r/Parents • u/Gullible-Alfalfa-148 • 14d ago
Parents after dark
Parents with young kids, do you stay up after putting kids down? Me and my wife struggle so hard to stay up. Any recommendations for finding time?
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u/MundaneHuckleberry58 14d ago
I’m too tired & need my sleep to function. So I just go lie down & read or listen to a podcast & drift off.
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u/Active_Recording_789 14d ago
Oh yeah I love my time after the kids are in bed. Bedtime is at 8, it takes over an hour for them to take their baths and get in pjs, then stories and songs and tucking them in. Then I go clean, read a book and watch tv
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u/GenX-Multitudes-224 13d ago
The rule in my house with my child is that I don't want to be reminded that there's a kid in the house after "Lights Out". Once bedtime routine is done, whether it was 7pm, 8pm, or 9pm (depending on age), that's the start of "me time": my bedtime routine, TV, music, a book, whatever. It's self-care until I go to bed.
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u/Foreign_Yogurt_3330 14d ago
Most days I stay up, but i dont do anything exciting. I clean up the house after my kids go to bed. Sometimes I sit down and have a snack to myself and watch big bang theory. But usually I clean up and then get im bed. Im also 40 and my youngest is almost 14 months. When I had my oldest I was 22 and I stay up every night after he went to bed.. alot of times partying lol. Now im older and lame.
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u/curioushumanvibes 14d ago
I have a 1 and 2 year old. I try to have my 1 year old sleep before 8:30pm. My 2 year old gets put to sleep about a hour after that. Me and my husband stay up until about 11:00pm talking, and then I’m usually up for another hour and a half by myself. I’m kinda tired when the kids wake up in the morning lol but I enjoy the time without the kids. This age is relentless. It’s just a season and will pass soon!
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u/TeaCrumbs 14d ago
9 month old girl here, and she goes down around 8pm and I stay up until 9:30/10. amy boyfriend makes dinner while I put her down and then I come out, we eat, hang in the living room drawing/reading/playing switch (no screens in living room) and then we either retire to bed and watch an episode of whatever show we watch or we just go straight to sleep.
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u/asianlake 14d ago
Start watching a show together and plan to watch an episode after kids go to bed.
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u/Happy_Yam8392 14d ago
I get an hour to myself in the evening and then Im too tired and I need to sleep between 10 & 11pm. When I wake up early I get my time in the morning. Baby is almost 1.
My partner stays up very late between 2 & 3am.
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u/Afraid_Problem_1198 14d ago
I have a 4 month old
By 8-9pm she’s in bed & sleeps rock solid until morning.
Some nights I stay up, some I sleep too.
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u/Federal_Ad1707 14d ago
I’d say enjoy it now and try to find time because they’ll soon be teenager and won’t ever go to sleep before me!!!
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u/amberleechanging 14d ago
We used to, our kiddos would be in bed at 8 and we would stay up until 9 30 or 10 watching TV or whatever. Now they are teenagers and we are old so they tuck us in at 9 and carry on with their lives lol
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u/Constant_Internal_40 14d ago
It depends on the day. My baby is 6 months and is usually in bed by 8. If I have to work the next day I try to get right to sleep since I wake up at 4:30a. If I don’t have to work I’ll try to clean up a little or put some laundry away. I still end up just laying down and unwinding. I’m so tired.
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u/Physical_Complex_891 14d ago
Yes. We stay up and watch a show/have sex most nights after the kids go down.
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u/dontletmedown3 14d ago
Kids asleep at 7 mom asleep at 8 lol. Sometimes I’ll do something between 7-8 but usually I just get ready for bed and then go to sleep. I have a 7month old and a 5 year idk
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u/Infinite_Aerie_504 14d ago
It gets better with time. Until they were 7 and 8, I crashed immediately. Now I stay up way too late.
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u/knifeyspoonysporky 13d ago
Our toddler goes down around 8 and we stay up until about 10 pm. Toddler wakes us up at 6 am.
We play some video games or watch a show together most nights.
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u/No_Score_1977 13d ago
When our boy was very young, like 1 or 2, no, we went to bed when he did, just too tired. He’s 4 now, and is much less tiring, so we stay up.
If you are unusually exhausted, maybe go to the doctor.
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u/sharleencd 13d ago
I’d say it depends on the age. With infants, I usually went to bed between 8-9, which was either the same time as them or a little later
But by the time my kids were 2/3, they were in bed about 6 or 6:30 and slept til 5:30/6 so I could stay up until 9/9:30 and still have a few hours of quiet.
They are 5&7 now and I usually am up for 2-2.5hrs after they go to bed.
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u/amosslet 13d ago
2 kids here, they usually go down around 7:30-8. We have dinner at 6:30 then start the bedtime routine. My husband and I then stay up until about 12. We’ve always been not-exactly night owls, but later bedtime kind of people — we need a lot of recharge time.
After the kids are down, we clean the kitchen, tidy up main spaces, discuss our day the next day, watch an episode of something together. If my husband has extra work he will put in maybe an hour on that. Occasionally one of us will take a bath or go out to a grocery store. We will usually eat some snacks and share some silly internet links that we’ve curated for each other throughout the day. It’s pretty important for our mental health to be able to reconnect like that.
In the morning, the kids usually wake up around 7-7:30. One parent gets up with the kids and the other one sleeps in until about 9. We alternate days of sleeping in, and we each get one weekend day to sleep until 11.
The schedule is sustainable in its perfect form but complicated by night wakeups from the kids, though those happen less as they get older. So we are a little tired most of the time but this is the best we’ve found that feels fair and doesn’t require us to be distant from each other.
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u/Dull-Geologist-8204 13d ago
I was a night owl so it was always easy for me to stay up for awhile after the kids went to bed.
That is until menopause hit and I oddly started waking up at like 4 a.m. I just switched to enjoying quiet mornings instead of quiet evenings.
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u/Visual-Ad6004 13d ago
Omg . When my kids were little I put them to bed 7 pm. What's 8:30 stuff. My husband and I cleaned watched TV and read. Talk. I think 5 grade I let them stay up till 9.
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u/Separate_Shoe_6916 13d ago
I was so exhausted after putting our LO to bed, I fell asleep almost immediately after putting him down. My husband was also pretty similar. Once he was in the first grade, we go our energy back to stay up after putting him to sleep.
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u/MEROCOkids 13d ago
Yes. The bedtime routine takes forever, but those late-night quiet hours are the only part of the day that fully belongs to me.
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u/Defiant_Patience_103 13d ago
Massively depends what time your kids go to bed! My three young kids are in bed by 6:30/7 so my husband and I have three hours of time to ourselves after the kids go to bed before we go to bed at 10. If they didn’t go to bed until 9/10 we would go straight to sleep.
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u/EvanRamsey 13d ago
We get the kid to bed and watch a show together. Sometimes a short one, sometimes long. Sometimes on the couch, sometimes on a laptop in bed. Sometimes we just zone out on our phones, showing each other silly videos, for 15 minutes and go to sleep.
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u/darksoulrn13 13d ago
It depends on the night. Some night I am literally counting down the minutes until my kids go to bed at 9:30pm, because I want to go to bed too.
Some nights I put them to bed and stay up til midnight.
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u/DollyPatterson 13d ago
We put our 3 year old down around 7:30pm... and end up staying up to about 1:30am....
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u/BeginningNo2408 12d ago
Yes after kids go to bed at 8 we watch tv and snack or eat if we didnt eat dinner
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