Ever since Scorch was a baby, he has woken up at the same time just about every day. He has never been one of those kids who will sleep in late to make up for going to bed late. 7:30 pm or 11 pm, it really doesn’t matter what time he goes to bed- with the rare exception, the kid is up between 6 and 6:30 every day. I’m always fascinated when I share a room with Scorch at how consistent his body clock is. Right around 5 am he’ll turn from a deep sleeper to one who starts tossing and turning and by 6 am he’s up. That’s just how he’s wired. When he was a baby, he would get up even earlier then 6, so we made a rule in the house that he cannot call for us or get out of bed before 6 am and that’s been our routine for the past 3 years.

I’ll admit that that has made us a pretty schedule driven family. We may deviate from the bedtime by 30 minutes, but I’m not a fan of getting the kids to bed super late because there will be hell to pay in the shape of one over tired, uber-whiny kid the next day.

Which is exactly what happened a few weekends ago. The kiddos got to bed late one night for whatever reason and, like clockwork, Scorch was calling for us to get out of bed at 6 am. So I set him up with his favorite (long) movie and I went back to bed where the Hubs, Beaner and I all slept until 8 am. Scorch won’t nap any more so by 5 pm he was a crying, crazy mess because he was so stinking tired. By bedtime, the Hubs informed Scorch that under no circumstances is he allowed out of bed before 7 am any more the weekends. Period. That’s it. Don’t even bother arguing.

The Hubs was darn proud of himself for laying down the law and also a little giddy at the thought of not getting out of bed until 7. Too bad his vision of how things would go the next morning didn’t exactly line up to reality. 6 am dawned at Scorch was wide awake in his bed. So even though he didn’t get out of his room as instructed, he proceeded to:

> Call for us every 10 minutes for this or that.
> Go to the bathroom 3 times- trips that included turing on the hallway light and the bathroom light, banging around and generally being as loud as possible.
> Singing to himself in his room
> Whistling when told he had to stop singing
> Setting up an elaborate play with all his stuffed animals complete with 3 different voices.

We get more sleep when we just let him get up at 6 am and chill in front of a movie! But the Hubs is convinced we can train Scorch into sleeping longer if we keep this up. I’m of the mind we’re fighting a losing war- his body is just made to get up early. What say you?