Time for Sleep!

Time is flying by anymore it seems. There just doesn’t seem to be enough of it for me to get done what I need to get done. If Sweetie was sitting here reading this as I type he would say that my definition of need is much different than his, and probably yours also.


When I was a child, time moved along SO slowly, or at least that was my perception. Today? I can’t keep up with it. I’ve been working on time management and narrowing down what I commit myself and the family to. Learning to say No has been a big obstacle for me, until I looked over the schedule and saw how much of our time was busy doing things that while important, would manage to go on without us. However, working through my schedule I still have quite a few things that I need to trim off my list.

One thing I need to add more of to our whole families list is sleep. I recently read a study that over 73% of Americans don’t get the sleep that they need to function! What? Here is a basic chart showing what each of us needs based on our age.

Sleep requirements -

Newborns (0-2 months) 12 - 18

Infants (3 months to 1 year) 14 - 15

Toddlers (1 to 3 years) 12 - 14

Preschoolers (3 to 5 years) 11 - 13

School-aged children (5 to 12 years) 10 - 11

Teens and preteens (12 to 18 years) 8.5 - 10

Adults (18+) 7.5 – 9

I value sleep a whole lot more these days. It hasn’t always been that way. I remember the red and blue sleep mats in kindergarten and how my friend Stacy and I would giggle and make faces back and forth instead of sleeping. I remember home quiet time/nap time as a child. I fought that..wow did fight that. Mom liked quiet time in the house, and my sister and I didn’t. Once I talked her into letting me take a book to read for quiet time I settled just fine, sometimes actually falling asleep. It worked for her as I was quiet and resting, and out of her hair. It worked for me as I was NOT sleeping but got to read.

That was a few years ago. Being an adult has its privileges, one of them being, you don’t have anyone telling you that you must go to bed, or take a nap NOW. We get the choice of when we rest and how much. So to me this is a catch 22 scenario. It’s a good thing and it’s not a good thing. We now have to be good stewards of our time and make sure we give ourselves unwinding time, and plenty of sleep!

How much sleep are you missing out on? Ya know, a cousin of Sweetie’s recently wrote a blog on how their family turned the TV off for one night a week. She also shared about how much more talking they did to one another, and how much more they got done. Isn’t it crazy that sometimes technology isn’t helping, but actually hurting us? That’s another thought! So, let’s turn off our TV’s, silence our cell phones, shut down our computers and GO TO SLEEP!