Tips from the Trenches: A Guide to Practical Parenting

For the first time since 2004, I’m living in a place that observes a biannual time change and I am not happy about it. Not having to bother with the time change was such a luxury. It did mean that summer days were not quite as long, but with two small children, bedtime in daylight is not an event to savor anyway. (Even though I personally like long summer evenings.)


The part I’m dreading the most is Monday morning. Sleep is in short supply already at my house in my bedroom and when my body thinks it is 6:46 am and the clock says it is 7:46 am, it makes for a very bad Monday.

See, they try to trick you by changing the clocks on a Saturday night. Probably under the sage advice that a one-hour time change only requires a one-day grace period. (Same for jet lag…one day per house of jet lag.) But we all know we don’t have to really make the change until Monday morning so it is completely pointless.

This time around, my kids magically knew to wake-up an hour early. No time change lag for them which is not surprising since they don’t seem to get jet lag either. Then today (Monday), they slept late as if to taunt me. Turns out I was right. It made for a very bad Monday.