to? Therein lies the problem. One doesn’t. Then parent "one" has a VERY tired little "one" the next morning, which is especially problematic when there is school to attend, learning to do, a job to go to or ANY activity really that does not involve sleeping. Remember, those of us with multiple children already struggle to maintain a daily schedule (and are already tired).

My point is that tired and whiny children (and sometimes parents) are NOT going to be more productive. If the intention of “saving” daylight is for prolonged opportunities to be more active or productive, I, for one, will gladly give mine back for a little more sleep and a lot more sanity. I may not be more productive, but I can assure you I won’t be less productive.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,
A tired mother of four who sees no value in losing more sleep and giving her children yet another reason to not want to go to bed, be late for school, etc. etc.

P.S. If you find this request completely unreasonable, it would be much appreciated if you could you at least please talk to the Easter Bunny and see about coordinating the timing of this change to take place over Spring Break when the kids are off their schedules and fueled by sugar anyway?